Treed!

It’s Arbor Day. Purely guesswork and speculation on my part, but it may be one of Katie Holten’s favorite days. I have a copy of, and have read, one of her earlier books, About Trees. I’m also most of the way through Suzanne Simard’s Finding the Mother Tree.

We’ve planted, and replanted, fruit trees a number of times on our little corner of the Anoka Sand Plain. If the deer don’t browse them, winter scald gets them or the pocket gophers eat the roots. We have one pear tree that may come into blossom soon. Last year it attracted no pollinators we could see and produced no pears. As noted elsewhere in these postings, I’m much more of a hunter-gatherer than a farmer-gardener. I have the failures to prove it.

pear tree in flower

Photo by J. Harrington

Back to Katie Holten. We have one of her tree fonts installed on the laptop that regularly helps us produce this blog but it’s not readily available through our blogger software so you should visit her web site for examples. Trees are one of several different alphabets she’s created. I’ve found the prospect interesting but not terribly useful, since most of us are limited in our ability to read “trees.” 

Without trees, we’d have no place to put tree stands; places to hang swings would be severely limited; almost all leaves would have no place to grow above ground level; and lots of birds would be without places to builds nests. Anything else? Oh, yeah!! Humans and other oxygen-breathing animals might be in a bit of trouble without trees. The other thing we haven’t much touched on here is the John Muir concept that: "When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.” Simard explores variations on that theme in her book.

Last autumn we had several trees removed from in front of the house. Oak wilt and some disease that killed our large pine (and several others in the neighborhood) had turned the trees into a hazard. We’ll watch and see how the pear tree fares this spring and clean up the piles of dead branches that came down during the winter. As we keep at it, we’ll try not to think of our efforts as “love’s arbor lost.” 

Tree

By Jane Hirshfield

It is foolish

to let a young redwood   

grow next to a house.

Even in this   

one lifetime,

you will have to choose.

That great calm being,

this clutter of soup pots and books—

Already the first branch-tips brush at the window.   

Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.

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