Things Change

I opened my drapes this morning to see carnage on the floor of our back yard. I wanted to have seen it wrong, that it wasn't as bad as I'd witnessed yesterday, but they're still out there— our red and white oaks whose boughs were severed and snapped, and especially our live oaks —as if a tornado had come through, choosing only the most beautiful trees to destroy. The swingin' tree is gone and our newly planted desert willow was squashed by the force of a huge limb that landed right on top of its spindly arms. What happened was a tragedy arriving with the ice storm that pelted the hill country and beyond—not just our yard. 

We are lucky to have a garage that was a safe haven for our cars during the ice storm, and we'd just had our trees trimmed away from our roof, so the destruction has not affected any of our material possessions except our fences and gates. First there was the initial snap as if the ice-laden branch had been shot by a marksman with an oak bough in his sights, and then the crash of the limb landing on the icy ground. We heard the pop and thunder over and over through the night and  into the next day. Our mangled fence can be replaced. But the trees . . . 

The beauty of the live oaks on our property drew me in when we were house-hunting five years ago. I spent a lot of time high in the branches of a big oak tree when I was a little girl, and one of the first things I did when we moved in was to build a tree house for the grandkids, though I think I had it built more for me.

 Not every tree has been destroyed, but every tree has been affected. Our large red oaks and elms that tower 60-70 feet have huge limbs caught in their crowns. The canopies where our resident woodpeckers and owls raise families are now scattered on the ground below in tremendous piles of twisted wood like enormous pick-up-sticks. The remaining branches are left with open wounds where the huge limbs cracked and broke under the weight of hundreds of pounds of ice, the ice that is still hiding under the jumble of leafed and broken limbs, too massive for us remove. 

One live oak in particular is breaking my heart. It lies completely uprooted with its huge earthen root ball exposed on one end. The trunk, with its beautiful arms splayed out from its sides, extends for 40 feet on the buffalo grass. I can glance, but I can't look at it for long. A friend is dying on the ground, and I'm helpless to administer CPR. This tree held two of our bird feeders and the lights we'd strung to dress up our shade garden. Now it's a tangle of wood and leaves, wire and glass bulbs, fishing line and feeders. 

We'll get help to clear our property of the ice storm's cruelty, and we can get help with clean-cutting the branches where they're exposed and ragged. It's just downright sad to see the devastation. There will be huge gaps in our landscape now, and I'll miss the way our yard used to look, but most of the trees will still be there. They will just look different. 

I am encouraged by the way these trees have stood the test of time. Quercus fusiformis are heat tolerant (which explains why they exist in central Texas) and resilient, growing in clusters where their roots fuse together. When one is affected, they are all affected. They are dependent on each other and thrive through difficult circumstances because they share water and nutrients, the essentials for a tree's health. Depending on each other is not a bad thing, though it does have its risks, but maybe we could learn a thing or two from how the live oaks in these parts live as one: recognizing that in this crazy world, we're stronger together too.