Anti-Arbor Day.

Friday, April 27, was Arbor Day, but I was too busy with Fiction Friday! to post about it. So, here we go. 

I like trees, and I've even planted a few, but the worst enemy to trees I know of seems to be nature herself. I've seen vines choke the crap out of them until they fall; animals strip them and kill them; and sometimes this. 

Perfectly healthy little tree, budding for spring, knocked flat by a windstorm a couple of weeks back. Wah!

As very patient readers of this blog know, winter essentially smashed us late in the season. Normally deciduous trees are helped by their loss of leaves when winter strikes, much as a ship has to furl its sails during gales. But this little tree was standing there in April, minding its own business, and wham. (I took the picture on April 28.) Sometimes nothing helps.

When I think about it, though, our deciduous trees, they are kind of lazy. It takes them all of April to wake up. I check in once in a while from the beginning of spring, and the reports are the same for the longest time:

bud 

bud

bud

bud

bud 

Then, all at once, leaves.

So May is spent unfurling the leaves and October is spent getting rid of them. By All Souls Day they're as dead as anyone. What does that leave? Four months of full dress. Lazy, I tell you.

I do my bit to relieve them of responsibility too. Our robins have returned to the deck again this year.

I don't know where robins nested before my deck came along, but you'd figure it was in trees, right? That's what the cartoons all say. So every year I keep one lazy tree from having to do this one thing.

You're welcome, Arbor Day.