Picture

I have never loaded a picture to my blog. I am a digital immigrant and it just seemed like something I could live without knowing. So I decided to try today. It fits the title of this blog. But see the tree on the right right of the picture? I wrote a thing about it for our church paper last month. I'll just publish it here. You might like it.

Our neighborhood is known for its trees; tall arching boughs that create a green canopy over the streets in the summer and in winter the bare branches stand guard as you drive down the snowy path. In the fall, the kids pile the leaves over the entire width of the street and encourage oncoming cars to charge through, creating a whirlwind of yellows, red and browns. And in spring, you just want to stand and look up at the gentle green leaves once again filling out the bare limbs above. We love our trees.

Three of these trees have roots in the little plot of the area that is our yard. The back is really the regal abode of a giant American elm. It majestically towers above, shielding our house, the garage and even part of the lane from the sun. It takes three people, holding hands to encircle its trunk. This is a hard tree to love intimately. This is a tree you respect and hold in awe.

In front we have our second elm and this is the one most people fear. It was planted too close to the edge of the lawn and now turning into or backing out of our driveway requires caution. It guards the entrance to our place boldly and from the large scar that has developed on its side, it is a testament to how many side mirrors and even a few doors have lost their encounters with it.

The third tree is my favourite – a mountain ash. It isn’t as tall as our elms. It doesn’t offer as much shade but it seems to have a sense of humor. Its narrow leaves are arranged in palm like fans and shimmer in the breeze. In the early spring there are lovely white flowers that attract bees and later turn into berries that are the source of food for many migrating birds in the fall. Chickadees often come back in the winter to clean the last fruit from the tree and we have seen squirrels doing acrobatics to get last ones from the end of a very slander twig. Watching the urban wildlife in this tree is a National Geographic special on an intimate and personal level

But in the fall this mountain ash frustrates me. You can find the full foliage color range from green to yellow to orange to red to brown on the mountain ashes down the street. With the bright orange berries hiding among the leaves, they are some of the prettiest trees in the fall. But for some unknown reason our tree stays green for weeks after the other trees have changed color. When the others have finally dropped their leaves and they are safely bagged or composted, our tree will finally start to show some yellow in the upper branches. Then when the hard frost comes and often the first snow, all the leaves in this tree turn a single shade of brown and fall in patches on the white blanket of snow. Its messy and well, just untimely. I love my mountain ash for the whole year but it really frustrates me in the late fall. Why can’t it just do what all the other mountain ashes do?

Who knows? It might be because we are the lowest spot on the street and it might just get more moisture. Or its roots are growing into our sewer lines. Maybe our soil is missing some special mineral. It might just be a late color changer. Whatever. It is our mountain ash and we need to take it just as it is. So I will enjoy it all year and next October or November when it drops its brown leaves on top of the snow again, weeks later than its peers, I’ll just smile and think. “Yes, that’s our mountain ash. I’m sure glad its here.”