Trees

I’ve got a thing for trees. I’m happiest when I can look out my window and see a tree. It helps that my favorite color is green, but I like trees, even in the winter when they are bare.  Ice coating tree branches is pretty darn beautiful. In the spring it’s exciting to see the first buds and then it seems later, especially after a good rain, that the trees have instantly transformed into masses of green.

Trees know how to get along with each other which adds to their beauty. As a tree grows, its branches search for the sun and bend to where they find the light. That’s why they can grow so close together and still survive, and that’s why the branches take on such gentle angles and curves. If you study a tree, even just for a minute, especially in winter, it’s really pretty amazing.

Trees are great metaphors and show up in literature all the time: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith, The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein, “The Last Leaf” by O. Henry. One of my favorite short stories is, “A Tree, A Rock, a Cloud,” by Carson McCullers.. What about that tree that Boo Radley left pennies in, in “To Kill a Mockingbird,” by Harper Lee? Or those angry apple trees in L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz?

I’ve got a green coffee mug with a tree on it. (Of course!) The back of it has some advice: Sink your roots into the earth, Be content with your natural beauty, go out on a limb, drink plenty of water, remember your roots. Enjoy the view!  A Google search tells me this is a quote by Ilan Shamir.

Recently someone asked me what the white trunked tree was in my backyard, and I didn’t know. I did what I call a reverse Google search (taking a picture of it first) and discovered it was a sycamore. I live in a very wooded area, and I don’t know the names of most of the trees here. And I’m sure I’m not the only one out there with this problem. In grade school, or maybe middle school, we made leaf books and named our trees. I remember ironing leaves between sheets of wax paper and how crinkly the paper became. Someday I’ll figure out the names of all the trees in my neighborhood. That might take the better part of a day. I should do that soon. But so many other things get in the way…