{"id":7675,"date":"2016-04-22T13:06:53","date_gmt":"2016-04-22T17:06:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/?p=7675"},"modified":"2017-04-20T11:50:28","modified_gmt":"2017-04-20T15:50:28","slug":"the-red-buckeyes-in-the-forest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/?p=7675","title":{"rendered":"The red buckeyes: In the forest"},"content":{"rendered":"

October 20, 2013<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I had finally figured out that the red buckeyes would never flourish<\/a> in our dry, clay patch yard at home. So I carefully dug\u00a0up the first one and put it\u00a0into a pot to take to Booger Hollow.<\/p>\n

Its root had a funny\u00a0kink, presumably from where I’d broken it as a seedling<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I look around for a cool spot with good soil that was likely to get decent\u00a0water retention. We had some mushroom compost, which was my latest cure-all idea for amending the soil, so I worked that into the soil before creating holes for the red buckeye and a bottle-brush buckeye that I’d raised\u00a0from seedling on the deck.<\/p>\n

I carefully placed each tree, telling them, “I promise you’ll like it here! No\u00a0deer eating your leaves, no car fumes, living in a real forest!” I put a plastic tag near each so that we wouldn’t accidentally trample them.<\/p>\n

October 25, 2013<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

We went\u00a0back to the cabin, and I carried with me the second red buckeye, the one Katie had given me. I was sad\u00a0to see the root when I dug it up: The soil at the house was so poor and rocky that the tap root had become a big corkscrew – convoluted itself around rocks, looking for nutrients.<\/p>\n

“Don’t worry,” I told it. “You’re going to a place where life will\u00a0be much easier.”<\/p>\n

As soon as we got to the cabin, I went to check on the other two buckeyes and got a huge shock.<\/p>\n

There was a big empty pit where the young red buckeye had been, and its tag was tossed a good 10 feet away.<\/p>\n

The bottlebrush buckeye was clinging to the side of a half-dug pit.<\/p>\n

I yelled bloody murder\u00a0and Tom\u00a0came running.<\/p>\n

Animals generally don’t like buckeyes (other than the fresh leaves), because they are mildly toxic. These holes were so\u00a0tidily and precisely dug that we couldn’t imagine\u00a0an animal doing it.<\/p>\n

I started to cry, wounded by the malice of it. Who would come out here and steal a buckeye? And it was so special to me. It had survived more than\u00a0four\u00a0years despite my ineptitude and the deer.<\/p>\n

Now it was gone – uprooted from its new forest home. I just couldn’t believe it.<\/p>\n

While Tom scouted for other clues of the intruders, I searched to see if the tree had been tossed aside. I knelt sobbing next to the pit where it had been, and clawed blindly in the brush next to the hole. Then suddenly I noticed a branch with a funny thick curl – the root.<\/p>\n

Though a bit dried out, it seemed OK. I quickly replanted it.<\/p>\n

As I did so, I remembered that I had put mushroom compost on it – and that in Europe they use pigs to hunt truffles in the forest.<\/p>\n

This has been a big year for wild hogs<\/a>\u00a0in North Georgia. We’d seen their tracks in our Booger Hollow yard and along trails, and they had been trapped in our community too. \u00a0Hogs are very destructive – especially to\u00a0trees<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I recovered the bottle brush\u00a0buckeye and put extra bark and leaves around the base of\u00a0both trees to protect against the frost. I did Reiki on them as they snuggled in.<\/p>\n

I wanted to plant the second\u00a0buckeye at the north end of the yard, where we’d more easily be able to keep an eye on it. But when I started to dig, there\u00a0was only poor soil and rocks.<\/p>\n

The buckeye whimpered, “I thought you said it would be nicer here\u2026.”<\/p>\n

I tried digging several places on our property. Every place had clay soil, rocks, no better than where the poor thing was before.<\/p>\n

I finally chose the best spot I could, just a bit downhill from the other red buckeye. There was lots of humus from dead leaves, and I\u00a0chopped up a chestnut oak sapling nearby to reduce competition.<\/p>\n

I cried again as I planted the poor buckeye with its twisted roots, because there was not a lot of room to stretch out, and the soil was not rich and not all that moist once you got past the dead-leaf humus.<\/p>\n

“I wanted to give you so much more,” I told it. “I wanted to give you nice soil and a place to stretch out, get moisture and sun. I’m so sorry to disappoint you but this is the best I have\u2026”<\/p>\n

As I spoke to the plant, I had a flashback to another life: being a tired mother trying to raise a daughter on this poor soil here in the mountains, wanting to give her so much more, but only being able to give her a rocky clay living scratched out like chickens feeding in the dirt. It hurt so much.<\/p>\n

I mixed some lime in potting soil, and put that around the edges of the buckeyes, hoping that the lime would\u00a0counter any remaining mushroom smell.<\/p>\n

January 11, 2014<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

When we returned to the cabin, I checked anxiously to see if the buckeyes had survived. They had new leaf buds, and I rejoiced.<\/p>\n

April 19, 2014<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

They are different trees – lush, big leaves, bursting with health.<\/p>\n

They smiled at me and promised they’d grow up to be adults now.<\/p>\n

I told them, “That’s right. You’re safe now and you’re going to keep growing into big, strong trees.<\/p>\n

“Your red blossoms will feed generations of hummingbirds.<\/p>\n

“And when you have lived your whole life, and you’re ready to transform back into the soil, you’ll get your revenge.<\/p>\n

“You’ll see a wild hog nosing around. And you will catch the strong wind and crash down\u00a0right onto that hog and kill it.”<\/p>\n

May 23, 2015<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The buckeyes have grown taller\u00a0this year. The seedling that I thought I’d killed is a good 18″ tall. Katie’s gift is more than two feet tall now.<\/p>\n

Again I told the buckeye trees the story of their lives. How they would feed hummingbirds and kill wild hogs. They nodded in the dappled sunlight and promised to fulfill their destiny.<\/p>\n

April 19, 2016<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I went to the cabin, after six months away. After a long, hard winter<\/a>,\u00a0when I had lost faith so many times.<\/p>\n

I ran to the buckeyes. Their leaves were glowing in the sun.<\/p>\n

A gorgeous red stalk of flowers rose\u00a0straight up from the middle of Katie’s\u00a0buckeye. Just waiting for the hummingbirds.<\/p>\n

“You kept your promise. We’ll\u00a0keep ours.”<\/p>\n

\"IMG_5746\"<\/p>\n

Today’s penny is a 2013, for the year that I brought the buckeyes to the forest.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

October 20, 2013 I had finally figured out that the red buckeyes would never flourish in our dry, clay patch yard at home. So I carefully dug\u00a0up the first one and put it\u00a0into a pot to take to Booger Hollow. Its root had a funny\u00a0kink, presumably from where I’d broken it as a seedling. I … read more The red buckeyes: In the forest<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7670,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[321],"tags":[94,220,908,228,498,909,910,612],"class_list":["post-7675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tress","tag-94","tag-booger-hollow","tag-buckeye","tag-cabin","tag-flower","tag-hog","tag-mushroom","tag-tree"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7675","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=7675"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7675\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7801,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7675\/revisions\/7801"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}