A View From My Garden

December 5, 2005

Snow, beautiful and welcome snow! Snow covers the oak leaves laid thick over the perennial beds, and over the strawberry patch. The leaves of the two large Burr Oaks (Quercus macrocarpus) are down, and the excess pilled in the compost bins, along with the leaves from the Norway Maple (Acer platanoides).There is, though, that recalcitrant Shingle Oak (Quercus imbricaria) a youngster at about 40 years of age, stubbornly hanging onto its leaves until spring. All through the winter months the ragged brown leaves dangle from the Shingle Oak's branches like pioneer ladies' dresses hung out to dry. . Every spring I try to catch it in the act of dropping those leaves, and every spring I fail. One day the drooping left-over leaves hang there, even as I bolster my lagging energy; each of us tired of winter and without an end in sight. The next day the leaves are gone, and in their place, each twig shows a new green spring bud.

On this day in early Winter, the Shingle Oak's leaves are still a coppery brown color, reflecting the brilliant rust and dark gold of only a few week ago. The Shingle Oak may fool me each spring, but it brings great joy each autumn, and this has been a very good year.

The large Burr Oak in the front yard has dropped all its leaves and bared that great structure of corky branches, stark against snow and overcast sky. Burr Oaks are of the Beech family and so second cousins of the eastern White Oaks, perhaps the greatest timber trees in our country. Once the monster White Oaks stretched all across the northern states into the Midwest, some trunks measuring six feet in diameter after growing for 500-600 years, gaining a grand height of over 100 feet. There are few of these monsters left outside of parks and preserves. They have given us oak barrel staves and Grand Rapids Oak Furniture, and all those golden oak desks and cupboards in schools and courthouses across the land. A few still give us some of the finest country furniture being built today, from Shaker to Stickly, from very old to very modern.

My father was a furniture maker and he loved to work in oak, though he said it fought the woodworker all the way, never letting go and never giving in. The old time craftsmen were like that, it seems to me, men of oak who always had the time to do it right. There are still some around today, if you look for them. You will even find them here around the valley of the lower Clark Fork..

The last major project my Dad made, in his tiny shop in a desert town at the foot of the Sierra, was a dining room set with a large rectangular table and eight chairs. The chairs were steamed and bent to a pattern, and like those barrel staves, were made of white oak. The table top was assembled of matching quarter-sawn white oak boards. The woman he made it for was a long-time friend of my mother's and she had stood by my mother through a protracted final illness. My Dad charged her only for the materials (expensive enough in our time) and contributed his skill out of friendship. He was in his late seventies then, an oak of a man, and it took him a long time to finish the dining set. When it was finished, my mother's friend did not like it; said it did not fit her dining room. My Dad offered to take it back, but the woman said no, she had an offer for it and she was going to sell it. Later, my father found out the price. She sold that last dining set to someone from Los Angeles for $10,000. Itmust have fit that person's dining room just fine.