Tree Hugger - 2; Tree Hater - 0

The puzzling phenomenon of an individual who would rather stare at an empty, neglected sidewalk tree pit than root for a tree.

Latest dispatch in the annals of guerrilla gardening the barren, neglected sidewalk tree pits of my neighborhood. I had two extra hardy hibiscuses in need of moving out of the crowded planter and two mystery volunteer seedlings (possibly mulberries, but unclear) that needed to be mercifully evicted.  

One of the hibiscuses was a seedling dug from near the hedge at the Mother Garden in Queens.  The other was grown from seeds collected last year from a multi-petal pink hibiscus in Carl Schurz Park.  They were among the four in the planter - more than could possibly thrive into maturity; I just didn’t know how many would survive.

So the hibiscus fraternal twins went into #YorkvilleUESTreePit454E84, where I put in a tiny maple seedling in the Spring that did not make it.  All was fine, the usual.  Several people stopped to chat, to thank me, to offer help ... it’s lovely, really, and I have come to look forward to those chance connections to my neighbors.

Then, off, with dusk apgproaching, to find homes for the mystery seedlings.  I passed by some candidates that looked like someone might actually care about them - in front of buildings that looked tended to, with folks who might actually want to have a say in their tree pits.  And then stopped in front of 401 East 83rd, before a laundry, in a small walkup, a sidewalk dirt patch that seemed abandoned with low likelihood of future greening.  As I was digging the hole, a woman appeared, and began to berate me; she demanded to know what I was doing, insisted that I stop, that planting the barren space was illegal, said she would remove it if I did not, and even threatened to call the cops on me!  I was stunned. All I could manage was to ask why she hated trees so much, and why she would prefer to look at an empty patch of dirt than one supporting greenery.  Anyway, since she said she lived in the building and would yank out the seedling, there was no point in continuing.

I was so taken aback by the confrontation that it was only right afterward that I realized she was MASKLESS - figures an anti-masker would also be a tree hater; they often go hand in hand. Just a mean and grouchy woman - of the same ilk as the destroyer of the birdhouses on 81st Street.

As Sissy labeled her later, a Karen if there ever was one.

I wish my brain were one of those that could come up with snappy retorts in the moment - responded sarcastically that I could see what concern she has for the community, depriving them of trees and health...  Instead, discouraged, and with full dusk having set in, I went home.  

So the day's tally: two hibiscuses in for the tree huggers, zero for the tree hater (and her neighbors at 401 East 83rd, who will have to suffer her and her imposition upon them of her masklessness and tree aversion).