The big orange bungalow was nice, but it was the beech tree that cast a spell.
On the day we toured the house, thousands of hard, spiny burrs enclosing beech nuts blanketed the side yard.
That, we were told, was a mast year, the beech seeding in exceptional quantities — which, of course, I took as a sign.
Mostly, I admire its generosity, its wordless willingness to care for what is not in any immediate sense its own.
He tells us that it can kill a big tree like ours in less than 10 years.
Locations:
North America