©voyager, all rights reserved
©voyager, all rights reserved
It’s leaf day! Around our house that means that the baby leaves are finally big enough to camouflage the highschool up the street. There’s nothing wrong with the highschool, they keep it well maintained, but I prefer to look at leaves. The city where I live plants a lot of trees free of charge. Technically they sit on city land (which is about 5 meters in from the center of the street), but they become the property and responsibility of the homeowner. About 20 years ago they planted red maples down my street and I happened to be home when they got to my house. It was near 5 pm and it had obviously been along day for the lads. There were only 2 trees left in their trailer and they were about to plant one of them in my side yard when I decided to ask if I could have them both. One fellow looked at the trees, looked at my yard, looked back at the trees again and shrugged. “Sure, why not” he said as he grabbed his shovel and started to dig. For once, I was in the right spot at the right time and was bold enough to open my mouth and ask for what I wanted. And it worked. Those 2 trees are now big and strong and shade my house all day long. Lucky me.
I love the story, I had two maples in the front yard growing up and they were beautiful climbing trees (well, one of them was -- the other didn’t co-operate as well) and because they were in the front yard, my parents insisted they were decorative and never got drilled for syrup. Every autumn they were a beautiful red, and every spring they had these lovely scented red flowers.
The maples here seem similar during the green months, but when flowering in spring, I know they’re different -- the flowers are a pale yellow-green: still pretty, but not the same.