I just have to write about trees today, having seen so many magnificent live oaks in New Orleans this past week. I hope the photograph of the biggest (with three cavorting daughters in front of its trunk) gives you some idea of their staggering size. These trees are evergreen, their shiny, leathery leaves remaining on the tree year-round. Their enormous limbs are lined with mats of emerald polypody ferns and drip with the gray beards of Spanish moss. When I got home I went around taking pictures of our New England trees, but none of them compare.
Do you have a favorite tree species? I would be hard put to choose just one, and of course it depends on the individual specimen, the time of year, the setting, the tree's age. One might pick a white pine, but only if it was a majestic one with some of its limbs tortured by wind and weather. A flaming sugar maple against a deep blue autumn sky can be breath-taking, but not very thrilling at other times of year. As a kid I would definitely have picked the huge cherry tree in our yard because every summer I spent hours in its highest branches surveying the world and eating cherries.
We don't have the climate here in the East to produce trees as spectacular as those in the South, but our white oak, provided it is ancient and grows in the open where it can spread its strong branches in all directions, can be almost as impressive. Or how about a sycamore, which I call a butterball because of its funny balls of fruit. The mottled gray and white bark of this tree is like no other.
I was unfamiliar with locust trees when Hank and I bought our farm back in January of 1962. My first glimpse of these bleak black statues lining the big meadow beyond the house had such crooked twisted limbs that they reminded me of the trees in a spooky Charles Adams drawing. Ah, but when spring arrived, so did the clusters of white blossoms whose delicious perfume saturated the air and whose petals dropped like snowflakes in the breeze.
One of my favorite trees is the silver maple. Not just any old silver maple, but the one right outside the bedroom window. It is the first harbinger of spring. At this time of year its buds swell and turn red, stretching toward the house to tell me warm weather is coming, despite the frigid temperatures on my thermometer. I think the maples make this decision based on length of daylight, not the temperatures.
We've raised the silver maple since babyhood, having transplanted it from the woods as a tiny sapling to replace a drooping Norway spruce that blocked all winter sun from the bedroom. I watched like a proud mother as it grew tall, but then one spring I panicked as it suddenly began to look sick. Its smooth gray bark was full of cracks and some of its limbs began to die. The thought of losing this tree was so upsetting I called a tree surgeon, and happily discovered that my concern was totally misplaced. Silver maples just get "wrinkles" with age, their bark splitting, and periodically they shed a few tired limbs.
The tree is now taller than the house. Chickadees, titmice, nut hatches and goldfinches flit from its branches to the bird feeder on winter mornings. Each May the orioles build a new nest in one of its drooping swaying branches, and its thick green foliage shades the bedroom from the hot summer sun.
Most of the trees we planted were like the silver maple, small saplings we took from the woods - maples, dogwoods, laurels. Our one store-bought tree was a weeping birch, an expensive mistake. We planted it too near the vegetable garden so its roots rushed right over to that nice friable soil full of rich manure. Then the sapsuckers attacked, making large holes up and down the trunk. Sapsuckers don't eat sap. They make a tree bleed, which lures the ants. The ants eat the sap, the sapsuckers eat the ants.
Last fall daughter Bridget told me she hated looking at the weeping birch because it appeared so tortured, its limbs unnaturally forced to weep. Since it now puts shade on the garden and fills the soil with its roots, Hank is planning to cut it down this spring. I suspect we will also have to poison it or we'll have a mess of hardwood sprout.
The last Monday in April is Arbor Day, the perfect time to plant one of your favorite trees. If you'd like a weeping willow, just cut a small branch from someone else's willow and stick it in a moist area of your yard. We have two weeping willows on Locust Hill that we "planted" just that way. Think long and hard before you plant your tree, so you don't make a stupid mistake like we did. Picture what it will look like in a few years. Will you want the swimming pool there someday or a sunny flower bed? If you think you might sell the house, plant a tree anyway. It will increase the value of the property.
Dig a deep hole and fill it with water. Make the hole large enough so you can spread the tree's roots, then add soil, tamping each layer firmly, getting out any air pockets, then water it again. If it's not a wet spring, keep watering it so it has time to establish those tiny root hairs that soak up moisture. They've probably all been damaged during transplanting.
Enjoy your tree.
