...tree magic and ice storms...

It started as a pretty fantastic morning. Today was supposed to be my first day back to work for the new semester and we were having a snow day! Yes, even professors get gleeful about canceled universities. Washington, D.C. has much more snow than we do in the Richmond, VA area, where we have mostly ice. I woke this morning early because even though my fella was teleworking, he needed to be up-and-at-em. 

I peeped out the window to see if we had any more snow. What’s that big blob in the yard? Oh no, a fallen limb. It was much too dark to see how much damage there was but I quickly headed out on our front porch to survey the damage in the dark. I could see a large branch had snapped from one of our pines. As I headed over to the side of the house through the garage, I discovered another large branch. Later in the morning, I saw that a third large branch had fallen from another pine and crashed down on our picket fence and new baby crape myrtle. Oh no! Yet, aside from the snapped branches, there was no damage. Just.Like.Magic.

These branches were too heavy for me to move alone. Not only were they large but they were blocks of ice. My fella and I worked together to move them off to the side of the yard. Fortunately, we had a tree service out just last week to remove a few ominous too-close-to-the-roof branches. We will have to have them out again because now we have some dangling broken limbs. Friends and family have advised us to chop down the trees. Not happening, kids. Do you know how long I waited for my very own piece of land with trees! What I have not written about yet is the magical copse in our backyard. Well, in my …blood, sweat, tears, and black mulch… post, I shared that we have 0.35 acres of land, a third of which includes a copse of trees: tall pines, an oak, two sweet gum trees, crape myrtles and shrubs as large as trees including red tip photinia and Rose of Sharon. I added two baby crape myrtles including a red dynamite and an ebony and ivory. When we purchased the property, the backyard copse area was filled with ivy. I worked as long and as hard as I could; honestly, I’m still pulling up new vines and killing the stuff that is coming back even after we hired landscapers to clean out the poison ivy and English ivy that had overtaken the backyard copse. The ivy had wrapped itself so high up the trees that I feared they would smother. The vines on all of the trees were cut up to 6 ft and the vines above slowly died and are falling off the trunks still.

Backyard copse ivy and all.

In August, only a month after moving to our new home, a storm blew in and while I was sitting on our back porch, I heard a loud crack and watched a tree come down... perfectly in our copse. It dodged every other tree and shrub landing inches from the Rose of Sharon by the road.  Talk about magic!

I love trees. For my 18^th birthday, one of my friends gave me a tree because she knew it would be the best gift ever. It still lives on in the yard of my childhood home. When I walk through our copse or in our front and side yards, I touch the trees often. I talk to them always. “You okay? Did that mean ol’ ice hurt you?”… and, “aren’t you a beautiful tree.” They are living beings. Some of them will outlive me. I want to be kind to them just as they are so good to us.

My fella shoveling the secret brick path.

We will trim branches to protect ourselves, the trees, and our neighbors; and, we will make sure that those branches that snapped are tended to. We will not remove trees unless we absolutely have to.

Also, that magical copse, well, we knew the copse on our property was magical. We had no idea that it was brick-path-magical though. My fella shoveled and raked to free part of the bricks only to discover old solar lights, a lattice, and more brick borders. We ended up with a trail right through the woods. Just like magic.