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Every new tree around my neighborhood seems to have a stake dutifully holding it-- down, straight, up?

Trees actually benefit more from not being staked than not being staked. Growing without a stake allows them to grow from the adversity, of well, growing. As the wind blows them, it makes them stronger. I'm not going to pretend that I understand the science, but, that's what the people who know about trees tell me.

One day I was watching my newly planted baby tree during a windstorm. I live in an area with few wind blocks so the wind can be strong. Like pick up your kiddy pool and carry it a block or two away, even your wheelbarrow can be sent adrift if left out during a windstorm.  Needless to say as I was watching my three quarter inch caliper tree wave back and forth in the wind, I was panicking. I love trees and want to offer them the best care possible. I knew unstaked trees are best, but I started to question the reality of this advice as my tree whipped back and forth, bending almost 90 degrees.

I called my friendly local nursery:

"Hi, I understand unstaked trees are best, but my tree is really bending in the wind? How much is too much?" I demanded.
"Wait. what?" said a woman on the line.
"How much can my tree break before breaking it?" I responded.
"Huh. Good question. I really don't know. I know we recommend staking trees. Let me find a tree person and have them call you back."

After a little time, a receive a call from a confused woman, who has a hastily scribbled not "how much can a tree bend." After clarifying, my question was answered.

The most important part of the tree is the root ball. The root ball needs to be stationary. Your tree only needs to be staked if the root ball is moving. Watch the bottom 1/3 of the tree for movement. The top can move as much as the wind pushes it, but the roots need to stay rooted in the ground.

Leaves

My daughter picked a leaf off a newly planted shrub today. It was a fascinating leaf, rounded on the edges, the green just starting to bleed into a fall red.

"Don't pick leaves off the plants," I instructed her. "The plant needs those to be healthy."

As I reflected on this moment in time, I remember a time when I either told my grandfather that I liked to fold leaves or he saw me doing it. He corrected me sharply for having done so. I remember being a taken aback and confused. But the tree had so many leaves!  My grandfather, like me today, was a lover of plants and gardening.

So who is correct here? The mini me or the adult me?

I planted a beautiful cinnamon fern. It was one of my autumn finds, one of the plants left over at the nursery,c craving real dirt after being passed over since spring. I plunked the fern down happily in my "shade bed" (which, come spring, I realized was not as shady as I believed it was in autumn). I was thrilled with my purchases. This fern was different than other ferns I had seen previously--it was evergreen but also the leaves uncurled orange. So evergreen and orange, what are the odds. I had found something special.

I didn't even realize the great find I had. Or maybe I forgot it was evergreen because I was thrilled to see the green fern still happily green after the snow melted from my flower bed. Post-winter green is the most beautiful colors of green. I loved looking at it everytime I went past and into my house.

But then we had a strange spring. And my fern disappeared. The green ferns slowly crisped up. What! I waited and waited, because the brown leaves were easy to mistake for the orange, cinnamony fronds. But no, nothing new sprouted. My fern was dead (of course said in the same voice as "my dog is dead!"). I knew I should pull it out and plant something new, but I didn't. I just left it there. I didn't even pull it out. I thought, "maybe in the autumn I can find another fern to fill its place." Perhaps my delay was because it is so hard to find the exact replacement in a nursery. I think I'd be being presumptuous to say that I left it there out of hope.

 I asked at one nursery and they told me trim it, hoping to shock it alive. Nothing changed, except now there was less crispy growth on the fern. I stopped watering it.

A couple weeks ago, I mindlessly pulled off all the dead stuff while I was waiting for the sprinkler to sprinkle the garden sufficiently. when it got hot, I finally started using the sprinkler head in the garden, feeling too lazy to individually water each plant any more.

Then, all of sudden, there was green. A nice bright green. Looking closely, I saw the browny-orange frond uncurling. It was alive! Thrilled, absolutely thrilled.

I feel there is a moral in here somewhere, but can't put my finger on it.



post script:
In other news, I left my apricot tree in months past after we suspected its death. I carefully pulled it out of its hole and carefully transported it back to the nursery, warning Grace not to break it. Why? it was dead. But still, I didn't want to break it.

