Oak Tree

One winter I watched a woodpecker or sapsucker finish a ring of holes it was making around the trunk of a young oak tree I planted. The next year a storm broke the tree on the dotted line. The tree sent up shoots all around its base and looked more like a bush than a tree. Though birds frequently perched on the slender stump, I sawed it off to make way for the thickening bouquet of trunks that were forming. I feared that if I left the stump it would be a weak spot that might make the tree vulnerable to injury again.

In late summer caterpillars appear in thick clumps on some of the oaks and eat bunches of the leaves. My defence of the tree against the hungry little guys has been getting weaker over time. I just shake off all that I can find and walk on them with my clogs. I know, gross! Until the tree sheds the rest of its leaves it looks a bit pitiful.

I pruned the bottom branches off this spring to make it easier to mow the grass around it. Now it is September and the tree with its knobby knees and chewed-on leaves makes me wonder how the many injuries it survives will change the assumed course of its life. The small trunks will become one large trunk someday and cover over the remnants of the first trunk. Most likely it will look like the other oaks but at its heart it will be different.