“I think she died,” I said to my husband as I lamented the appearance of my friend, the tree who once stood proudly along the fence line. Each fall for decades she’d graced our backyard with a striking combination of colors. Every spring and summer her green waxy leaves provided beauty and shade. But on that mid-spring afternoon, she showed no signs of life. No leaf buds emerged from her long, bare limbs. This mighty tree spread her branches at ninety-degree angles from the eighteen-inch-thick trunk. She stood in sharp contrast to the spring-green leaves and grassy lawn around her.…