Tag: Trees

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Hazards to Green

ellenparkerwrites

I’ll have to agree with the frog on this one. While green is useful and I wear it with pride – it can be hazardous at times.

This winter was difficult. Yes, my roots were secure. The cold temperatures were expected and the abundant snow welcome. You see, I’m designed to endure long, cold, dark winters. My friends and I in the field flex in the storms and then capture the snow in drifts around our skirts. It’s so nice and comforting to the roots when it melts, trickling into the soil at all of thirty-three degrees. (One above for folks that think Celsius.)

But deep snow brings hazard as well as welcome moisture. My friends in the rows nearest the woodlot get the worst of it. Three or four heavy snows into the winter and the deer discover that our tops are easier to find for a snack than their usual woodland shrubs. It hurts when they visit. Chomp. Chomp. There goes my leader – trimmed down to less than an inch from the proud crowning glory of early December.

Warmer, longer days and vanishing snow changes the hazard. The deer retreat but the field soon has a new visitor. Legend among the trees tells of the ‘good old days’ – before the wild turkeys came. Now they move through the field in a flock. Peck. Peck. They pull off and gobble down another growth bud. How am I to grow straight and tall with they pick away at my potential? Days like this I wish for a little mobility – or a strong breeze – to wave my branches and discourage them.

Wait. What’s that sound? It’s growing closer. Yes, here come the humans. They are walking between the rows – scooping and tossing cups of nutritious fertilizer at our drip lines. Go rootlets – Go. I stretch them out to claim my portion of precious minerals mixed with fresh spring moisture.

Green Narrator
Green Narrator

 

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The Right Tree?

ellenparkerwrites

What kind of tree is that?

Good question. Especially when asked during the dormant season. In early spring — when snow remained in our forecast — I decided to photograph apple blossoms from bud to flower to tiny fruit. My first task — find an apple tree.

Apple trees bear fruit – a delicious and healthful one. I knew an accessible one grew only half a block from the regular route of my morning walk. It would be easy to take the short detour — as long as I remembered to grab the camera.

On an early March morning I started. A row of six or more trees bordered commercial property. Which one was the apple? Most of them were about the same size. All of them displayed the bare branches of the season (no help from leaves today). I looked. I thought. I tried to remember where in the row I’d found it two years ago in late summer. It wore apples then, easy to identify.

I settled on the smallest in the row. Something about the shape indicated fruit tree rather than ornamental or shade.

Did I select well? It’s a little like beginning a new story. Do I have the right idea? The proper characters to act out the play on the pages?

Patience. Time. Patience and time as my father used to advise.

Right Tree? Right Story?
Right Tree?
Right Story?
Blog

It’s Official Now

ellenparkerwrites

Yes! Spring arrived. Well, the vernal equinox arrived on schedule. Depending on where you live it may or may not look green and “springy” outside your window.

St. Louis is brown with small, irregular spots of green. Thank you hardy bulbs. Daylight makes an effort to cheer the humans and their pets. As one of the impatient people, I’m eager for more. More sunshine. More warmth. More enticement to linger outside and chat with a neighbor without both of us bundled up from toes to ears.

With a nod to the past and hope for the future I give you a photo from my personal archives. Not every March 21 is bleak and brown.

Blooms on March 21, 2009
Blooms on March 21, 2009

Next stop on The Writing Process Blog Hop is March 24 at   http://barbarabinns.com

Blog

Wooden Tale

ellenparkerwrites

A large, tidy stack signals preparation for the next season.

How? Why?

As a fiction writer those are two of my favorite questions to twist with a “what if” and embellish.

This is the American Midwest. I’ll start my short, short, short story with a storm damaging a large tree. I’ll add a tree service with their special equipment but the owner makes a deal to have the truck and larger limbs remain on his property, cut into fireplace sized chunks.

Now I see a father and teenage sons moving the pieces and tipping them on end. Wedges. Axes. Learn by doing. Swing into the wood. Release frustration. Work in a team. Work as punishment. In early morning before the heat makes it unbearable. On a crisp early fall evening.

Carry. Move. Stack. Clean up the scrap for the backyard summer fire pit.

Stand on the porch and savor the result of your labors. Enough fuel for evenings around the fireplace. More than enough for one winter of storm caused power outages.

