Bearded old man

No, I'm not talking about myself.  I'm talking about this stalwart valley oak (Quercus lobata - aka California white oak) growing on a hillside along Old Creek Road between Paso Robles and Cayucos, CA.

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The hillsides are still brown in this, the driest year ever in many parts of California.  Liberally hung with Spanish moss (nature's own t.p.) I'm guessing that given the crown-to-bole ratio this old gent - like so many of us - once had a lot more foliage up top than he does now.

 

Sorry about the lighting in the photo.  Getting my back properly to the sun would have required that I play in traffic even more than my parents used to encourage me to do.

If that a fleck of light you see coming through base of the tree?  Yes, yes it is:

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Dude is completely hollow, probably after wounds caused by fire, lightening and cattle hooves.  Hollow, but solid - it that makes any sense. 

An acorn filled weekend

My sons definitely out-acorned me this weekend, I'm embarrassed to say.

On Friday night we played Scategories, an activity I enjoy only marginally more than a rousing game of Poke Your Head.  Or a really deep paper cut.  Anyway, one of the topics was Ethnic Foods, and the letter in play was A.  I suffered the brain lock I am prone to whenever an hourglass is transferring its contents with (seemingly) increasing rapidity from top to bottom and as the scrit-scrit of opposing players' pencils on their score sheets reaches a crescendo.  I scored a big fat zero.

My son wrote Acorn.  I immediately awarded him double points.  And stabbed myself with my Bic pen for being such a moron.

The next day we were working on his book report on Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve.  My son has read the book.  I have read the Wikipedia version (Wikipedia = the Cliff Notes of 2013; those beautiful black and yellow books that got me through high school and college).  One of the characters in the book was named Nikola Quercus, but later changed his name to Nikolas Quirke.  Two weird things about this:  First, if you were lucky enough to have the surname Quercus, why would you ever change it?  (Well, apparently in this case you'd change it if you were bent on creating a post-nuclear-apocalyptic new world order in which mobile cities roam the barren countryside devouring each other for food and spare parts.  You'd probably want to play down the "green" aspect of your family name.)  Second - and I'm not kidding - I desperately wanted to name our second son Nicholas Quercus Siems.  I was vetoed... for which Nicholas will no doubt be very grateful.  In the same way our daughter is forever grateful she didn't become Harriet. 

Later on Saturday, Ethan had a soccer match in nearby Templeton.  While I was riveted to the action (lost 2-1 but Ethan got the lone goal and we had a penalty kick that would have tied the game get saved by the goalkeeper.  A 6'2" twelve year old.  Who shaves.  But I'm not insinuating anything.  Or bitter.), Nicholas was busy doing this:

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Gathering a cap full of massive valley oak (Q. lobata) acorns.  I asked what he planned to do with them.  He said, "Pant dem and grow oat tees!"  How cool is that?? Then I asked if we should grind some up and eat them, to which he replied, "No, papa. Dat would be ewey."

So the weekend wasn't perfect.  But it was darn close.

 

Battle Lost?

While traveling on business in California over the last twenty years, and even more so since I moved to California just over 2 years ago, I have marveled at the way California oaks cling so tenaciously to life, even after losing huge chunks of crown to lightening, wind and decay.

One tree I have been watching for several years might have finally given up the ghost and gotten out of the proverbial canoe.  It's a valley/California white (Quercus lobata) in Shandon, CA.  I took this photo on August 31, 2012:

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This tree had looked exactly like this for several years.  It had obviously been through the wars; huge branches dropped, roots disturbed by road construction on one side, agriculture (hay field) on the other side.  But every year it leafed out, every year it kept fighting.

I took this one last week:

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It's dropped all its leaves, much too early for autumn.  We're in the midst of a terrible drought in this area, and I'm afraid this oak might be a casualty - along with the vineyard industry and along with good relations between neighbors whose wells tap into the same shrinking aquifer.

I will keep watching this one for signs of life next spring.  Could be that in these dry conditions the leaves became more of an evaporative burden than a photosynthetic benefit, and it just "decided" -no, I'll get rid of the quotation marks and give the trees its cognitive due - it just decided to go dormant for the remainder of this season, conserve what little water remains within its reach, and try again next spring.

I'm hoping.  I'll let you know.

Oaks in repose, oaks battling for life

Typical California.  While driving a country road outside of Atascadero, CA to deliver bird netting to a vineyard customer I saw these two beauties just a few hundred yards from each other:

Survivor.

