"I will survive..."

You know that song by Gloria Gaynor, right? Well, it's apparently the motto of my lilac tree.

As you all know, Patrick and I spent hours the day before we planned our Big Move to Detroit getting everything we needed to make a root ball for the lilac tree that I wanted to take. (Patrick went along with my crazy scheme of digging up a tree on the day before our move because he knew that I desperately needed something to take with me from our first home. And I've always loved lilacs since my mom and I used to sneak blossoms from a neighbor's tree that grew near the alley of our Detroit home.)

And as you know, we had to leave the tree behind in Cincinnati because it couldn't fit in the U-Haul. Yes, I agonized over it through the cold months, wondering if I should send the neighbor a key to our house (which is for sale) and ask him to rescue the tree from the garage, where it lay to die.

But during our first visit in months, we found the tree miraculously survived, living somehow on drips off water seeping into the garage and benefiting from an unusually warm season. Naturally, I was in awe, having expected to spend time breaking apart the poor dead tree (and cursing my recklessness). Instead, the tree was in bloom.

Well, she suffered a bit from the trip back home in the Vue. And the lengthier Michigan winter didn't help, particularly because we couldn't plant her immediately. (Temperatures were still freezing regularly here.) So she lived a while longer in her new garage.

She finally made it into the ground this week after we experienced some steady temperatures in the 50s and 60s. (This weekend made it into the 70s.)

But I'm still worried. She may have suffered some trauma and some of her leaves have browned. My parents, who took great pains to replant her, claim they see some new green buds on her branches and a twinkle of purple blossoms shooting from those. I'm not so sure I see what they see, but I am incredibly hopeful.

What a joy it will be if she makes it!