Tale of 2 trees

 You know the story, Tale of Three Trees? It is a beautiful and moving story of sacrifice and salvation. 

Well, we have our own story, Tale of Two Trees. Our story, too, has a moral. Just not quite as spiritual as the more popular one.

Our story started in the spring when we had to put our front tree down. She served us well but she was declining and it was getting painful to look at her.

Then ensued the conversation about what would replace her. The majority of us wanted something that would have beautiful pink buds every spring. The Good Doctor wanted something bright red in the fall. And since each of his votes counts as five votes, and even if we had all four votes, we could never have over-ridden his vote for the red tree. And we didn't have all four votes because we had a dissenter who doesn't like anything pink because it's "for girls."

So, in the spring we got a tree named Scarlet when what we really wanted was a tree named Coral. A few members of the family, who choose to remain anonymous, briefly considered ordering a can of pink spray paint off of Amazon so we could enjoy our pink tree but said family members abstained from such actions.

Well, here we are in the fall. Our tree's cousins at the middle school are a beautiful red color. 

Ours is still green. Plain green. Just green. Nothing but green.

It's a good thing we didn't waste our money on that pink spray paint because now we have to buy a can of red spray paint to help our little tree reach its (supposed) full potential.

So what's wrong with our tree, you ask? This summer, when the topic of the tree came up during Mariana and Jake's wedding shower, Jesse suggested that it was struggling because we were so mean to it.

We thought he was joking.

We forgot that he's a science teacher. He knows these things.

Because it appears as if trees are susceptible to bullying and apparently we were the worst kind. 

We're sorry, Coral. We repent of our sinful ways. Please, please turn pink in the spring. 

Or red in the fall. Fine. Red is fine.

Anything. Just do something. 

Please?