Snowdrift Saplings
Change. I’m not a fan of it. My daughter’s not either. It used to be that I was the only one who tried to hold on to the way things are with both hands, but now I see that tendency in her, too. I’d like to save her 40 plus years of stress and tell her to relax, that change is inevitable and she can’t control it, but I’m still working on that lesson myself.
Sometimes, the changes are big and obvious. The trees I wrote about a few weeks ago, for example, now look like this:
The sad oak stump
Even though we planned it, it’s a shock every time we look out the window.
But sometimes, change just sneaks up on you, so stealthily you don’t even notice, and there’s nothing you can do. Day by day, I tell her, the saplings that we planted to replace the oaks are growing, are stretching and reaching tall. In a few years, they’ll be big, even though the changes are happening so slowly it looks as if no change is taking place at all.
Little snowdrift crabapple sapling has a lot of growing to do.
When she asks me how I know, I just shrug.
Trust me, I tell her. I just do.
Such a simple lesson but so difficult to manage sometimes! I love your blog. It is so refreshing!
Thank you, Meghan. I’m glad you visited!
Love this, Liz, and the way you weave words and pictures. 🙂
Thanks, Karen! The view is definitely different…on both accounts!
You made this grandfather smile.
Thanks for stopping by, Rick!
Is the oak going to use somewhere? Even as firewood? When we cut down a massive oak to build (it was over a hundred – I counted), I used all the branchwood as firewood for several winters, and the bole went to a woodworking friend who made doors with it. It somehow made the loss easier to swallow.
Seeing how your equestrian sapling has grown gave me a smile this morning too. Thanks for sharing the lesson.
Sadly, we don’t have a wood-burning fireplace — it’s something we keep talking about rectifying. But I did save a slice of wood to make the ‘back’ of a stump seat in the spring, and I saved a little birch bark for decoration.
I know I keep saying this, but your woods sound so beautiful. Our trees were only about 30 or so years old, if the rings are accurate …
I’ve been meaning to take some photos of our woods to post on FB. Maybe after the first ‘pretty’ snow, which should be any day now. I’ll holler when I put it up. The stump seat sounds cool, and yeah, there’s something special about burning the real stuff, I’ve found. Smell, look, old-timey feeling, not sure what, but I love a real fire.
I wonder if you leveled the top of the cut trunk if it would make a nice place to sit and watch nature. I think I’d try that and see if it helped soften the loss.
Fran, my daughter has already picked out ‘her’ stump. She thinks it will be a nice place to sit and read in the spring.