My sister Bevin refuses to believe that trees die. Trees can be KILLED, of course, by lumberjacks and utility companies and ice storms. And trees can get sick and die from bugs and fungi and whatever else creeps in to kill them. But trees do not, all by themselves, die.
They do, though, and the sycamores on my block are demonstrating, daily, seasonally, how trees die. They usually do not die gracefully, for instance. Valerie, Zelda, and I were sitting out last week when it was so pretty and watched a limb, like, the thickness of two baseball bats, drop from the sycamore closest to Grand and just land in the front yard of one of our invisible neighbors. Kaboom. Up on the other end of the block, the sycamore is in distress. The utility company came through last week and removed a bunch of branches, really hacked away, but didn't take it down. Not their job. So asinine.
It made me glad for my oak and sweetgum.
Zelda has a dead tree in front of her house, too, a young maple (I think) that didn't make it through last winter. It had some stress shoots last spring, but they didn't last. The tree is now dead. Doornail dead. It has a shelf fungus growing on it. It is now an ecosystem. I'm sure they will plant again soon and all will be well. Plus, in the winter it looks like all the others.
(Note: I don't care about the dead tree. Really. I think it's funny because it obstinately stands there, dead, but it doesn't bother me a whit).
1 comment:
Poor tree.
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