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Recliner.

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California is laid back and mellow.  And California is a hardscrabble battle for survival - to pay the rent, buy food, pay for insurance... to balance the state budget.

I - with the type of personification I mock and ridicule coming from others - see both of these reflected in the oaks I see on the golden California hillsides I drive by every day.  

I see oaks which must have had huge, spreading crowns that were long since lost to lightening or rot still standing, their massive boles sending out one or two pathetic limbs in a desperate attempt to cling to life.  And they do... for decades.

I see oaks on hillsides that just seem as though they just plain got tired, and decided to lie down for a nap.  And never got up.  I see so many of these beautiful, reclining oaks that I'm thinking of doing a coffee table book on the subject, Oaks in Repose.  That will scream to the top of the NYT Best Sellers List I'm telling ya!  Publishers, call me.  We'll do lunch.

Valley/California white oak (Quercus lobata).

 

Burl Burglar Bagged... Story at 10

My last post showing a huge burl on a huge Atascadero, CA valley oak prompted Oak Watch reader Walter to send this Boston Globe link* to a story about a series of burl thefts from Boston area parks.


Norm Helie is a plant and soil scientist hired by the Friends of the Fenway Victory Gardens to keep the garden healthy.  He heard the sound of a chainsaw coming from the woods, went to check it out, and saw two dudes standing over an amputated red oak burl - and probably looking more than a bit guilty.  He walked away so as to not become the main character in a really bad and stupid horror movie, and called 911.

Here's a tip for all you wannabe burl thieves out there:  When stealing valuable oak burls be sure to do so in broad daylight, and be sure to be seen hauling the burls (and your chainsaw of course) off to your apartment immediately across the street.  This saves a lot of time and trouble for the police in locating and questioning you.  It is a courtesy they really appreciate.

Under what I am sure was intense questioning burl burglar Michael Scanlon admitted to taking the burls (the ones he was seen by God and everyone taking) but said the others were dropped off at his apartment by a friend.  A friend whose name escaped him at the moment.  Right.

I was of course shocked to learn that the dude who was with Scanlon at the time was arrested on unrelated drug possession charges.  

The story reminds me a bit of a story I heard about 18 years ago of a gang of black walnut tree thieves in Indiana.  The group stole dozens of veneer grade black walnut trees, some valued at more than $10,000.  They always left behind a pile of empty Budweiser cans.  They were caught returning to the scene of a crime to collect the cans for recycling.

OK, I made that last part up.  But the story of the Budweiser Gang is very true.  They were eventually caught, but I can't remember (and even worse can't Google) how.  I'm sure they did something equally dumb.

Only to have another idiot do the same thing.


* This Boston Globe story is worth much less than it was a few days ago.  The newspaper itself sold for $1.1 billion not that many years ago.  The paper plus a number of other affiliated companies/publications was purchased by Jeff Amazon.com Bezos yesterday for a paltry $70 million (which he probably found loose in the pocket of his spare jeans).  He's mostly buying it for the purpose of data mining online Boston Globe readers.  Sign o' the times.  Said the blogger.

Now THAT'S what I call a burl

California white (aka valley) oak (Quercus lobata), at the entrance to a vineyard near Atascadero, CA.  A giant tree, with a serious burl.

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No, the tree is not growing horizontally (although many oaks in California do seem to).  I took the photo on my phone in portrait format, pivoted it before saving the file to my computer, but &^%#$@*&^@ blogger only wants to display it horizontally.  Doh.

No matter how you view it, it's pretty dang cool.  Have a great weekend!

How to kill an oak tree #973: Killing me slowly with backfill

God, this is disheartening.  Stopped for gas in Paso Robles, CA on Friday afternoon (Paso Robles = Oak Tree Pass in English - the most recent and perhaps most ill-fitting language of the area) and I saw this:

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This tree is dying. It is a massive California white oak/valley oak (Q. lobata) with a crown spread of about 80 feet or so.

And therein lies the problem.  A crown spread of 80 feet equals a root system spread of more than 80 feet.  But when the gas station was built the grade was raised around the tree, save for a 10 foot diameter dish right around the trunk that was left at the original grade.

The grade wasn't raised by much - 6 inches in most places, maybe 12 to 18 inches farther away from the tree.  But that's enough, especially if (as I suspect) construction equipment compacted the soil in the drip line root zone.  Roots that were inches below the surface poised to swallow precious moisture from the rare Paso Robles cloudbursts and which had plenty of pores of air space in which to breath, are now several times farther from the hard packed surface, with no air space to breath and no water to drink.

