trees of our fathers

While walking today I noticed that part of the gloom of an Ohio winter is provided by the trees. Not the bare ones that shiver pathetic little straggles of leaves out on the furthest branches. It' s the sometimes majestic but mostly misplanted Norway Spruce.

Pices Abies grows to 150 feet in the northern Baltic region it is native to and is frequently seen at 75 to 100 feet tall here in Ohio. Unfortunately what is majestic in a northern forest setting does not look that way when paired with a 50's tract house in Cleveland.

The pioneers of the Western Reserve brought the Norway Spruce west with them to provide shelter from the winds off Lake Erie. Soon their lacy dark green fronds marked homes everywhere. A lonely farm in the middle of a field and a city bungalow. Actually, the spruce looks kind of nice and unassuming when it's planted at about 12 to 18 inches tall. At about 4 years it starts to take shape as a baby Christmas tree. By the time it is 10 years old it is, if professionally sheared, the perfect pyramidal tree to enhance a holiday living room. Glossy and dark green with slightly drooping branches, some Christmas tree growers are planting these trees for future harvest because they look nice and grow reliably fast. Unfortunately they also tend to lose needles faster than their relatives the White and Blue spruces which can be a problem if you want to keep your tree up past Christmas so the lights will make you forget the gloom of January.

In their zeal for "landscaping" the old homestead, people generally buy those cute little potted trees and either plant them 3 feet away from the foundation or if they are particularly flush, plant a whole line of them on 6 foot centers down the edge of a driveway. That's what the previous owner of my old childhood home did-marked the driveway with a nice little conga line of spruces. The lady that lived next door, a longtime gardener herself, tried to get Mr. Ware to plant the trees further apart. "Six feet is too close, they'll grow into each other before you know it and take over the yard, not to mention the drive." she told him. So, the trees grew and probably looked quite fetching when they were younger, growing into a nice green line marking the gravel drive. Ah, but we all tend to look fetching, if not green, when we are young. It's when we keep on growing past our limits that there is trouble. Too many chocolate chip cookies and ice cream sundaes make our waistlines bulge past the boundaries and planting the Norway Spruce on six foot centers tends to make for a short life for a long green line. The stronger trees take over and leave the others stunted and warped looking until the unfortunates wither away. The whole process can take forty years or more (Norway spruces should be planted on 20 foot centers), leaving a raggedy line with the trees on the end (and maybe one in the middle) towering over wizened little creatures in between.

Of course, there's the other guy. The one who thinks that a little pine tree on each end of the house will define it from the rest of the little boxes on the block. Which is great. Until a few years later, when the trees are approaching 50 feet and simultaneously growing into the foundation and dwarfing a modest little ranch, making it look like the victim of a double Godzilla verde.

So where does that leave us on this drab January day? On a sodden street pockmarked with grossly overgrown forest trees that overhang little gardens and filter through the bare branches of other (unclothed) forest trees. No sun, no proportion. Just a runaway forest in a long-ago cow pasture filled with row upon row of little boxes .

At least the wind sounds nice whispering through the old girls in my parents yard.