tree rebuttal

Cedar trees are not designed for climbing, swinging from vines or tree houses. A few small cedar trees might be meant for Christmas trees, a few larger ones for bird havens or a means for displaying outdoor lights. We have a surplus of cedars here at III. I sat at the cabin today and looked around for my future vegetable garden spot. I can not find it, as every whipstitch there is a cedar tree.

My mother, memory crippled by dementia, mourns the demise of the farmers who kept the cedar trees out of their pastures. It must have been a point of pride learned at her father's knee and later practiced at the side of the young farmer she married. I point out to her on our country jaunts that that are fewer farmers now, that farmers often work in town in addition to farming, farmers have less time and less need for the pasture but still she fusses about the cedar trees taking over the pastures and I, seemingly, have absorbed the lesson . . .

Let us just tuck the cedars around the edge of the cabin clearing. Let us free the oaks and hickories of the cedars hanging on their shirt tails. Give them room to breath, to grow. We have more than enough hardwood trees for tree houses, swinging ropes and cowboys here on the 37 acres of Shagbark III. I look forward to 10 year old boys and 12 year old girls that will tomorrow be running through this timber, playing hide and seek and learning the love of trees, timber and childhood freedoms from their PaPa.