The sad parts are:

1. Someone actually made an effort to help the tree by leaving a dish at original grade.  They just didn't know (I prefer that to thinking they knew and just didn't care) that the most valuable roots are way out below the drip line or beyond.  They didn't know that even a minor change in grade, especially when combined with soil compaction, can suffocate the fine feeder roots that are the lifeblood of any tree, no matter how huge.  The knowledge gap on construction sites is still, after all these years, immense.

2. The tree is dying so slowly - this gas station was built several years ago - that by the time it dies no one will connect its death to the damage that was done during construction.  Instead its death will be blamed on old age (Ha! This tree would live another 150 years left to its own devices) or on the insect and/or disease pests that aren't the primary cause of death but are only the secondary and opportunistic beneficiaries of the tree's stress and struggles.

The third and saddest part?

 (Click to enlarge)

3.  There's another tree right next door behind a car dealership that is dying in exactly the same slow way.

Sigh.

Obey the drip line people.  And if you're not going to - or can't - obey the drip line, then do the tree the honor of harvesting it and putting it to use, rather than leaving it to die a slow, drawn-out death that will leave its wood rotten and its spirit ruined.

The Work From Home Oak

You have heard of many famous oak trees.  Treaty Oaks.  Hanging Oaks.  Dueling Oaks.  Meeting Oaks.

Here's another one to add to that list:  The Work From Home Oak:

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California white oak (Q. lobata), Atascadero, CA.

On the surface this would seem to be a heck of a deal; in 2011 the average income of Fortune 500 CEO's was $12.94 million.  So being able to do that from home would be, you know, sweet. 

Believe it or not, I didn't call.

Mistletoe in 2 parts

This California white/valley oak (Q. lobata) was the subject of a recent post - it's the one that sadly also serves as a fence post.

But, man, it's an awesome tree.  I love this time of year here in California when the white and blue oaks lose their leaves, revealing huge masses of mistletoe - something I didn't grow up seeing in my native Minnesota.

One my way home from my daily sales rounds yesterday (which only included the fulfillment of everything I set out to do in my career in the course of two short but spine-tinglingly cool meetings - one with a nursery ready to revolutionize and industry and one with an amazing guy working to restore native California oaks and other trees in the face of difficult economic, political and environmental conditions; other than that it was a pretty nondescript day) I just had to stop and take pictures of this tree from two different angles.

Mistletoe in the moonlight:

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Mistletoe at sunset:

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I wish I had gotten there about 12.3 minutes earlier. Better yet, I wish I knew how to use a camera in a way that those 12.3 minutes wouldn't have mattered.

Have an awesome Thanksgiving.

Went to a soccer game...

 … and an acorn fight broke out.

We spent last Saturday at a soccer tournament in Templeton, CA (yes, as a matter of fact my son did score another goal, thanks for asking – and yes, it was left-footed, as he will tell you ad infinitum even if you don’t ask).

Between matches, the boys discovered enough of these to feed a medium-sized village for a year (which, of course, they did in simpler/better times):

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California white oak (Q. lobata) acorns – BIG ones.  Big, pointy ones.

And the boys did what 11 year old boys would naturally do:  Someone yelled “acorn fight!” and they started chucking them at each other.  Acorns: Staff of Life, handy projectile.

Except one kid, who gingerly picked up an acorn and looked in amazement at the tiny radicle that had started to sprout from it.  You could see the mental wheels turning:  So this is where an oak tree comes from.  He showed it to his dad, then saw I was watching the scene and he showed it to me.  I asked if he planned to plant it and he said yes.  We wrapped it in a t-shirt for safe transport home, and I’m happy to report that by the time of the team pizza party (my favorite part of every soccer season) later that evening the acorn had been safely planted in a pot.  Very cool.

No, that wasn’t my kid.  He was too busy becoming an acorn Gatling gun to notice things like sprouting radicles.  Proving, of course, that the acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree.

It's the drip line, people!

A few weeks ago a wrote about how heartened I was to see more and more construction projects with protective fences set up around the drip line of oak trees in order to protect the root zones from soil compaction and grade changes.

Well, the last few construction sites I have seen... not so much.

(Click to enlarge)

Above: Mid-state Fairgrounds, Paso Robles, CA.  Below: Hwy 46 east of Paso Robles.  In both cases California white oak (Quercus lobata) - also called valley oak.

