askyermom

It’s nearly October and that means it’s the time of year when I stomp acorns. I have always stomped acorns, or any type of nut in my path. Always imagining it is a service to squirrels and little creatures who feed on them, I crunch them underfoot, finding that as I grew I could crush more and more of them in one step.

Not everyone has strong tree feelings or acorn stomping habits, I know. I used to think this was universal, but like everything else, tree feelings are a very individual trait.

I have something of a tree romance going on. The object of my love is a great white oak in the park behind my house. I can see her from all my rear windows and have positioned my furniture to give the best view of the very old oak. She is majestic and I’d estimate her girth at a three-person hug. She leans toward the sunrise, just a little, showing a mild preference. Her enormous branches form a condominium for squirrels, and all the nests are well hidden until winter drops the curtain.

When we had seventeen year locusts swarm, her tips were bare of leaves by the time the insects had burrowed back into the ground. Alarmed, I called the University Extension to ask what I could do. “It’s nature’s pruning,” they said, calmly.

I’m not proud of the possessiveness I developed toward my tree. But I did begin to refer to her a my tree. People were confused when I got worried again and said that my tree had a very large dead limb that was going to need removal. Why did I not just amputate? Well, I’d explain, she’s in the park and she’s got to be at least 80 years old. Any pruning would be rude and expensive.

I contacted the county at last about a completely different tree as a sort of test case. A neighboring home owner was allowing a very dead oak to stand at the street. It was a small death compared to my tree, but the smaller tree was enough to create a serious hazard to cars and people, in that order. Each storm generated a pile of debris and sometimes great hunks of dead wood exploded as they hit the sidewalk. Nothing happened. I contacted them again with photos.

This Spring, the county had apparently sent an arborist to the neighborhood, but instead of tagging the dead juvenile oak, they blazed my tree on two sides. The following day I got a flood of cheerful and repetitive messages that the reported tree had been removed and ground into mulch. They referenced the wrong address by a mile. So now, the very dead tree was still standing on my street and the beloved oak was marked for death.

The shock was painful and surely more painful for being foolish. I had noticed that my tree had leafed out less again–she now had three huge branches that were at least half dead. I consulted a couple of arborists with hope that I could fight for my tree. I was ready to battle nature and bureaucracy.

Of course, there was also the possibility that the county would forget about my tree. Last year, I watched a crew efficiently prune and grind up another tree, while setting up their mulcher under the scariest side of the oak. I was relieved that they were able to work unharmed and that they seemed oblivious to the looming dead branches overhead.

I bought some paint to cover the marks and then immediately reconsidered interfering in the process. I didn’t want to be the cause of dead wood exploding on the ground by the tot lot.

There’s only one person I have known who was killed by a tree, but it happens. I would bet there’s a couple more people of my acquaintance killed by trees and I just didn’t learn the circumstances. In the safety business, we called that a “struck by” fatality. It’s a weird category that can include all the things that strike people, trees, tractors, pneumatic nails–it’s all the same class of injury. I simmered down yet again to remember I didn’t want anyone to be struck by my tree.

Finally, a very thorough and thoughtful arborist replied to me, on reddit. They provided a technical take that was easy to understand. Trees don’t heal and they are not immortal. Once the oak begins to die it will stop supporting the outer limbs and will not grow above or below ground. It goes slowly, trying to shut off the lost parts and to reproduce a few more times if possible. The problem for human managers is that the tree is easier to control and remove while it’s not completely dead. It will be very dangerous to deal with later on, so it makes sense that they would not wait for even more of the big branches to fail. They also pointed out that there is a lot of potential damage because of the location. Nobody is going to be happy about taking out this tree.

It was such a lovely and sympathetic message–I bet no one expects that from reddit. They closed with the suggestion to find out about planting replacements.

It’s a tremendous bummer to imagine her gone and I have cried too many times. It is no exaggeration to say I mourned for a month. I prayed that she isn’t in pain, that the squirrels will work out new homes without warfare. I really embraced my role as tree crazed old lady during all this.

Finally after my month of boohooing, I looked at the sunrise through my tree and understood that when she’s gone, I’ll have more sky. I will see the moonrise twice as often, which is a predictable and yet encouraging result. I’m pretty sure the squirrels don’t care about seeing the moonrise, but as always, they are on their own.

Now, instead of stomping all the acorns I see, I am collecting the best ones from my tree with a scheme to make her a grandmother.

Love,
yermom

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