Attribution: Leonhard Lenz, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
By Bill Stokes
Kickass, the doorstop dog, may see trees in a different light than the keeper and Phyllis, but on a recent day it was a universal requirement to appreciate and marvel at the big plants as they did what seemed to be a last summer dance on a scorching hot day, swaying back and forth in their green formals, entwined with each other in graceful motion, moving to the sighing music of the wind and giving no indication of the wild party to come when they will briefly put on their gaudy dresses and then strip naked to prepare for standing through the winter like strip-tease skeletons on a frozen stage.
That the keeper has a special relationship with trees is undeniable. It began with stories from his grandfather about the “big fishhook tail” of the puma hanging down from the high branches of a giant white pine, and it stops to acknowledge trees presence with his book, Treeson, an APOLOGIA to Trees, for the paper pulp that went into printing his newspaper columns over the years.
Treeson includes background stories of some of the off-the-wall things that went into column writing, and it is available from Amazon, through bookstores of from the keeper at billstokesauthor.com.
Photo by Bill Stokes