Suburban Wood Reserve
Suburban Wood Reserve
Blog

Autumn Buffet

ellenparkerwrites

Harvest time!

To this rural girl it brings images of corn fields turning yellow and dry, waiting for the picker. Squash and pumpkins lay at opposite ends of a large garden. Potatoes wait to be dug under dry and shriveled plants. Onions are pulled from the ground and their long hollow leaves braided together.

If the weather had been right, and dad talked to the owners, we gathered nuts. We’d carry, or drag, burlap sacks and collect dark butternuts from the ground. (Yes, I’m aware butternuts to not grow everywhere. Other places it would be walnuts or hickory nuts that were valued.)

We weren’t the only creatures that collected a harvest. Generations of forest creatures collect and store nuts and fruits for weeks of cold winter. They come in different shapes and sizes but one of the most prevalent (and cutest) is the squirrel. Some fall days the oak tree on my lawn is as busy as a hotel at high season.

Nature spreads this fall buffet on my walking route – where the mature trees drop their fruits to share.

Acorns for All!
Acorns for All!
Blog

Trees and Water – A Scenic Combo

ellenparkerwrites

On my recent travels I got a taste of the West Virginia and Maryland Appalachians. Unlike their younger, taller, mountain range cousins in the western states, these mountains wear forest all the way to their crown.

While my passenger remarked on the stratification of the rocks revealed in the cuts for the highway I concentrated on traffic with frequent glances at the larger view.

Where are the farms? A person could get lost down there. Too steep for anything but a goat. I tried not to think of myself as a confused hiker, trying to follow a creek downstream to a sign of civilization. A sprained ankle could turn life threatening.

No, I wanted the big picture. The variations of green that sweep over the hills (pardon me, mountains) for miles and miles until they meet the clear blue sky.

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Thank you to Maryland for supplying the rest area with this view. You are looking at the Youghiogheny River and Reservoir. According to the sign, the water from here flows north, into Pennsylvania where it joins the Monongahela River.

How awesome to think a leaf that falls into this lake could make it’s way along the Monongahela to the Ohio passing miles and miles of wilderness, industry, and agriculture before joining the Mississippi, dodging barge traffic and at long last meeting the salt water of the Gulf of Mexico.

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A Place to Shine

ellenparkerwrites

I made it!  My roots spread out in the northern Midwest soil and fed me. I stretched and grew and healed from the shearing machete.  I stood tall and proud with my pine companions of several years. I was taller than the humans walking down our rows.

They tagged me. Yes, it seems a small gesture. But it marked me for the cutter. Moved me one step closer to my ultimate goal.

The saw came. I went numb. Pulled, dragged, tossed onto a truck I nestled with my field mates. We were literally carried away, forced into a different pile, and received a protective net. Then a larger truck and a longer journey.

Cool air, the almost frosty nights, gave way to milder temperatures. I sure could use a drink. Mile after mile the flat bed semi carried hundreds of us. The top layer received a little rain. I enjoyed the moister air and a few drops trickling down.

Humans unload us. Give us another sort and count. Then on a sunny November morning I get my chance. I’m set upright and cut out of my netting. I stretch my limbs. Do you see how pretty I am? Check out my fine shape.

Shoppers look, take some of my companions away. No need to worry. A few cool nights later and December begins. I refuse to shiver under the string of lights at the perimeter of our lot.

She picked me! I’m clothed in net again, perched on the roof of a sedan, and carried off to a modest house. It’s all I ever wanted. I’m going to be a real Christmas tree!

Waiting for the Final Touch
Waiting for the Final Touch

Starr Tree Farm is now available wherever fine ebooks are sold.

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When I Grow Up…

ellenparkerwrites

When I grow up I want to be a tall, graceful, center of attention in a home. I want to hear children laugh. I want to support strings of tiny lights and hold decorations rich with memories on my little green fingers.

That’s in the future. I have several years left to grow among my friends in the field.

We look a little shaggy and small at the moment. Soon the workers will come with their machetes and shear our sides into a gentle slope. My leader will get a trim, preparing me for the next growing season. I’ll stand proud, holding my place in the row until the autumn when I’m selected to decorate and scent a home at holiday time.

Will you select me?

Will I be your Christmas Tree?
Will I be your Christmas Tree?

Starr Tree Farm releases Monday, August 5. Click on the dedicated page of this web site for details and order information.