My pine tree has kept me company the whole time we’ve lived in this house. All of us, really – people, dogs and cats. It’s very close to the porch so it’s witness to everything happening around the house. Participant too, for the cats.
This is a eulogy for my pine tree, I guess. Photos of it since we’ve lived here. One for each month of the year plus a couple of my favourites. In some, you can see its mate down the yard a bit, still alive and well. The two of them have a row of peonies and flowering bushes between them.
The porch pine started dying about three years ago. We couldn’t help it recover. Tree guys said it happens. They couldn’t see anything wrong with it other than, they figured, old age. It should stay fairly stable even in death, they said, so cutting it down isn’t a matter of urgency.
So, for as long as possible, it will continue to give humming birds and song birds a resting spot and provide food for woodpeckers. And, of course, be a jungle gym for the cats. Cats and birds seem to maintain a truce in and around the tree.
My pine tree has seen a lot in its time standing beside the house. It’s not mine, of course. Others before me have claimed it as their tree. I’m thankful that I have had its company all these years.
Trees
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
— Joyce Kilmer 1913
- The winter storm pics at the end of the slideshow were taken by my husband. They and more can be seen on his Nor’easter page at jimstewart360.
