Unstuffed: The Tree Year: Bark Life Part II

Thursday, February 3, 2011

The Tree Year: Bark Life Part II

This is the catalpa tree I'm observing this year.

There are two in the park. I'll be spending time with the one in the foreground.

I love the gently curving branches.

The most notable thing about the trunk of this tree, are the splits and cracks in the bark.

Some of them look quite fresh, exposing soft, white wood within.

These cracks have me a little worried. How did they happen? Is this normal? Is it a sign of distress in the tree?

One of the cracks ends here. Anybody home?

The catalpa is native to North America, tropical in origins but extending its habitat northwards, so that now it thrives well in the more southerly parts of Canada. It is grown as an ornamental tree in Zones 4-5.

According to Diana Beresford-Kroeger in Arboretum America, the catalpa tree can deal well with climate change. "The catalpa is basically a tropical tree that has, by adaptation, moved itself into all of the north temperate regions of the world. It can withstand the ravages of sun, drought, snow and ice. It produces good quality shade during the heat of summer. Because of its flowers and fruit, it extends nature's food basket northward. Seed-eating birds such as the cardinals...have learned to use their beaks to split open the seed pods while they are still hanging on the tree. The cardinals release the seeds on to the ground to eat them." She goes on to say that, "Catalpas will keep pace with the needs of a moving bird and beneficial insect population." The trees are important to beneficial, non-flying insects as well as butterflies, bumblebees and wasps. They feed seed-eating birds, squirrels and smaller mammals.

I'm looking forward to getting to know this tree better and will keep on eye on those cracks and see how they might be affecting the tree.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...: a very nice form of that tree - and the cracks in the bark are amazing. Maybe this one isn't that well ajusted to the weather...; February 3, 2011 at 3:31 PM
Marvin said...: The curved trunk and arm-like lower branches make your catalpa look as if it is dancing -- in very slow motion, of course.; February 4, 2011 at 4:25 AM
Amber said...: Dreamfalcon, I wondered that myself. One too many freeze/thaws perhaps?

Marvin, that's lovely! The tree does indeed look like it's dancing. It will be my dancing tree from now on. :); February 4, 2011 at 3:07 PM

Raison d'etre

In 2008 I didn't buy anything new for the whole year. Food and basic toiletries (but not toilet paper) were the obvious exceptions (twice I broke my own rule). Used items were allowed, but I tried really hard to reduce consumption as much as possible.

I finished my year successfully, and along the way learned a lot about how much the world consumes, the waste we produce, sustainability, voluntary simplicity, climate change, peak oil, resource depletion, the water crisis, the food crisis, voting with your dollar, voting with your fork....

Now, I've transformed into a slightly nutty, very passionate, gardening, preserving, DIYing, simple living, nature loving, weed eating, backyard medicine making, urban homesteader, and I still don't use toilet paper!

With the help of the Awesomedudeguy (ADG), I'm continuing my exploration of living lightly and frugally, while increasing my self-sufficiency and resiliency, staying debt free, and preparing for a climate changed, resource depleted world, in uncertain economic times.

My nothing new restriction is lifted, but I continue to be a gentle, local consumer as much as possible.

My hope is that some of the information and resources I post about here will be helpful to others. Thanks so much for stopping by !

Yours in unstuffing,
Amber

"Forgive me if I never visit. I am from the fields, you know, and while quite at home with dandelion, make a sorry figure for the drawing room" ~Emily Dickinson

"I never had any other desire so strong, and so like covetousness, as that.... I might be master at last of a small house and a large garden, with very moderate conveniences joined to them, and there dedicate the remainder of my life to the culture of them and the study of nature." ~Abraham Cowley

"The laws of nature are under no obligation to cater to our culture’s emotionally charged fantasies of perpetual progress and limitless growth." ~John Michael Greer

"Sometimes we think we are too small to make a difference in this big world. Our actions seem insignificant in comparison to global issues such as climate change and population growth. However, the reality is that action on an individual level is exactly how big changes are made. Without individual and family sustainability, there’s no community sustainability. And without community sustainability, there’s no global sustainability. In fact, earth-wide change is absolutely impossible without individual change.
It really does come down to you and me."
~From Living Sustainably: It's Your Choice

"The universal conspiracy of the silent-assertion lie is hard at work always and everywhere, and always in the interest of a stupidity or a sham, never in the interest of a thing fine or respectable. Is it the most timid and shabby of all lies? It seems to have the look of it. For ages and ages it has mutely laboured in the interest of despotisms and aristocracies and chattel slaveries, and military slaveries, and religious slaveries, and has kept them alive; keeps them alive yet, here and there and yonder, all about the globe; and will go on keeping them alive until the silent-assertion lie retires from business--the silent assertion that nothing is going on which fair and intelligent men and women are aware of and are engaged by their duty to try to stop." ~Mark Twain

"It is not enough simply to abstain from theft...We must remember that nothing in this world really belongs to us. At best, we are merely borrowers. It is our duty, therefore, to borrow no more from the world than we absolutely need, and to make full and proper use of it. Taking more than we need, and wasting it, is a form of stealing from the rest of humankind."
~Commentary on Sutra 30 The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali