420 Old Millbury Street

Every morning on my way to drop the girls off at day care, I always ask if they want the highway or the back roads. The answer is always the same, so we have become very familiar with the streets of Millbury. At 420 Old Millbury street there was an unusual sight that didn't quite fit in to the sometimes manicured, sometimes bucolic landscape.
An old rotted out tree stump cradled a baby pine tree. Maybe a bird dropped a seed at just the right moment and it found itself in the perfect dewy niche in which to germinate. This would be a perfect spot to start off life. Raised above all the shrubs, there was no competition for space or light, no lawn mowers to thwart it's sprouting, no snow plows to bury it until summer. So it thrived, this brilliant green life growing out of the hollowed out carcass of another tree. But I always wondered how long this untenable situation would be sustained. Sometimes a life with a perfect beginning is destined to be felled early. Just the other day, I saw that the owners had cut down that old stump and with it, that new tree. I wonder if they ever noticed it. I wonder if it's replanted somewhere in the background of our drives.