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Category: trees

Toppled and Crushed

Toppled and Crushed

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I knew it was a dumb title … Kingdom of the Wind. Well, that kingdom just took down not only the Sword of Damocles, but the 110-foot-tall split-trunk oak that had snagged it. And with an awe-inspiring precision, the huge tree fell right on top of my trampoline.

Smashed it, split it right down the middle.

I’m grateful no one was hurt, that Copper wasn’t in the yard … and of course that I wasn’t bouncing at the time (not that I would have been in 60-mile-an-hour gusts).

But the trampoline meant so much to me, as did the tree — and now they’re both gone.

Soon there will be chainsaws, re-fencing, carting the trampoline away. There will be estimates, expenditures, recalculations.

But there won’t be that portal to the sky.

Flying Free

Flying Free

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Maybe it’s just the angle of the light this morning, or the way my chair is facing on the deck, but whatever it is, I’m seeing more clearly the limbs and branches that need pruning, the deadwood.

It’s no surprise the oaks need a trim. They’re old and tired, some of them just hanging on. They would be much happier if they were lighter, leaner — shorn. Wouldn’t we all? And isn’t so much of life about finding the balance between heavy and light, rooted and free.

As I write these words a male cardinal lands on the browning stem of a day lily plant, which seems too slender to support the weight of a goldfinch, let alone this summer-plumped bird. But the stem holds, dips gently, then rises again. The cardinal pauses, fluffs his feathers, then flies away. Oh to have that kind of trust, that kind of lightness.

To Capture Rapture

To Capture Rapture

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Underlit can mean inadequately or poorly lit — or it can mean lit from beneath. As in these trees, glowing from within, it seems, though drawing their light from the setting sun.

They shine like this for only a few minutes each evening, and woe to the photographer who thinks she can bounce a few more minutes on the trampoline before snapping a shot. She will be disappointed. 
Because it only takes an instant for the light to drain away, for the trees to move from emerald to forest, to lose their glow, to become ordinary.
But this night, I stopped bouncing, climbed down off the contraption, ran inside and grabbed my phone. It’s difficult to capture rapture. But that’s what I was trying to do. 
A Dogwood’s Year

A Dogwood’s Year

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After an early bloom and an untimely freeze, I didn’t expect much of Spring this year. But it has surprised me. The hyacinths are wafting, the lilacs are trying (I have three blooms this year, up one from last year) and the dogwood, well, it’s something else entirely.

I remember when we would have four or five flowers on this tree. And now, it has burst into life and threatens to overcome the mailbox if there isn’t some judicious pruning.

Until there is, here’s the shaggy, unruly tree in all its gleaming,white 2017 glory.

Work of Redemption

Work of Redemption

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Trotting down the road this morning I looked to my right, at the trees just greening in the forest. Little leaves still so young, so tender. They were shining with the effort and the touch of early light.

Maybe it was the music playing in my ears at that moment, a string trio by Mendelssohn, or maybe it was the release of a work week’s tension, but I was suddenly overwhelmed by the bravery of those leaves, by the work of redemption they perform every spring.

Of course, there’s a biological explanation for what they do. I vaguely remember it from high school biology class.

But for me, the biological becomes the metaphorical, just as the walk becomes the lodestone, the anchor of a day.

Horizontal Tree

Horizontal Tree

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Trees are lovely and I enjoy writing about them. But they have a design deficit when it comes to blog post illustration. They are, for the most part, relentlessly vertical.

This is, of course, one of their chief attributes.  They stand up straight and tall. They aim themselves heavenward and take our thoughts with them.

But in a blog layout such as this, a horizontal picture suits better than a vertical one. Enter the banyan, a tree that is born of air, that grows not from the ground but from another banyan. A tree that grows not just up but out.

Banyans provide cool gathering places. Whole villages can assemble under their canopies. One of the largest spans eight acres!

And then, there is the banyan’s pictorial properties. When you need a horizontal tree, the banyan fits the bill. It is not just shade but shelter.

(Photo: Wikimedia)

The Bismarckia

The Bismarckia

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I only learned its name today, this plant that I’ve seen for the last four years I’ve been coming to this Gulf Coast beach town.

It’s a palm that stood out for its blue-gray color, the hue of Nordic seas, a subtle note among the tropical oranges and yellows.

At first it was little more than a tall frond, a shrub. But as the years  have passed it has added to its heft and hue and now stands  quite proudly, as befits its rather hefty name.

I looked it up online. Named for the first chancellor of the German Empire Otto von Bismarck and native only to Madagascar (an odd combination!), this plant is grown throughout the tropics and subtropics.

Which is why I’ve found it here in subtropical Florida, where a brief rain shower drove me inside to finish the post.

Name That Tree!

Name That Tree!

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It was already in the 90s by the time I took a walk on Saturday, and I’d forgotten to wear sunscreen. Which is why when I found a shady side path angling off invitingly from the sun-stricken W&OD, I took the path, gladly.

It’s called the Sugarland Run Trail, and it meanders along behind Carlisle Street to Elden Street in Herndon. There are frequent glimpses of Sugarland Run gurgling beside the trail.

With a name like “Sugarland,” I half expected a Candyland Board with Gumdrop Mountains and Peppermint Stick Forests.

What I found instead was almost as good, because this little woods comes complete with tree labels. In addition to the usual white oaks and red maples, there were a slippery elm, a pignut hickory, an elderberry, a hackberry and others, all neatly labeled and described.

I wish all community forests did this. If they did, I’d finally learn the names of the trees I walk among, these old friends, and soon the forests of my mind would be filled not just with “trees” but with green elms and American sycamores. What a rich place that would be!

(The path looked somewhat like this, but without the leaves and with the labels.)

Trees, Today

Trees, Today

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We have plunged through the humidity and come out on the other side. A morning cool as the underside of a pillow. Trees etched clearly against the sky.

I’m learning on the job now something I must have learned before but understand better — how much carbon trees absorb, the boon they are to our atmosphere. So when I look at them I see not just trunk and leaf, but a busy factory.

On a sultry day it’s harder to believe what they do for us, the air heavy with earthly exhale. But on a morning like this I can feel their power, their cleansing power. It’s not scientific, of course. It’s only metaphor. But it makes me a believer just the same.

Slow Greening

Slow Greening

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When I returned here late Sunday from Lexington, I could tell that spring hadn’t gotten much further than it was when I left three days earlier. And no wonder: Virginia had the same cold rain and snow bursts over the weekend that Kentucky did.

Which means that spring is delightfully long this year. The trees, just greening, are paused at a precious and delicate moment. For some, too much cold now means no blooms later on. The hydrangea comes immediately to mind.

For others, though, the cooler temperatures mean a slower greening — a longer run of “spring green,” a Crayola color I remember from childhood. It’s a hue closer to yellow than to green. “Nature’s first green is gold,” Robert Frost said. “Its hardest hue to hold.”

Some years, that “hardest hue to hold” lasts only hours; other years it might linger for a few days. This year it’s going on a week — a slow greening that’s a long tease and a rare treat. It’s all I can do not to aim my camera at every leaf and tree.