And the yew is thriving. In fact, there is something about the yew only Blake and I know, and I caught his eye across the table at lunch. It was our job to care for the trees in that section of the university gardens, including regularly calculating height and girth. The yew is a long-lived species, and slow growing; it usually takes about ten years to reach a height of six feet. My yew was fifteen years old and had already reached twenty. Blake and I didn’t know why, but the yew appeared to be growing inexplicably fast.
