What's Time to a Tree?

Thinking about time and effort and the future of life and art and the planet

For some reason, there have been a bunch of new subscribers here. Of course, this always stirs up thoughts of WHAT IF I DISAPPOINT THEM? which I hope I didn’t do, but welcome. I’m not sure why you’re here, but I am happy that you are.

The following post is part of a Seed Pod collaboration about time. Seed Pods are a SmallStack community project designed to help smaller publications lift each other up by publishing and cross-promoting around a common theme. We’re helping each other plant the seeds for growth!

I am addicted to planting trees

Here’s what you need to remember if you are going to go around planting trees: You will never live to see them in their full glory, unless maybe you started planting trees when you were two years old, and probably you weren’t thinking about trees very much then, at least not about planting them. I’ve visited places that had trees that were 500 years old or older. I wonder what the person who planted them was thinking when they planted them.

I recently planted a little Noble Fir, re-homed to me by a friend who had raised it in a pot. Every year they wheeled it in front of the patio doors and decorated it for Christmas. It was about to outgrow the pot and they really didn’t have a place for what would someday be a large evergreen tree on their small property.

Can you see it? it is right in the middle, with some battery operated lights that lasted for about 8 hours…oh well…

I have a five acre, mostly wooded property, so I said sure! There’s always room for another tree. After we got the tree in the ground, I thought maybe I should read up on the latest addition to my forest. It turns out that Noble Firs can live 400-600 years, and reach a height of 230 feet. I think I put it in an okay place, at least it won’t be my problem when it gets too big. Ha ha!

We benefit from trees that were planted long before we were born, and we hope that the trees we planted are still there several more lifetimes beyond us. I planted a bunch of trees that were about the size of a pencil and some that were as big as I could fit in the back of my Honda, so not very big, 20 + years ago when I first moved in here. They are sizable now 24 years on, although they will all be much bigger after I’m gone. I will be long gone before the eventual size of my little tree is a problem.

Maybe someday I’ll get around to cataloging the trees I planted. It would be nice to have a document that listed all the trees I’ve planted.

Making art is a little like planting a tree. It takes time from when the idea for something is first planted until it finally becomes whatever it is going to be. It might go through an awkward growing phase, but once it takes root, it can grow beyond your wildest imaginings. One of my gardening friends used to say about planting something: the first year they sleep, the next year they creep, and the third year they leap. (In gardening, that’s when you realize you planted things far too close and you start moving plants around.)

In making art, it can take years or longer for a process or medium to take hold in your art process. You hope that it will still be giving people joy years after you’re gone, and having a place of pride in someone’s home or a museum. You are always building on everything you’ve done before. But adding new processes or new methods to the mix is mentally and creatively energizing. I’m getting close to having something to show and share from my new monotype work.

Stay tuned.

And go say hi to your trees for me.

Made from stuff my trees gave back to me.

What have you planted lately? a tree? an idea? a painting?

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