They Called It a Wutong Shu

I’d been up for a while.  By 6:30AM my daughter was up too.  Made some coffee and went out on the porch.  A family of deer walked away, slowly, unsure.  They weren’t clear if I was trouble or not.  One by one they stepped into the brush, the last one turning, to look my way before disappearing.  It was warm outside.  Overcast, but no rain yet.  Beyond my eyesight I could hear the dear crashing now, through the brush.  

I showed my daughter a clip I’d seen in the paper of some buck with an imposing rack, leaping through the window in a hair salon in Long Island and the pandemonium that ensued.  We both tried to imagine how her mom, my wife would react to such an event.  The laughter paused when we stepped outside.  A mini-drama in the driveway as I suggested to my daughter that I had no intention of driving her up the hill on this perfectly reasonable morning.  There was no drizzle, it was warm enough for a tee shirt.  She threatened to wake her mom up. Mom would certainly drive her up.  But that would take time and time was running out, so reluctantly, she joined me for the plod upwards.

I managed to make her laugh at least one more time before she left.  And walking back down the hill, I tried to look at one small tree and another.  What if I cleared out the trees around this little guy and let it grow?  Is this a tree I’d want here?  Would this be a good place for a copper beech tree?  What about two or three birch trees right here?  Do Aspens grow in the east coast?  What is this mighty tree, off away from the driveway?  Is that a Walnut?  It looks like the one that grows so tall in my mother’s back yard.

When I got home, I spent some time on line looking at trees, trees that I’ve loved and trees that you can buy.  The Plane trees of the Former French Concession in Shanghai . . . those are lovely trees.  What if we put one here, down to the left in the yard?  What is the name of that tree that grows there in the park in the middle of the SanYuanQiao clover leaf back in Beijing?  There are two tall trees, which grow back to back and in the spring,  they erupt with purple flowers.  I had thought it was a Jacaranda tree, but they don’t grow in northern climates.  When we’d been in Hunan I’d seen the same tree and they called it a Wutong Shu 梧桐树 or Parasol tree.  I looked on line and couldn’t find the flowers that looked like what I had in mind, associated with that tree.  Perhaps the tree I had in mind is called something else?  Eventually though, I found the tell-tale flowers drooping from pictures depicting Parasol trees.  We seem to be just outside the preferred growing region.  Perhaps we can make it work, regardless if we get one in the spring.

Monday, 10/07/19