The maple trees have put on their pretty spring garments in my area of Appalachia. For the last two weeks I’ve watched the maple’s first blush of pink get darker and brighter as the days go by.
The woods here are plentiful with maples.
There’s a small copse of trees inside the pasture down the road that always catches my eye this time of the year. Over the years the cattle have manicured the underside of the tree canopies to about the same height. I’ve never been in that portion of the vast cattle farm that borders our land, but every spring I find myself wanting to walk out under the blooming maples and sit for a while.
Tipper
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Everything is so pretty right now.
A great time to ponder all the wonders of the trees in Spring. Sarvis trees were only ever mentioned to me by my Dad. They bloom year after year with little notice and no mention from anybody except my treasured Blind Pig blog. It was almost as if the old timers were a part of the earth, and they made it their business to learn its secrets. I was distracted along the way, but decided to pursue Home Health just to make sure I was not enclosed in walls. I would watch the seasons change, and each had its own richness of color. By far my favorite was when you can look into the mountains and there is that dusty rose color from all the kazillion buds in early Spring. Then there is the scattering of sarvis blooms.
Unfortunately, I have not chosen well in trying to bring a forest of trees to my backyard, and my dad warned me Silver Maples not a good idea. One little bush /tree I trimmed back for many years so that it never bore fruit was a Quince. I thought it was a type of Azalia! One year when I was too busy to trim it was loaded with fruit that looked similar to an apple. Dad had never identified it, and was one of the many times I wished he was here to share in my discovery. He taught me it is sometimes the small things that make us truly happy.
My dad planted two maple trees in the back yard seventy years ago. He said he just went into the mountains and dug up two saplings and each one is a maple but a maple of a different kind. I think one is a red maple because the veining is red and the other one has green veining. They are incredibly beautiful and hold so much life all summer. Birds and squirrels are fun to watch while I sit on the back porch. The shade those two huge trees provide keep the back yard cool. Daily I watch the changes nature (God) brings to these trees. I am richly blessed to live where I do.
The maple trees are pretty when they start to bud and even prettier when the leaves are fully developed. The guy down the road has rigged up some maple syrup collecting buckets. They can be seen securely hugging the trees all around his house. He enjoys his maple trees in more ways than one.
Red maple is the tree I watch to see spring come. The twigs turn a brighter red first then the bloom pops open. Around here now the bloom has come and gone and the red is seed. Come fall it will be red again with red leaves, living up to its name.
There may be a spring in that little patch of woods or at least water not far down. Red maples grow their best near water, though they will grow most anywhere.
I’ve noticed the local sarvis (serviceberry) is in full bloom. Sarvis is what we always called them.
There is a wilderness area in W.VA. called Dolly Sods and the top of the mountain is covered with Sarvis trees. You could actually pick buckets full of berries. I’ve never seen a place like that here in E.KY.
AW-I would love to pick a bucket full sarvis berries! Pap let me taste them one time-very sweet. The trees here are spread out and so tall the berries mostly get eaten by the birds 🙂
The sarvis trees are the same here in e.ky.
There is a local tv station broadcast out of w.va. and the weather man tells when the berries are ripe. Ain’t that neat?
AW-very neat!
Maples are beautiful through every season
It’s an amazing time of year, when life starts to happen before our very eyes. There is a row of bushes in front of my house that I trimmed back last fall. Now they have a lot of beautiful new green growth happening, it seems like just over night.
We get to watch the earth come alive again after the winter. It’s an wonder we get to see every single year!