John Terpstra, a Hamilton author and cabinetmaker, has been helping us count trees in Westdale. Inspired by Hamilton's urban forest, John wrote what he called a 'deciduary' - a dictionary of deciduous trees, called Naked Trees in 2012. Naked Trees and several of John's other books are available from Mixed Media on James St. and Bryan Prince Booksellers in Westdale. John has also generously donated a signed copy of Naked Trees to our tree story prize pack!
We asked John to tell us about his favourite tree and he penned this lovely little story about his side yard Eastern Redbud (Cercis canadensis). John's tree is a cultivar called 'Forest Pansy', which has purple leaves throughout the year. Eastern Redbuds are available via the City of Hamilton's Free Street Tree program and they are an excellent small tree for urban yards, providing bright pink blossoms in the early spring, pretty heart-shaped leaves throughout the year and they also resist clay soils and black walnut allelopathy!
--Giuliana
Here is John's tree story:
Redbuds Rule!
It took us many months to decide how best to obscure the pale
blue vinyl siding of our neighbour’s
house. I wanted to completely conceal the wall: a cedar hedge. My wife
convinced me a small tree would be better. We settled on an Eastern Redbud,
which we purchased from Connon Nursery last June while it was still in blossom.
Good choice. The tree instantly looked like it belonged. It was a
young thing of beauty which, when its blossoms fell, began to unfurl red
instead of green leaves, making it even more special.
We watered. We fertilized. It took hold, thrived and grew.
Fall came, the leaves fell. We were already looking forward to
spring, when our redbud would have its first seasonal blossom in our yard. Then
winter came, and was cold, and stayed long. In the spring, no blossoms appeared
on the branches. Small buds were visible, but they dried up and failed to leaf.
We thought we had lost our tree.
Slowly, however, it started to come back to life. More and more
buds, and leaves, started popping, and though several branches proved dead for
most of their length, closer to the trunk they valiantly sprouted new growth.
In the photographs, you can see the dead branches poking their
sticks into the air. We have yet to prune them, but that will happen soon. In
the meantime, our stalwart little eastern redbud tree has survived its first
trial by fire, or rather, ice.
