Spring -- cleaning the leaves

Oak leaves that have hung on all winter are being stripped from their branches today. The breeze is blowing at 25 mph and gusting up to 40+ mph at the same time warmer temperatures are causing the leaf buds for this years leaves to swell, loosening the holdfast at the base of the old leaf stem. By the end of the upcoming week, the branches should be bare and ready for a new season's growth. Meanwhile, we try to not get demoralized by oak leaves that fall from October or November through March, but the dogs persist in trying to eat some and the humans keep tracking some into the house, and the flower garden keeps getting buried under layers of fallen leaves. Would that our woods held many more maple trees than oaks. We'd have home made syrup and leaf fall that only occurred once a year.

Spring's green sprouts pushing up through oak leaves

Photo by J. Harrington

On the other hand, oaks provide mast (acorns) that helps feed squirrels (red and gray), chipmunks, turkeys, deer, and the occasional bear. The shape of burr oaks is often enchanting and the metallic hues of autumn's oak leaves are stunning. Perhaps we don't know as much about what "our" woods should hold as we think we do.

mid-Summer acorn

Photo by J. Harrington

The Oak

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

 

. . . It is the last survivor of a race
Strong in their forest-pride when I was young.
I can remember when, for miles around,
In place of those smooth meadows and corn-fields,
There stood ten thousand tall and stately trees,
Such as had braved the winds of March, the bolt
Sent by the summer lightning, and the snow
Heaping for weeks their boughs. Even in the depth
Of hot July the glades were cool; the grass,
Yellow and parched elsewhere, grew long and fresh,
Shading wild strawberries and violets,
Or the lark's nest; and overhead the dove
Had her lone dwelling, paying for her home
With melancholy songs; and scarce a beech
Was there without a honeysuckle linked
Around, with its red tendrils and pink flowers;
Or girdled by a brier-rose, whose buds
Yield fragrant harvest for the honey-bee
There dwelt the last red deer, those antler’d kings . . .
But this is as dream,—the plough has pass’d
Where the stag bounded, and the day has looked
On the green twilight of the forest-trees.
This oak has no companion! . . . . 

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