Call me a tree hugger if you‘d like, but I’m a person who hates to cut down a grown tree. I figure by the time a tree has grown to stand ten times taller than me (or thereabouts), it has a right to exist as much as I do.
Brings to mind a line from one of my favorite movies, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pitman: Jane, a 100+ year-old former slave, still kickin’ in the early 1960s, is talking with a magazine writer about her long and storied life. The two are sitting underneath an old oak tree. Jane says she comes down to sit under the tree now and then for the counsel it gives. She lifts her cane slowly, taps the tree, winks, and says, ‘It’s just the age that one respects...’
That said, we had a tree fatality in our yard recently that has me thinking today about its demise. It’s a spruce. Don’t know if it’s a Colorado or a Norway, but it is a spruce. It stands just off the back porch, down on the decline toward the back property line.
When we got here fifteen years ago, as far as I know, it was doing fine. The crown has looked a little weird for years, though. Couldn’t figure out what happened to it, but it was a little contorted and didn’t seem to grow any taller. Still, the branches were long and lacy and it was a good companion in that place where I like to sit three seasons of the year, temperatures willin’.
Two or three years ago I noticed a major needle fall late summer/early fall. I didn’t remember it dropping needles before, but this was really something. Then I heard about how vulnerable spruce can be to dry conditions. Hmmm. Didn’t like how that sounded. I tried to water the thing, but didn’t know exactly where to put the hose. I mean, the ‘drip line’ of the tree (the radius of the branches, from tip to tip) must have been thirty or forty feet. Where do you put water to help something so extensive? And what about all the other trees in our little back yard forest? I eventually dropped the hose at the spruce’s base and let it run for a couple hours. I hope it helped. The other trees were on their own.
But then we had another dry summer spell. And another. And the annual needle drop began again. The bad thing about a spruce needle drop is that once the tree has decided a particular branch is unworthy of pumping fluid out that far, there is no tomorrow. The tree gives up on that limb and, I guess, tries to plan for the future in new growth somewhere else.
Unfortunately, those water abandoned appendages took on a macabre view from out dining room window, just above the porch. Back in this last spring I did what I could to lop off the deadest looking branches so we saw more green from other trees out the window. Still, dead spruce branches were prominent and I knew my friend had seen its better days.
Years ago I remember hearing from Paul Knoop, now-retired Aullwood naturalist extraordinaire, that when one is going for firewood, not to cut dead and dying trees. Instead, cut healthy timber that may be crowding out other trees trying to make it. Give the trees a little more light room, in other words. Besides, the dead and standing stuff make great homes for critters that woodpeckers and other bug eaters need. Made sense.
So, even though the spruce was effectively dead, I thought it best to let it stand. Still, every time I drove up to the house I could see it’s dead crown sticking up over the house. Didn’t like it, but I was willing to sacrifice appearances for Nature’s People in the neighborhood.
Then last week a young man stopped by in his beat-up SUV, wife and two kids with him, asking if he could take the spruce down for a moderate fee. He was a laid-off brick layer from up north a county or two, with no real chances of a better job in this economy. He took to tree trimming some time ago to keep food on the table. I had considered potential trouble with having a dead tree standing so close to the house. When he gave me his price, which was a lot lower than I knew my regular tree guy would be, I said Do it.
And so the presence of spruce off the back porch has been eliminated. Pretty much, anyway. Since it stands right on a chain link fence line, Nate couldn’t reduce the tree to a short stump. I told him to leave it stand just high enough so that I could put a bird feeding platform on what was left.
In the last week, I’ve had three major fires in the ‘pit’ on the patio trying to reduce dead limbs from said spruce. (See action photo above.) Lots of stuff remains. Trunk chunks, cut in fireplace length, are now stacked in front of the garden house waiting to be split. Branches have been trimmed and burned, while a large pile of heavy limbs awaits further cutting and stacking. Oh, and by the way, the ashes from all three fires have been scooped up into a galvanized bucket and sent flying back over the floor of our Wild Grace back yard.
I notice, too, that sun now shines on that section of the woods more brightly. With all of the rain we’ve gotten this September, I know those smaller trees trying to make a living back there will have a better shot at good health next growing season.
So it goes, and good for the kids. But I’ll miss the spruce. Made me think about Colorado pretty often.
Today’s Elder Idea: The tree is more than first a seed, then a stem, then a living trunk, and then dead timber. The tree is a slow, enduring force straining to win the sky.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
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