Tag Archives: oaks

The mother and daughters of acorns.

poetry, trees, , , , , , , , ,

When I drove up into the mountains this month, it was through the area burned by the Creek Fire in 2020. The year following that devastation I’d also passed that way and shared a picture or two here. This time, four years later, I mostly noticed a couple of the plants are thriving in the changed landscape. Along the road scores of milkweeds were lined up, and lots of young oak trees. I didn’t manage to take a picture of a little oak, but I got close enough to the milkweeds to see two kinds of bright insects on them.

The oaks in this case were the daughters of acorns that sprouted soon after the tall canopy above them had burned off. I read that “…fire directly promotes the establishment of oak seedlings by reducing competing understory vegetation, releasing needed soil nutrients and reducing numerous pathogens.” source

I think the ones I saw might be black oaks, Quercus kelloggii; the photos I found online.

EPIGRAM 9.312

Refrain, sirrah, from cutting the oak,
the mother of acorns;
refrain,
and lay low the old stone-pine,
or the sea-pine,
or this rhamnus with many stems,
or the holly-oak,
or the dry arbutus.
Only keep thy axe far from the oak,
for our grannies tell us that
oaks were the first mothers.

-Diodorus Zonas, 1st century BC, Italy

Translated by William R. Paton, The Greek anthology, Vol III

Oak, by Ivan Shishkin,1865

In The Odyssey Homer refers to a legend that men were sprung from oaks or rocks,
e.g. “But tell me of your family, since you did not spring
from a tree or a stone as in the ancient tales.”
Homer’s Odyssey XIX.

Revisiting my Valley Oak.

family, history, trees, ,

Last week I took a little hike with my friend Lucy in a nearby park, up and down the green hills among the oaks and wildflowers, and past the sheep who were grazing one area of the park. Lucy and I talked about how we don’t know the names of very many oaks. I told her about the great oak of my childhood, and I will tell about it here again, too, because it’s been about twelve years since I did:

My father bought 30 acres of land with oranges and lemons growing on it, and no house. There was a large oak tree looming above a spot where a house might have stood in the past. And he thought that the tree was pretty much grown up, so he planted a house nearby.

This is the oak under which I lived after we moved in, until I went away to college about twelve years later. Only twelve years? Those formative years have an impact far beyond their numerical value, and that tree has to be my favorite tree, because there hasn’t been a particular beloved tree between then and now that I can bring to mind.  I realized that this week when Elizabeth was telling about her favorite trees and I wondered if I had one.

In these first pictures, taken decades after I had married, the tree had recently been trimmed with great care and patience by a tree man who was in love with it. I was amazed at its beauty and took a lot of pictures.

At that point the oak had grown mightier than my father ever expected, and its limbs were leaning dangerously over the house. My father said that if he had known how big it would get, he wouldn’t have built the house so close to it. At least one large limb had to be cut off to protect the house, and the whole tree was refreshed and lightened by being pruned all over.

When I was growing up I only knew that it was an oak tree. If someone told me it was a Valley Oak I didn’t remember. People in our family rarely talked about the birds and trees in those days. I didn’t know those were mourning doves I used to hear every evening as I was lying in my bunk. But one year a flock of bright orioles lived in our tree for a few weeks and we heard some talk then.When I used to play under the tree, this is the way I mostly saw it, as a thick trunk. There was no reason to look up into the branches, excepting the times when orioles visited, and it was usually so messy up there that some twigs or dirt or even tree frogs might fall in your face.

Yes, more than once we had veritable plagues of tiny tree frogs swarming in the branches, on the trunk, hopping all over the ground under the leaves. When we walked under the tree they jumped onto our legs as though they were little trunks.

And our tree suffered many times from all varieties of galls, the most common of which we just called “oak balls.”

Always Daddy had stacks of firewood under the canopy of branches, usually fruit wood that he’d gleaned from neighboring orchards that were being replaced. But here we see it is logs cut from our tree’s own pruned limbs.

One year my grandma gave me a little tent for my birthday and I set it up under the tree to lie in the summer long, reading comics and books and sucking on cubical cinnamon suckers.

Doghouses were common at the base of the trunk, and one year we had a banty chicken coop there. The basketball hoop that my father built for me was shaded by this tree friend. And as I think more about the shade it provided, I wonder if it helped out the swamp cooler by giving us a partial shield from the burning Central Valley sun.

In his last years my father would walk out under the tree to the edge of the orange grove and scatter grain for a family of wild pheasants that visited. You can tell that this picture was taken pre-trim. One pheasant can barely be seen between the rows of trees.

One view of our tree that we didn’t have as children was from above. But some time after we were all grown up an aerial photographer took the photo below and came to the door after the fact to present his wares. Of course Daddy couldn’t say no. As he studied the picture he could see his spray rig in the driveway and him bending over it. And soon each of us kids received a gift of a framed picture of our childhood home — and my favorite tree.

