Evangeline’s Daughters

Evangeline was unwell. You could see it in Her lackluster crown, leaf-bald in places, and in the meager crop of acorns She begrudgingly sprouted. A creeping fig vine, starting out innocently enough as an ornamental ground cover in the 1980s, had escaped its intended location and had managed to scale the trunk of the legendary oak, growing tighter, more leafy and more woody every year, tighter even to the point of cutting into Evangeline’s bark.