I have always loved trees, from the joy of climbing them as a youth to the joy of planting them and watching them grow as a man. I have some favorites but they all make me say to myself, what a beautiful green color. Once in awhile I will see a tree that has been painted light green and I will think what a beautiful contrast between the dark green and the light of those two trees. My very most favorite tree is the Weeping Willow, I see a weeping willow and I think that they must have been sculpted by a magnificent artistic sculptor. I imagine that they were the tree that made the Hanging Gardens of Babylon catch the eyes of travelers on the desert. Weeping willows grow rapidly and their long viney limbs hang down in bunches in what seems like decorations. Years ago when I was still a homeowner, I had a beautiful yard, one acre in size with a variety of trees. It took a lot of my home time keeping it up, but I enjoyed making it beautiful. I had a huge weeping willow in the very front, and one day in the fall of the year, I was draining my sprinkler system. I laid a broken stand pipe about a foot long in the crotch of the willow, where two large primary branches separated and went different ways. My intention was to take it to my shed and reinstall it next Spring just before the watering season began. Next Spring I was reminded of where I had left it and went to retrieve it from the crotch of the willow. To my surprise and even amazement the tree had grown around it.
The sprinkler head was sticking out one side of the crotch and the end that screws into the water source was sticking out the other side. A year later it had disappeared, it was literally swallowed by the tree. A willow is sculpted and is one that stands out among the others. Everywhere I go I am amazed at the variation in colors and sizes and shapes of the trees along the roadway.
In the late fall of each year, I would go to the local nursery and spot trees that had not sold during the regular season, trees that had scars or an abnormal shape or was so large and heavy that most yard owners did not want to wrestle with them. Because they did not sell, the owner whom I knew well, and I would bicker for a price on the ones I wanted. I would select the ones that did not sell and ones I knew he did not want to carry forward to the next year. If he were to carry them forward he would have to go to the trouble of repotting them in larger pots. My price would be a fraction of the price on the tree. One year I bought a beautiful tree for $5 that had a $95 price on the tag. I would get it home and plant it and then trim the bad part off and a year later it was a beautiful perfect tree. I will always love trees—God, too, loves trees or He wouldn’t have planted them, most everywhere, to beautify this gorgeous earth. A tree provides shelter from the hot sun, they are a playground for youth, and they beautify everyplace they stand with their variety of shapes, colors and sizes.
Trees
I think that I shall never see,
A poem as 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
A person who goes through life without contemplating and enjoying the beauty of trees as he passes by them, has not learned to live, to really live. The things that bring tears to my eyes: Newborn babies, the death face of one whom I have loved, success in life of those I love, to see my eternal companion happy, a beautiful scene with a tree at it’s center. Those are the things I love. Because I know that only God can make and love a tree, and all the other things I love as well.