It has been a simple dream of mine as long as I can remember to have a Japanese maple in my yard... since, probably, I finished college and left the East for good. Every time I came home to visit over the decades, I was captivated by the maple's color and by the delicate leaves as seen through filtered light. I didn't kid myself about those long Minnesota winters, and put the dream aside. I did try to grow a potted one in our tiny San Francisco garden a few years back, but the poor small thing didn't like the winter rains and summer drought enough to master its modest corner. Now here I am, surrounded by more Japanese maples than I can count. Not the small, delicate, umbrella-like trees that I have held in memory, but ones big enough to arch across whole neighbors' yards, ones that whisper against our windows in the rain, and ones that line our little lane, now brilliant in the morning sun.