26 November 2015

Thanksgiving Tree

Who needs a Christmas tree when you can have a Thanksgiving tree? 

I'm so thrilled to welcome a new chinquapin oak to our back garden, which replaces the xylosma that I removed a few weeks ago. The oak is perfect, and I can't wait for it to grow larger and provide us with shade from the hot summer sun.

Oaks are some of our most important trees for wildlife. They are hosts for tons of species of bugs, which means they are great sources of food for birds. The acorns are important for a lot of species too, such as blue jays. Even early settlers and Native Americans ground the acorns into flour. 

Great trees.

An added bonus is that this tree already looks like it belongs here in our deep black clay, near our creek that's in the Colorado River watershed. The xylosma never did. Something about it just seemed out of place, even though it was a nice specimen of a tree. The chinquapin looks at home. 

I'm thankful for this tree. Yes indeedy.


5 comments:

TexasDeb said...

It's a beauty. You'd never know it wasn't squirrel planted and grown up in just that one spot forever. Great choice (and not a bad spot to enjoy a piece of pumpkin pie....).

katina said...

That is a great looking tree. So hard to remove an established healthy tree, but the Chinqapin looks so good.

Louise said...

How has the lovely tree fared during the winter? Reaching 70ft anytime soon? =) Oak is really the best of threes. It used to be mandatory to plant oak-trees here for the kings fleet, but it is now legal to cut down oak for other pruposes than building an armada. There are some positive aspects to this I guess (less naval war in the baltic sea f ex) but not so many oak trees anymore...

Unknown said...

I rather laughed because here in Clearwater Florida our oaks are so incredibly messy. There are 4 months of raking leaves and nuts and sticks. I'm sure your oak trees are not quite as messy.

Gerard W said...

Thanks for this!