A forest in my pocket

When I thrust my hands into the pockets of my farm jacket, vest or overalls, I'm bound to turn up a handful of acorns, gathered from oaks scattered about Farm Dover. Seems I carry a whole forest around with me.

I also manage to scavenge acorns from our travels; and some come from magnificent oaks I see around town, especially those at Second Presbyterian or Cave Hill Cemetery. My favorite source is an incredible tree in the Indian Hills front yard of my friend Jody.

Eventually I get around to depositing my treasures in a baggie of moist dirt that I keep in the fruit-and-vegetable drawer of the fridge. After a couple of months of cold stratification, an embryonic root will appear on some of the acorns and I'll know it is time; I sort the nuts and plant them in tiny pots, prop them near the front window in our study, water them every Sunday morning, and impatiently wait to see them poke up their tiny sprouts.

Eventually, Ed and I plant these tiny oaks along our trails, protecting them from deer, bunnies and weeds with a chicken-wire cage surrounded by a ring of mulch. Then, we take great pride in watching them grow.
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I've always had a thing for acorns. In fact, in my previous life, the logo for my marketing company was a stylized acorn/monogram G. (I somehow equated tiny acorns with good marketing ideas and mighty oaks with successful organizations).

In my life at Farm Dover, this transformation from tiny acorns to magnificent oaks takes on a whole new level of wonder and obsession. As I roll these beautiful nuts around in my hands, I ponder the miracle of having one's destiny within. It was Aristotle who first described this purpose of existence, an internal code which turns potential into reality. It is in the entelechy of a caterpillar to become a butterfly; within the acorn lies the oak.

Not all the seeds that I plant are oaks – some are pawpaw, chestnut or buckeye, a few are hickory. Of all the trees we have planted from seeds or seedlings (over 1000), perhaps 40 percent are oaks. Of all the species that we could chose, oaks sequester the most carbon and support the greatest number of butterflies and moths, 534 to be exact (according to Douglas Tallamy, University of Delaware professor of entomology). And, if you consider the number of species around Farm Dover that depend on acorns for food: deer, raccoons, turkey, mice, squirrels, – plus, the dozens of species of birds that depend on the canopy and cavities for nesting sites, you can begin to appreciate all they offer – truly, they are quintessential giving trees. 

Last week I finished reading "The Overstory," last year's winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. It was as if Richard Powers wrote this book just for me. I've not stopped thinking about it since I turned the last of its 500+ pages. While the epic is told through nine characters, it is the old trees that are the real protagonists of the story. They are the ones with the real wisdom -- and the ones we must learn to listen to. I'm trying.

There is a folksong written by Malvina Reynold in 1974 that goes something like: If you love me, plant me a rose. If you love, love, me, plant me an apple tree. I venture to say that if you really love me -- or this fragile planet we call home – plant me an oak tree. Now that's true love.