I woke up with a start, being startled by some horrendous noise. Normally I creep slowly out of sleep, but the sound rushed me out of the quiet chambers of sleep, and I sat up, trying to identify the source of the sound. Outside. A howling and banging and whipping and whirling. The wind sounded like it was trying to pick up my toddler's Little Tike castle and take it to the neighbor's house. It picked it up and dragged/dropped it repeatedly.

G had just received a new toy wheelbarrow earlier so of course that's what I thought of first. As I went downstairs to make sure the wind didn't make a prize of the wheelbarrow, my husband opened the window in our room. In the brief period that our window was open, the dust filled his hair, the window sill, and the dresser.

We should have known better. Earlier in the day, Nathan had been working outside, constructing his "chickie mansion." I had walked outside, in search of the cell phone I had left in the car. I had attempted to swing the garage door on my way out by the wind was too strong; I hadn't stopped to close it completely since I was going out for just a minutes.

60 seconds when I walked back in, my whole house was coated, thickly, in dust. Thickly. Everywhere. It took days to clean it all up. All from not closing the door, fully. The wind took the opportunity to enter and spread that sawdust everywhere.

What would you do if your mom was being bullied? What would you do if your mom was being bullied by your friends?

Okay, let's take a step back. Its not your mom, but someone who could be your mom. A group of women, married and many with children, gather one night a week to get some much needed away time for themselves and for their bodies that just aren't what they used to be. They practice basketball. Some are still polished, but most are there just for some good ol' fun. Many are probably disappointed that their bodies don't do what they used to. Things just aren't as neat and tucked away like they used to be, but these women are trying to look past that.

Enter some single, young adults. For some reason, they feel some sort of possession over the gym the women practice in and want to get rid of them so they can play their volleyball, privileging their sport over the women's sport. One young man is very belligerent and just wants to show these "old women" up.

I'm 26.

He hasn't seen what a mother goes through. The tantrums, the pee cleaned off the floor after the third accident, the inability to reason with an upset child, the kicks in the face and crotch and sore breasts as you try to change a child, the slow pace at which they move, the inability to do anything other than breastfeed and change diapers, the struggle to know which crying child to answer to first--the loudest or the most helpless, an exhausted child that refuses to sleep and poops their pants when you want them to nap.

He just sees some old women taking up 30 minutes of his "court time."

Why won't he just let us play? He doesn't know and probably never will understand what this time, this measly one hour a week, means for our sanity and for the good of our children.

I feel sad for him, since our shared court spaced is supposedly because we both believe in the same God and the same loving Jesus Christ. I'd like to tell myself that one day, one day, he'll learn. But I don't know if he will. Motherhood, I'm learning, is hard to understand without experiencing it and fathers experience parenthood differently. But I do hope he will learn compassion.

Its a cold, but not too cold, but very gray day in mid-February. We've entered the winter doldrums. It had briefly warmed up and when the sun disappeared again (because it is winter, after all), it cast me into a seasonal depression.

I had bullied myself into going to a Relief Society exercise class, so here I was. One and a half hours late, but better late than never. I now proved to myself that it was thing and that people went and that I could too. Partway through doing the stretches for yoga, I noticed someone else who had appeared later than everyone else. She looked not like the other sisters. Her hair over her ears looked shaved, a "punk" look. She, like me, probably didn't know anyone in the room.

Gratefully, Grace gave me a means to talk to her after the yoga music stopped.

"My daughter says you are going to the library too."

And the conversation that followed had nothing to do with the library.

"Oh probably...we have a huge bill there. My eight year old lost books this summer. We're going to use our tax return to pay off bills. I'm so sick of living paycheck to paycehck."

"Makes sense. No better use for a tax return," I quip.

I tune out for a minute because by infant daughter who had been content up till this point in her infant carrier was being rocked and startled by an adventuring new walking baby.

When I tune back in, I hear this woman say, "Death can do that to your routines."

Uh oh, i chose the wrong part of the conversation to tune out,