Granted there are mitigating circumstances and the construction crews might be doing the best they can under limiting circumstances.  The tree above is located in a roughly paved parking area and the fence marks the perimeter of the area of bare soil around the tree.  Despite the tough growing conditions this is obviously one heck of a healthy tree.  To some degree the pavement is probably serving the same function as mulch film - holding moisture in the soil.  Rip up the pavement and I guarantee you find a ton of feeder roots immediately beneath it.  So my fear is they are going to do just that:  Rip up the pavement and the feeder roots beneath, the compact the soil in the process of re-paving the area.  I hope I'm wrong.

No matter what, why wouldn't they have put the construction fence at the drip line or beyond?  Answer: Because the Mid-state Fair is in August when it's hot as Hades in Paso Robles and everyone wants to park in the shade.

In the lower photo the tree is on the shoulder of a soon-to-be-widened highway, and a fence, private property and a vineyard lane on the other side.  This photo is taken looking east.  No way you can fence out to the drip line to the north (road) or south (fence/vineyard lane).  And you don't really have to, since the road shoulder and the vineyard lane have probably limited root growth in those directions for years.

But you could, in order to compensate, extend the fenced area east and west to the drip line - or even far beyond the drip line.  There's no law (although sadly there's probably a CalTrans spec) that says tree protection fencing needs to be erected in a circle.  Most of the root growth of this great tree has been going out from the tree to the east and west.  Why not protect those roots from construction damage?

I keep a mental catalog of at-risk construction site oaks and follow them for years to see how they fare post construction.  I'll keep watching these in the years ahead.

Oak Abuse: Oak as fencepost #437

This kind of thing really steams my bean:

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 California white oak (Quercus lobata), Highway 41 near Creston, CA.

I get it.  You're building a fence and come to an oak tree and you think, "Cool, it's like a giant pre-pounded fence post but with leaves."  And I know that a couple of fence staples and some barbed wire aren't going to kill the tree (unless you're wounding the tree during oak wilt season in the Upper Midwest, April 15 - June 15).

But I hate what it says about how we think about trees - as if they are, well, fence posts with leaves.

This one takes the idea a step farther: Oak as gate post.  Perfect!  A monster oak tree right where I want to put a gate!  Besides the fact that by definition vehicles will now be driving over and compacting the soil in the root zone, there's another problem with this:  Gates must be hinged vertically.  Oak tree trunks are conical.  How do we resolve this geometrical conundrum?  Easy - by gauging out the buttressed base of the tree to create a cavity in which the base of the gate will rest.

Ouch. This is somewhat - OK, a lot - less benign that just pounding some nails into a tree to string some barbed wire.  This is creating a nasty wound almost sure to become the entry point for fungal pathogens, not to mention a handy pooling spot for the moisture that will help feed those decay fungi.

Would it have been that hard to drive a fence post 10 feet away?  I think not.

Am I advocating cutting down another tree somewhere to make a fence post to drive 10 feet away from this tree instead of gauging this living tree in order to hinge the gate?  Yes.  Yes I am.

I believe it is a much "kinder" cut to harvest a tree with a specific purpose or use in mind (and then to replant or otherwise foster the regeneration of the piece of land from which the tree was harvested), than to subject a living tree to the indignity - and shortened life - of using it as a fence post.  Or clothesline pole.  Or flag pole.  Or etc.

But that's just me.

Oak Gall du Jour

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That's one humongous oak gall!  California white oak (Quercus lobata), Santa Margarita, CA.

For my Midwestern, Eastern and Southeastern readers the scale can be a bit deceiving in terms of the size of the gall relative to the size of the leaves.

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California white (a.k.a. valley) oak leaves can be wee itty bitty.  The leaves on this particular tree aren't that small, but they are nowhere near the size of the white oak (Quercus alba) that you are used to seeing; if they were the gall would be the size of a rugby ball.

As it is the call is still nearly as big as a soda can (that's pop can to you Minnesota friends).  Not that I'd know for sure, and not that I don't have about two dozen Mountain Dew can rolling around the floor of my truck.

I really, really need to get going on making some oak gall ink.  Promise:  One post written in oak gall ink by next week.  It's up to you to hold me to it!

Monster

Approaching this tree on Vineyard Drive west of Paso Robles, CA I thought to myself, "Gosh that's a pretty darn big valley oak."  But, like so many of the bigger valley/California white oaks (Quercus lobata) in the area, this one had seen better days, and had been through the wars of lightening strikes, dropped branches and the minor detail of having a road built over its root system... leaving me to think to myself once again, "By golly, I wish I could have seen it about 50 years ago."

