Uncle Donald, originally uploaded by trekr.
My uncle Donald gave us a house warming present nearly a decade ago. The plane hangs on the ceiling of our back porch. When the wind blows, the propeller spins with a distinctive sound not unlike a creaky windmill on an abandoned farm. This little plane has foretold many storms.
We lost another White Oak this Spring to Hypoxylon canker. The sawdust in the foreground is the ground up stump. The bare patch of grass is where the kid’s swing used to hang. Surprisingly, the limb the swing hung from was the last part of the tree to succumb to disease. The arborist that felled the tree tied the swing to a sturdy limb in a nearby tree. I guess everyone remembers their favorite childhood swing. When the tree you are swinging from falls, its time to find a new tree.
