Relative Something

On our morning exploration through the woods yesterday, one of our weird trees caught my eye. It’s kind of hard to photograph, but I tried anyway.

There is a tree right behind it that complicates the view, but if you focus on the closest large trunk, you will find that it snapped off, but a limb pointed toward the ground did a 180 and started growing upwards.

It’s gotten tall enough to compete for sunlight in the overhead canopy. I can’t imagine the success of that wild U-turn growth is going to last indefinitely. Try to picture if it could live long enough that the trunk of the post-incident growth grew as wide as the base portion.

Trees can do some amazing things. Not that I’m still bitter about it… Well, yeah, I’m still bitter that the maple tree I transplanted into the center of the labyrinth gave up without warning after 7 years of promising growth. Why couldn’t it have shown the fight to survive that this tree exhibits?

The big barn doors were frozen solid again yesterday morning, but I wrestled them loose once more around noon, and the delivery of feed happened about an hour later.

When Asher and I arrived to work on the doors, I had left the small door open to indicate we were expecting the driver. Inside, we surprised a pigeon and a squirrel that had taken advantage of the opening.

I didn’t see the pigeon’s exit, but I saw the squirrel trying to hide way up high in the eaves. Poor Asher whined over knowing it was there but not being able to do anything about it.

When the delivery arrived, I left Asher in the house, and when I got to the barn, it appeared empty of intruders.

I paused to capture the state of melting ice on Paddock Lake in the afternoon. I’ll be surprised if it lasts two more days at the temperatures we are enjoying lately.

The horses will likely be holding a splashing party very soon.

.

.