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Then as I got nearer to the trunk of the tree I just about locked up the brakes and thought to myself, "Holy moly that tree is huge!"  Because apparently I have taken to thinking to myself in dialogue from episodes of Ozzy & Harriet. 

To return to the more appropriate lingo of 2012 central coast California:  Bro, this dude is a beast.

 

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Need a little scale?  Here you go:

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That is my ball cap.  Stylish, eh?  Keep something in mind here:  I have a big head.  A really big head.  And not just figuratively.  My older brother played football at our very large suburban Minneapolis high school, and he was the only kid on the team for whom the school didn't have a large enough brain bucket.  He had to order a custom helmet from the same place that used to outfit the Minnesota Vikings.  Do you know what we call him in the family?  Pinhead.   As usual I didn't have a tape measure with me, but I'd estimate the dbh (diameter at breast height in forestry jargon) at 7 feet.

The California white oaks of the coast range hillsides and valleys amaze me.  Summer temps hover around a bajillion degrees.  Winter temps often go well below freezing.  Rainfall is as infrequent as it is sporadic.  These oaks cling tenaciously to life for decades & centuries, and then the second they tap into a water source (in this case a creek/ditch) they grow to immense proportions.

This is the base of a branch this tree dropped:

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The base of the branch is bigger than most mature oak trees in my native Minnesota!  The architecture necessary to support a branch of those proportions boggles the mind.

 

Oh, yeah - remember the pruning scare on the roadside of the tree, the pruning scare that left much too long a branch stub?  Here's what you see as you drive by:

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Yes, I could be a curmudgeon and file this under "Oak Abuse," but come on.  I'm not a big one for anthropomorphizing trees.  My friend/mentor/hero Donald Willeke (co-founder of the American Chestnut Foundation, past president of American Forests, co-founder of the Twin Cities Tree Trust, etc etc etc) once wrote a typically hysterical and acerbic piece lampooning Joyce Kilmer's poem Trees, in particular questioning the contortions required for a tree to press its "mouth" against the Earth while at the same time lifting its "leafy arms to pray" while "looking at God all day."

But you have to admit, giving this tree a face is pretty cool.

Oak Abuse #548

These photos are of the same huge California white oak (Quercus lobata) north & west of Paso Robles, CA (can you tell from recent posts I have been spending a lot of time in that part of the world delivering bird netting for vineyards?  I have about a dozen more posts ready to go resulting from these drives through oak-laden vineyard country!).

I don't know why stuff like this bugs me so much, but it just does.

By my count that's eleven nails within about a square foot.

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I would conservatively estimate the number of nails pounded into this (approximately 2.5ft diameter) tree at three or four goo-gobs.  Do the nails harm the tree?  No, not really - although they could severely harm the poor soul who might someday have to cut down or section it with a chainsaw.  To me it's more indicative of a mindset, of how people so often think of trees as telephone poles with branches and leaves.  Instead of vice versa.  Or something like that.

 

All I know is that's one heck of a lot of posters for a tree on a very lightly traveled country road.  What are they posting?  Lost cat flyers? Probably better off asking the local coyotes.  Barn dance announcements?  Posting of indictments/contradictions of Catholic teachings?  Soon-to-be-disregarded Indian treaties?  Hard to say; I have never actually seen something posted here.

Same tree:

(Click to enlarge)

 

Another in my series of "oak tree as fencepost" photographs (none of which have I posted here, so don't waste time looking.  He said, as if you had actually planned to look.).

Again, is this especially harmful to the tree?  Eh.  It is of course better than wrapping wire completely around the tree and eventually girdling it.  It's not precisely bad for the tree, but for crying out loud would it be that hard to drive a fencepost a couple of feet away?

And again, I'm glad I won't be the guy with the chainsaw in hand cutting it down someday.

Tree of Life

California white oak (Quercus lobata), Chimney Rock Rd, Paso Robles, CA.

(Click to enlarge)

 

Is there any organism on the planet that, pound for pound or acre for acre, supports as much life - in terms of diversity and volume - as the oaks?

I counted 15 wild turkeys under this tree, feasting on early dropping acorns.  Standing amidst the turkeys were three large does which bounded gracefully away just as I pulled to a stop (and yes regular readers, I actually pulled to a stop this time before shooting the photo - big mistake ;-).

