(Click to enlarge)
OK so Ansel Adams I'm not. This is as bad a photograph of an oak as you'll ever see. With apologies to Kilmer, I think that I shall never take a picture as lovely as an oak. (Then again, Kilmer should have apologized to decent poets everywhere and been dragged before an international tribunal and charged with torturing metaphors.)
As a great man (I think it was Rod Stewart) once said every picture tells a story, and luckily the story behind this picture is a lot better than the picture itself. (Yikes, I don't think ol' Rod could get away with those lyrics in 2010!)
This is a valley oak (Quercus lobata) that is nearly 20 feet tall. It was planted as an acorn in the spring of 2006, which means that it is now coming to the end of its fifth growing season. For those of you keeping score at home, that's 4 feet of growth per year... starting from an acorn!
We need to overcome this ridiculous myth - ironically promulgated by poets (and I use that term loosely) like Kilmer - that oaks grow slowly. They. Do. Not.
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