Trees for tomorrow

Long before I ever read the likes of Aldo Leopold, Henry David Thoreau or Wendell Berry, I was fascinated with trees. It might have been that they were really scarce in North Dakota, or that the cottonwoods growing down along the Missouri were so huge. It could have been that my fall-collected bur oak acorns sprouted roots and leaves the year I forgot to dry them out. Perhaps it was that my ancestors made a business of supplying seedlings to shield railroad cuts from blowing snow and to help slow topsoil losses on the northern plains during Dust Bowl days. Whatever the reason, I continue to struggle each spring with a compulsion to plant trees – lots of trees.

In the late 1980s, I succumbed to the Soil Conservation Service’s siren song in Lincoln County, South Dakota. The volume discount was phenomenal, and the government’s machine-planting crew came cheap. The SCS cost-share was 75 percent that spring, so we went with a 2,000-foot-long 5-row shelterbelt that included lilac, locust, green ash, Russian olive and Colorado blue spruce. Conservation service guidelines noted that to be in compliance, I had to keep the tree rows black (clear of any competing vegetation) for a minimum of three years, to give those thousands of 8- to 12-inch-tall seedlings a fighting chance.

Two years after installing that first shelterbelt, we planted a couple of others to shield our house from the west and to protect our lane from drifting in. Manchurian apricot, Nanking cherry, Amur maple and buffalo berry were all up to the task. We also transplanted scores of volunteer cottonwood seedlings (from the low end of our pasture) to stabilize the bank where the creek arced through the yard. In 1996, when we bid those trees farewell, my wife, Kate, reminded me that the planting was well worth the enjoyment they would bring to future generations. I wasn’t so sure.

Over a decade later, with my first Osage County winter now past, I am expecting delivery of more than 200 seedlings. You see, there’s this opening where the yard is a little too exposed to the road. And there’s that empty area to the southeast where a couple of pines blew down in some former land steward’s neatly planted grove. Then there’s the general lack of cottonwoods on this place, and I’m just certain a small grove of bald cypress will look great down by the pond.

I have no illusions that I will see these late-life plantings reach the grandeur of their maturity. The joy will be in putting seedlings in the ground and in documenting their advances from one year to the next. There are plenty of mature trees here to enjoy today, but when they succumb to the ravages of time, with any luck at all, our plantings will be ready to stand in.

Whether you’re planting trees and gardens or building ponds and barns, we’d love to know what you’re up to this season. Please don’t be shy about letting us know. Email digital photos to editor@Grit.com or post them on cu.Grit.com. Articles can be submitted electronically as an email message or an attached word processing document. We also like hand-written notes, typed or printed documents and photographic slides or prints – feel free to submit by mail and be sure to include an SASE if you want things back. We’ll publish some of your stuff in the magazine, some on the Web site, and some in our bi-weekly electronic newsletter, Grit eNews.