I have a tree that doesn’t really belong where I live. Wrong soil, wrong weather, wrong light for what it needs. Some years it grows a little. Some years it survives the winter and nothing more.

But I go out and check it. I trim its dead branches, loosen the topsoil, and look for early signs of green. It would be easier to replace it with something better suited to Seattle — a hardier tree that asks for nothing. But I don’t. I tend this one.

I check on my tree most weeks. I check my phone a lot more. The difference is stark. Online, I chase quick green shoots of validation. With the tree, I'm looking for something else entirely. Maybe a bud that wasn't there last week. Growth so slow it feels imagined.

One late spring, though, the new buds hadn’t come. Just limp, browning needles. I didn’t notice right away — too busy, too distracted — and by the time I crouched down and looked, the branches were webbed over. Spider mites, practically invisible at first, had threaded their quiet damage through the whole tree.

It occurred to me that patience alone wasn’t enough and wouldn’t save anything. Even slow and well-intentioned, neglect could still kill.

I washed the tree down with dish soap and water — an absurd solution for a barely visible invasion. Weeks passed. Many needles browned and fell, but some clung on, stubborn. Some flipped green again. Not a miracle, not even a comeback. Just a truce with loss and gardening failure.

The internet rewards what the tree can’t do — burst into sudden bloom, spread everywhere at once, demand immediate attention. I’ve felt the pull myself. But I go back outside, brush a hand against rough bark, and remember: not everything can be saved by wanting it to grow. Some things need more than patience. They need watching.

I decided to write online anyway.

Just a small personal website. A place to put words that aren’t trying to bloom all at once. No trending tabs, no vanity metrics. Just quiet, steady work — the kind you have to check on even when it looks like nothing’s happening. Some seasons the tree surprises me — new needles on new branches. Most of the time it’s just there: rooted, recovering, stubborn. A personal website feels the same. Posts go up. Some find a reader. Some don’t.

The point isn’t just to wait and hope. It’s to tend — even when there’s no obvious reward. Even when it would be easier to walk away.

Some things are worth the effort. Even if they only teach you that caring isn't passive — it's washing spider mites off with dish soap, noticing decline before it spreads, learning that love and care without vigilance is just another kind of neglect. The tree didn't ask to be planted wrong. But it's here now, and that seems to matter more than whether it thrives.