Will you tree my valentine?

There are a lot of trees here at the coop.  And i like them all.  It was really what i fell in love with that first time winding up the drive.  A little patch of forest struggling to survive in a suburban desert.  Take away the trees, like they did next door, and you uncover the ugliness of the two legged stink bugs living underneath.  Like peeling the bark back and exposing a colony of the six legged variety.  Just nasty.  Now, as much as i love this wood and these trees, i don't do anything to maintain them.  To me, God's system for forests seems to work best the less we interfere.  Death, fire, rot are not things to be fought, they're part of the system.  Like digestion, fever and excrement.  They're not pretty but without them we'd be poorer... and probably explode at a very young age.  Ewww.

So the trees i have are the ones that grow.  i love them.  i don't hug them.

Except for two.

There's a holly on the property.  So verdant, lush, green, vibrant at all times yet with berries of opposing hue adding such a splash of crimson that you know this is no one dimensional tree.  It may be a member of the forest, doing all the usual tree stuff: providing shade and cover and protection from the wind but it also knows how to party, it retains something, some secret that it only hints at with these scarlet sparkles.  This tree, i love.  This tree i want to see not just survive, but flourish!  i love to watch it grow.  i love how it hints of Christmas.  i love to just look at it.  

The problem comes when i try to get closer.  Hollies hurt.  They are fierce defenders of themselves.  Reminiscent of rose bushes.  They scratch and tear but i can't let go.  This is the tree i love.  Not an oak or a hickory or a cedar.  This tree, this holly has my heart.  

i've tried pruning back some of the sharper branches but i'm not an arboriculturist or even a topiarist.  i'm more of a ...not quite a lumberjack... um, what's the word, what's the word?  Butcher?  No, too artistic.  Barber?  Enh.  Too scientific.

Ah!  Axe Murderer!  That's it.  The poor critter just looks wounded for weeks till the bare spots fill back in.  While i fret that this time i killed it for sure.  God is gracious though and repairs the damage but... there we are.  Back to square one.  Tree and frick, unable to get closer.  Unable to be apart.  What's a poor hollylover to do?

Go to the other tree i love.  There are only four trees around the coop that i planted myself.  Three are dead, one, George, survives.  But it's not George i go to.  And it's not one of the other two Christmas trees i killed.  This tree i go to was dead when i planted it.  Yet it's the only one that can bring life.