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Write about a pine tree – any pine tree, a real one which grows in your yard or in the woods where you go for a walk, or a pine tree you saw on your vacation, or a pine tree painted by an artist. What it looks like, smells like, how does it feel to touch? Where to start wit this prompt! Visit the rest of the Rise and Write link ups here. This was a true prompt-11 minutes.
We have four pine trees in our back yard. For a brief time there were six, quickly dwindled to five due to the one unhealthy spot in the yard. Two summers ago, number five dried up and died and now is waiting it's fate in logs under the deck with the river birch we lost a few years ago. Little by little, log by log, the trees will be part of weekend fire and lazy relaxing around the fire pit. Two of the four left were purchased with the other two that died, part of our first summer landscaping. The were all about 6 feet tall when they went in the ground, but without girth. The last two though were bought on a whim. Two little pines in pots, smaller than our then three year old, and about the size of the one year old.We found these and bought one for each kid at a Menards store, not a garden store. Humble beginnings, but have these two ever grown and thrived. They are fuller and taller than the remaining two landscape trees, reaching more than a dozen feet to the sky.
I love these trees. For a few years, I tried to get pictures with my squirming and growing kids, but being a poor photographer, I couldn't find anything decent to try and scan for this post. Perhaps when I go back and edit, i'll find something suitable. As the trees have grown, they've morphed into creating a hideaway, a barrier between the neighbors and the park. This was a perfect spot for my now blown away and smashed up chaise lounge chairs. I am on the hunt for more. They leave me gifts of pine cones to put in bowls each Christmas, and block out the too bright morning sun when I am trying to have my Saturday morning coffee on the deck.
Some day, another family will live in our house, and our now haphazard tree assortment of trees will be cut down and cleared for a more cultivated landscaping. I won't worry about that now. It will be a few years before we move on, so until then, I'll continue to think of these two trees in association with my two oldest children. May my children reach the heights that their conifer siblings have.
When my parents moved onto their "new lot", it had only four trees, all of which died of Dutch Elm Disease. And yet when I moved off to college, the yard was filled with trees they'd planted. Some did better than others, a few died, most flourished. They also felt a very close bond to those trees. There's something about planting a tree yourself ... :)
ReplyDeleteTrees do have human qualities and also symbolize so many things. As we planted all our trees, they do feel like family. Weird?
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