For the Love of Trees

I’m having a real tree moment. For 6 years we lived on a small piece of property with not one tree on it. A large rhododendron was the extent of our arboreal existence. Since moving to a bigger piece of land with many huge trees on the property I have been completely inspired by them. To the chagrin of my husband (a tree is just a tree to him…) I really do think of these trees as living beings. I am mesmerized by their stamina and strength – some most likely have been on our property for 75-100 years. They were here before us and many will remain long after we are gone.

When we moved in we knew that there were clearly some old ladies who had seen a better day. A Red Maple directly in front of our house has been devoured by bugs and birds, leaving her trunk half-decayed. It hurts me to know that she must come down in the months to come for safety sake. I’ve learned a lot about trees since having a host of specialists come to give us quotes. The saddest part about this tree is that Red Maples are actually quite resilient and they try and regenerate where there is damage to their trunk and bark. This tree was most likely injured by a lawn mower ramming into her and the “wound” was so bad that the bark peeled and then the bugs and birds started pecking away. You can see where the tree is growing new “skin” to cover the gash but the rate of decline is faster than it’s able to regrow. This tree makes me think it would be worth it for us all to pay more attention to who mows our lawns and how we interact with the tree trunks near the grass line.

And then there is this big Beech Tree near the garage. Soon after moving in I noticed she had a white scar on her lower trunk. Her leaves looked fine to me but the specialist informed me the scar was most likely from the snow plow pushing mounds of snow up against her for years. The snow had eventually killed the bark and frozen that area of the trunk. Beech Trees are very sensitive and hard to revive once they are 40% in decline. He said he thought we should enjoy her while we could but inevitably she won’t live more than 5 or so years. I plan on really admiring this tree while we still have her.

And then we have this out-of-this-world Oak Tree – the home of our treehouse. I am obsessed with how she has grown around the treehouse over the last 10 years. I love to envision how useful this old tree feels knowing she has such purpose and brings so much joy to our family and the family who lived here before us.

And then in the midst of my love affair with our trees one of our favorite teachers stopped by a week ago and encouraged the girls to get crafty and use their imaginations. She inspired us to use acorns for making fairies. My daughters and I started hunting in the yard and then created these tree-born fairies earlier this week. All you need is to gather leaves, twigs, acorns, and pine combs and then use a hot glue gun to secure them to thick paper in order to make your own. For the love of trees – give it a try!