Duty Tree Microcosm
My duty partner has gone away for a couple of weeks to visit his daughter in London, which leaves me alone under the duty tree - a giant willow oak.
Having just finished a unit on the Transcendentalists, I decided to take this opportunity to Thoreau-ly (sorry, had to go there) study the tree's microcosm. In fact, today I want to borrow a camera from the library to capture some of the more interesting specimen that I have found in order to identify them.
Some of my observations -
Contrary to depictions created by most pre-schoolers, the trunk of my willow oak is not brown. In fact, it is various shades of gray - from a dark, slate gray to a pale, dirty, shell gray. Now, to be entirely truthful, if you peer into one of the cracks in the gray bark, you will see some shades of chocolatey brown. Perhaps that is the brown that has perpetuated the myth of the brown trunk. Something like a hybrid of moss and sea coral covers some of the bark; it is sometimes lime green and sometimes very nearly white. I'm not sure what it is, though I've probably been told before in a Biology class in high school. Obviously, I didn't get it. Don't worry. I'll uncover the mystery. I'm on top of it.
The narrow, finger-like leaves of the willow oak have turned rusty brown and have fallen into mass graves at the roots of the tree, where they neatly stacked themselves with crop-circle-like regularity due to a run-off of water from the eastern curb to the lower western curb. (I may have to alter that guesstimation of the directions later; however I am sure of the reason for the odd stacking of the leaf decks. I pulled the horticulture teacher from grading papers to come and answer my questions. I think that he thought that I, the crazy English teacher, suspected that someone might have come in the night to arrange them into orderly, canyon-like formations to disturb my fragile mental state. He put my mind to rest and went back to grading papers. To be perfectly frank, however, I will confess that my very first, though very brief, thought was, "Who in the world did this?")
It's time to go back to school and to my duty, where I will further investigate the world of the willow oak. I'll report back to you tomorrow.
Having just finished a unit on the Transcendentalists, I decided to take this opportunity to Thoreau-ly (sorry, had to go there) study the tree's microcosm. In fact, today I want to borrow a camera from the library to capture some of the more interesting specimen that I have found in order to identify them.
Some of my observations -
Contrary to depictions created by most pre-schoolers, the trunk of my willow oak is not brown. In fact, it is various shades of gray - from a dark, slate gray to a pale, dirty, shell gray. Now, to be entirely truthful, if you peer into one of the cracks in the gray bark, you will see some shades of chocolatey brown. Perhaps that is the brown that has perpetuated the myth of the brown trunk. Something like a hybrid of moss and sea coral covers some of the bark; it is sometimes lime green and sometimes very nearly white. I'm not sure what it is, though I've probably been told before in a Biology class in high school. Obviously, I didn't get it. Don't worry. I'll uncover the mystery. I'm on top of it.
The narrow, finger-like leaves of the willow oak have turned rusty brown and have fallen into mass graves at the roots of the tree, where they neatly stacked themselves with crop-circle-like regularity due to a run-off of water from the eastern curb to the lower western curb. (I may have to alter that guesstimation of the directions later; however I am sure of the reason for the odd stacking of the leaf decks. I pulled the horticulture teacher from grading papers to come and answer my questions. I think that he thought that I, the crazy English teacher, suspected that someone might have come in the night to arrange them into orderly, canyon-like formations to disturb my fragile mental state. He put my mind to rest and went back to grading papers. To be perfectly frank, however, I will confess that my very first, though very brief, thought was, "Who in the world did this?")
It's time to go back to school and to my duty, where I will further investigate the world of the willow oak. I'll report back to you tomorrow.
posted by Autumn at 3:33 AM
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