The death of my tree.

I looked outside the window this morning and as usual it was pitch black. I left the house just as the sun was beginning to peek over the horizon line. I love sunrise. This morning however was a bit different. I looked around and noticed that... wait a minute... the leaves on the trees are turning colours already! Fall is my favourite season, crunching leaves under my feet, the smell of fires creeping into the neighbourhoods. Good stuff. But when did this happen???

Now I know the science as to why the leaves turn colours and fall off the trees - the storing of energy, dormancy stages - ways of surviving the winter keeping the lifeblood of sap stored deep within the trees. But it's little help when I know the reason that my tree has no leaves is because it died this summer. What tree you ask? Well, I suppose it was mum's tree first, but she has been watching it for so long, it became my tree too, and in fact, I learn that it had become the tree of many sarnians. Technically it is in the middle of a field on Lakeshore road between Brights Grove and Camlachie in southwestern ontario - right in the middle of a crop of soy beans and just down the road from home - my parents home. It is a majestic elm tree that survived the first bout of Dutch elm disease and has been cared for and studied by the university of Guelph for years, so they could figure out why it survived.

Here is a photo of it last winter - my sister and I put together a series of photo's - one from each season. Isn't it gorgeous!

So even though this is the time that the leaves fall, and the trees store up their potential for the coming spring, there is something sad about this one, for I know it won't be bursting forth with buds after the winter ends. Rumour has it (and small towns are wonderful sources of rumours) that the owners are planning on just letting the tree naturally fall as opposed to cutting it down. There is something beautiful about that, almost like a good death for the tree. My dad (who builds BEAUTIFUL furniture) is going to offer to make the owners a table out of the wood if they would like one - a harvest table - a rather fitting memorial.

(hmmm... I think I've been reading too much for my death dying and grief course!) But you know what? I'm really going to miss that tree - we would sometimes even drive out of our way just to check on it - now there is nothing to check on, and its sad.