I admire Marie’s garden.

friends, other gardens, wildflowers, , , , , ,

A mile or so down the mostly dirt road from the monastery lives my friend Marie, who moved there from my county a few years ago. She’s learning by a process of self-education, experimentation and observation how to garden in this “intermountain” area that gets very cold in winter, yet doesn’t escape the summer heat and drought.

She made me a cup of tea, and I sipped while we walked and chatted our way around her vast plantings and greenhouse — herbs, vegetables, trees and flowers, intermingled with native plants and wildflowers, all of which ultimately either thrive or don’t. Many of the trees and shrubs and even perennials she has to plant in mesh cages to keep out the gophers. And of course there are deer, and rabbits.

Marie isn’t sure about many of the flowers, whether they have come from seeds she threw out one time and forgot, or if they are fully native-born. But if they are happy to take the place of weeds and grow in that climate, she is happy, too. She has other work to do besides gardening, sitting at a desk and computer, and appreciates the necessary breaks during which she can work outdoors with material and living things, but still, she was happy to unpack the hedge trimmer that was delivered that morning, which will help her to prune a hundred lavender bushes.

If we had been competing for the prize for who could remember the most names of plants, I don’t know who would have won. Mostly we both had to be accept that we were unable to bring to mind the names of many that were actually very familiar, even our favorite salvias or wildflowers. I knew I had seen this striking bloom before, but I had to ask Pippin that night what it was:  Pretty Face (Triteleia ixioides) or Golden Brodiaea.

It was Marie who told me what Bugleweed was, and who also knew the name of a salvia she showed me and that I would like to find, “Gracias.” When I went looking for it just now I found a site extolling the wonders of our native sages where I read that some of these plants can live 40 years  if they are growing in a spot that they like. They are typically drought tolerant; maybe some of the species I have planted have not thrived because they got too much water. Check out this list: California Native Sages

I wish I could identify this pretty blue flower that I also pictured at top. If someone knows… [update: I think this is the flower I just saw on the Annie’s Annuals blog, Nemophila menziesii “Baby Blue Eyes”] In this picture it looks more purple for some reason.

Out there you don’t find the orchards and gardens such as the monastery tends; you are in the middle of oak and scrub. Marie does like the oaks, but they get a little monotonous, so she is lovingly expanding the botanical interest and color palette by her labors. She has planted more species of manzanitas and ceanothus, also California natives.

When I left her place I got turned around and drove the wrong way for a mile or two, but that route took me past a great view with more flowers that I didn’t know, and which I could only see at a distance — but what a springtime spread that was.

I was halfway home, stopped at a rest area, before I really noticed my shoes, which were carrying with us quite a bit of that mountain dirt. As I cleaned it off that night it was a fitting end of my trip that turned out to be more about farms and gardens than I expected. I’m very thankful for all those who tend the Lord’s creation and are fellow-gardeners with Him, and to be around so many of them in just a few days was a joy. It’s another springtime in God’s world.

Rabbitbrush and butterscotch.

family, nature, trees, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Last week was full of rocks and trees and even flowers. Joy and I took the children to Garden of the Gods, where red sandstone in ragged forms towers above the walking paths. Even the littlest guy walked more than two miles among the juniper and mountain mahogany, and wildflowers mostly gone to seed. The Gambel oaks, also known as Rocky Mountain white oak or Colorado scrub oak, had probably displayed more varied shades of orange and yellow a few weeks ago, but when we encountered them the leaves had aged to a rich, mellow gold.

We saw the rabbitbrush in many forms and places, but didn’t know what it was until just before we left the park and saw its picture in the visitor center. I have known of rabbitbrush for decades and I hope that after this extended encounter I will not forget it so easily. We saw its flower, two sorts of galls on the plants, and noticed its needly leaves and how they are softer than conifer needles. One of the galls is cottony gall; the other I haven’t been able to identify.

The very next day the whole family drove up to Woodland Park; it’s less than an hour to this town that lies at 8500 feet. We walked along Lovell Gulch Trail, among several species of conifers and groves of aspens. We suspected they were aspens, but we knew that birch have similar bark, so when we got home I googled around and it became clear that yes, what we saw were aspens, so plentiful in the Rockies and in dry places high up, while birches like floodplains and shade. And the few leaves that we saw  — most had fallen after turning bright yellow — matched the pictures of aspen. I only saw one bright leaf, of another species.

We admired the bark of other trees, especially one that had lots of texture, and fresh sap flowing. Soldier had a sudden thought, came close to get a whiff, and concluded, “Oh, it must be a Jeffrey pine — they smell like butterscotch.” Indeed. Oh, that was delicious! I made up a mnemonic story for myself about a boy named Jeffrey who was walking down the trail and discovered a butterscotch drop on a tree trunk.

The view of the mountains is striking from there, a different perspective from our daily one. We have seen Pikes Peak from several angles now, and don’t know the names of any of the other peaks visible from here. Soldier just read that Colorado has more than 50 peaks over 14,000 feet. Colder temperatures are coming this week, and yes, snow is on the forecast, too. So our views will grow even more spectacular.