who says trees can’t fall in love?

 

Act I: I Will Hold You Until Long After I’m Gone

A yellow birch root encircling the base of an ash. This one’s weird, actually: I can’t find the rest of the birch. Just its root. Which is weird, because normally, yellow birches get their start as seedlings, on stumps and downed trees. That’s why they have such great, exposed roots – when the stumps decay completely, it looks like birches are standing on their toes.

And if that’s not cool enough, check out their bark. Thin narrow strips…

…of gold.

Act Deux: You know who else loves stumps?

Mosses and lichens, that’s who.

Part C: Our Love Story

Saplings of white birch (on the left) and yellow birch (on the right) got their start right next to each other.  As tiny saplings, a couple of feet tall, they must have been less than eight or so inches apart. As they grew, they filled in the space between them…

…until their bases practically welded themselves together.

A couple of feet up, still going strong…they start to twist around each other.

…so that the yellow birch is on the left now.

Once they hit light, they spread out…sort of like when a middle-aged married couple finally gives in and gets a king size bed.

This post is dedicated to my first real mentor, Howard Brown, who was infamous for starting lists with “1, 2, 3…” and switching over to letters (“a, b, c…”) partway through. He was also the king of mixed metaphors, to wit: shooting from the seat of one’s pants…keeping your ears to the grindstone… etc.