![\"fallen](\"http:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/IMG_2904.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nOnly then, when she was in pieces, did we see the rot at her core.<\/p>\n
Sometimes the illness of trees is visible. We can see the fungus consume a small dogwood that’s growing in the shade. We watch the maple\u00a0bending at the spot where it has an old wound. We monitor our hemlock carefully for the white fuzz\u00a0of wooly adelgid, which has infested so many of the hemlocks down at the creek.<\/p>\n
But you can’t always tell.<\/p>\n
When we first bought the cabin, I asked a friend who is a forester\u00a0to come and have a look, ask him to diagnose\u00a0the health of our little chunk of woods.<\/p>\n
We had a white oak<\/a>, and he pointed out the large, dark splotches on its trunk. I hadn’t noticed them. “Do we need to take it down right away?” I asked.<\/p>\n “Nah,” he said. “It’ll probably be good for a few more years.”<\/p>\n I was surprised. “Isn’t it rotted at the base? How can it stand?”<\/p>\n “Oaks invest in their infrastructure,” he explained. “They grow slowly, maybe a foot a year. They build. When one part gets diseased, they can isolate\u00a0it and continue living just fine.<\/p>\n “You take that tulip poplar<\/a>,” he added, pointing to the tree next to it, “it’ll shoot up three, four, five\u00a0feet in a year. But, no investment in infrastructure. The least thing’ll take it down.”<\/p>\n If you ask at a nursery, they’ll tell you that no one wants to buy a white oak because they grow too slowly. People want the fast-growing trees<\/a>, they want fast shade and ornamentation, so they buy trees\u00a0like the hybrid poplar that grows as much as eight feet in a single year.<\/p>\n They’re trading expediency\u00a0for\u00a0integrity.<\/p>\n One\u00a0spring at the cabin I found a huge pile of germinated acorns buried in a pile of leaves. I took those\u00a0acorns, 100 of them, and planted them around on the property. I don’t know if I can make the forest healthier, but it seemed worth the investment of time to try.<\/p>\n Day 104’s penny is a 2013, the year of the acorn planting.<\/p>\n She was such a beauty, her many arms curved gracefully to the sky like a dancer. The loveliest tree in the yard at our cabin. Unlike some of the older, taller trees, our scarlet oak\u00a0seemed very healthy: straight of trunk, and with no fungus or weak spots. I looked forward to many more years of … read more The secret life of trees<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5940,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[321],"tags":[94,220,370,372,373,369,371,180],"class_list":["post-5915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tress","tag-94","tag-booger-hollow","tag-growth","tag-infrastructure","tag-investment","tag-oak","tag-poplar","tag-trees"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5915"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5915\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5943,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5915\/revisions\/5943"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"