And if you look closely in the reflection of the windshield of my Dodge pick up you can see the ghosts of the humans - the indigenous people of California's central coast - that were smart enough to take their place beside the wild turkeys, deer, squirrels, jays, woodpeckers, etc etc etc and take sustenance from these Trees of Life.

Oak Abuse #529

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Well, I have seen better pruning jobs.  Ouch.

California white oak (Quercus lobata) - or rather, it was a California white oak - Vineyard Drive, Paso Robles, CA.

Ouch

This California white/valley oak (Quercus lobata) has seen better days.

(Click to enlarge - but it's not pretty)

Atascadero, CA.  I'm assuming it lost its main stem in a storm or lightening strike, but that's an interesting piece of pruning where the main leader used to be.  Part of me is glad someone made a decision not to remove the tree.  Part of me (the professional urban forester part) wonders about the wisdom of leaving a rotting trunk with two poorly connected branches standing.  Over a park-and-ride lot.  Next to the bus stop.

The tree does remind me of something, but I can't my finger on it.  Now I remember:  my hair line.

My Cool Ride Home

A couple times per week business takes me from my Los Osos, CA home on the central coast to the San Joaquin Valley.  It's 2.5 hours but a whole world away.  The intensity and variety of agriculture in the valley never fails to amaze me (just add water).  But after a day standing in dusty fields talking to growers I'm always ready to hop in the truck and head home to the cool, foggy coast. 

Here is a summary of the latter part of my trip home yesterday, as it pertains to the native oaks of the area.

5:19pm
Passing through Shandon, CA 44 miles from home
97 degrees F
Native oaks are California white/valley oaks (Q. lobata) and California/coast live oak (Q. agrifolia), most growing as widely spaced medium sized trees on the grassy range land hillsides, growing bigger on the banks of the (mostly dry) creeks.

5:44pm
Passing through Atascadero, CA 22 miles from home
91 degrees F
Both California white and California live oaks, with the whites dominant.  As I have posted before this is where the combination of degree days and available water produce some real giants (that's my baseball cap against both trunks):

 

(Click to enlarge)

6:00pm
Hwy 41 at the top of the pass between Atascadero and Morro Bay
67 degrees F
This is almost precisely where the California white oaks disappear and the live oaks become the dominant - though increasingly stunted - species

6:02pm
Hwy 41
61 degrees F

6:04pm
Morro Bay, CA
58 degrees

6:10pm (and most importantly in time for the end of soccer season pizza party!)
Los Osos, CA
54 degrees w/fog
California live oaks dominate the coastal scrub.  Bonsai California live oaks.

Less than 1 hour, 44 miles, and a temperature drop of 43 degrees - right into my comfort zone (the farther it gets away from 60 degrees in either direction the crankier I get).

I'm not exactly breaking new ground here in pondering the effects of coast and topography on climate, but for someone recently transplanted from the Arctic tundra of Minnesota it's pretty darn fascinating.

Looks like pizza

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When I took this photo of a trio of California white oaks (Q. lobata) growing in a clump on a hill surrounded with wheat (photo taken near Creston, CA) I was all set to launch into a rant about the stupidity of beating the snot out the soil to produce a cereal crop on land that for centuries supported its inhabitants with acorns.

But in light of the previous post I'm seeing this photo in a whole new light.  Acorns plus wheat equals... pizza dough.  Or really, really good bread.

The problem, to me, is one of scale and proportion.  I hope I live to see a day when oaks will be the primary crop on land like this, wheat is an afterthought, and the farmer spend a lot more time sitting in the shade with his friends than sitting on a tractor burnin' oil.

I wonder if the farmer knows that he can produce a different, more nutritious flour from the bounty of this field that fetches 18 bucks a pound?  For some reason I doubt it.  But in field after field - be it a corn field in central Minnesota with a magnificent bur oak or a vineyard in Tulare, CA with a giant California white oak - I see oaks left standing where they arguably detract from the productivity of the target crop being grown, and I often wonder why.  Yes, there are regulations here in CA and probably elsewhere restricting the removal of mature oaks.  But I don't think that's the answer.  I think something deep in our psyche finds reassurance and comfort in seeing those oaks.  We subconsciously know - even if our conscious mind has long forgotten - that the crops we are laboring so hard to grow are fragile and foreign, and are one water shortage or disease away from disappearing.  The presence of these "farm field oaks" tells our subconscious that even after we beat up the soil beyond the ability to produce row crops there will still be food.

Well what do you know?  I managed to get my rant in any way!