[Other Wind] The early real estate deeds at the Archives where I work mark boundaries with trees. Surveyors used them as solid and permanent fixtures on the land. Steel posts mark my property now, but my home is still defined by trees. Returning from a far off wonderland, I am warmed by the sight of leafy trees carpeting hillsides or of stark bark in the winter spiking up from the ground, intermingling shards slicing the air.
[Prairie Point] ...a photo-copied page with a black and white photo of a tree and a brief paragraph headlined “Largest Pecan Tree in the World.” There was a little map that showed it was just 3.5 miles north on Highway 51. The guy behind the counter had never been there, but Highway 51 was right outside the door. I pulled the car out of the gravel lot and headed north through the farmland, measuring the miles on the odometer.
[rubysuz * so freaking in need of an update *]the place whispered to my soul, the grounds sprang up around my feet, the dense moss drippy canopy climbing upwards like graceful old cathedral spires, this alaskan coastal forest breathed so heavy with life, it left cray-pas stains on my hands. settling down to its winters rest, the forest was no less alert, no less piercingly perceiving the pervasively pristine perspective. shhhh. i find forests so comforting in their group embrace, neighbor tress sofly carressing each other stories over my head, creating another biosphere about giant eyes height. an extreme environment, worn down with permeating marine rain, leaves of lichensuggling up the feet of trees, crawling alongside creeping moss electric mini verdant afro. my favorite path in our long fibrous hike thru alaska.
[O'DonnellWeb] My first memories of childhood come from Torrejon, Spain, a small town outside of Madrid. My father was in the USAF, a member of the Strategic Air Command helping protect the world from the evil commies in the USSR and East Germany. We lived off-base, in a community of Americans that did not qualify for on base housing. The central gathering point for the kids of the neighborhood was The Tree.
[Field Notes] His obsession was the result of unwavering imagination. And so when I'd awake just past dawn and find myself alone in the dome, I'd know where to find him. Coffee cup in hand he stood with a hose or a hoe, ant spray or fertilizer, tending his trees. When I looked at them, I saw their upward form, their tall smooth trunks, graceful few fronds on top, and the coconuts that greened and fattened there, then dropped milky and full. But he saw something hidden, something I couldn't see. His battle was with the roots. The roots needed tending, for it was the roots that would save him. Whatever time of year, the rainy season haunted him. There was never enough time to prepare, to fortify against the torrents that would inevitably come and wash away his land. Roots were needed.
[OnePotMeal] My father's family is full of schemers brimming with schemes: my great-grandfather who built the Maryland house I grew up in and founded his own hellfire religion because the others weren't enough for him. His son, my great-uncle, who bought the house and planted acres of would-be Christmas trees, his fortune waiting for harvest, but instead he grew restless, sold the house to my grandparents who sold it to my parents, and the only trees harvested were cut down by us for our own holidays, choosing a trunk each year to gnaw with soft, plastic saws until we got cold and my father chewed it down with the teeth of a chainsaw.
Once in a while though, like last week when my brother was here from Toronto, the sheer breathtaking girth of them is brought to my awareness again. Out on a walk in Crippen Park last week, my brother pointed to an old Douglas-fir that rose straight and cylindrical out of the forest floor up a couple of hundred feet and said, very quietly, "Look at that."
[Northwest Notes] Hello! Fran here, writing from Seattle... normally misty and wet, currently hot and sunny. Here's a review of a great book about trees. I learned one of my favorite tree facts from this book: the explanation of how water rises to the topmost, thinnest twig of the tallest trees—and does so with no energy expenditure on the part of the tree. Adhesion and evaporation of water molecules provide the mechanism. A water molecule is absorbed into a root and pulls other water molecules behind it; meanwhile a water molecule evaporates out of a leaf in the top of the tree. The next water molecule is pulled up by adhesion, pulling all the water behind it in a chain reaching all the way back to the tree’s root. Water moves hundreds of feet straight up, one molecular step at a time.
[Creek Running North] The longer I garden, the more I sneer at the notion of "slow-growing" trees. I plant them, turn my back, and turn again to find they've tripled in size. I'm not talking about the silver maples I planted in our yard in New York, which now overtop the house (if the owners haven't yet cut them down). Silver maples are "trash trees" - they can grow six feet a year. I'm talking about Catalina ironwoods, Xanthorrhoeas, cutleaf Japanese maples: the kind that pout out a few leaves each spring, an inch of new trunk, and that nonetheless seem to grow at an amazing rate, nourished with a thick mulch of calendar pages.
[Flyleaf:] It may tell you something about where I live that on the day the city cut several aging, spotty oaks in Horseshoe Lake Park near my house, several women were roaming the grass with tears in their eyes. One of them told a reporter she had touched a tree's spirit and that it was sad, but not angry.
[Mulubinba Moments] The story of the "Crown of Thorns" Tree.
[Lifescapes] The mesquites that grow abundantly here in the Texas hill country are usually small trees, but large in spirit, large in generosity--not well loved by the local ranchers, though, who hate mesquite with about the same passion intensity that they direct to prickly pear cactus. Mesquite are deep-rooted and compete with grass for the limited water. And, back in the days when cows were rounded up by real cowboys on horses, you could lose half your herd in a thorny mesquite thicket. In fact, mesquite is on the Texas hit list of invasive plants. But there are fewer ranchers than there used to be in Burnet County these days, and it's getting harder to object to mesquite. The tree is perfect for xeroscaping your yard (as long as you don't let the kids go barefoot where they can step on the thorns). The wood is a natural for barbecue, and mesquite jelly is delicious, sort of like apple jelly. Settlers hereabouts processed the dried beans into flour, which was in turn made into bread and, cunningly fermented, into booze. And artists are discovering the exotic beauty of its wood. On Lifescapes for 8/26/03: a photo of a mesquite vase that my Bill turned on his lathe. Lovely to have the mesquite outside my window and inside, on my desk.--Susan
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