Jeff O'Handley, Author

Jeff O'Handley

The Doubting Writer Finds His Voice

Once More, The Chestnut

Hi, all, not much to say here today for a variety of reasons. This being the end of September, with summer officially over as of last week, I thought I’d break out a couple of quick pics from this morning. The American chestnut has survived the summer, and while it didn’t do as well as I expected, it did pretty well considering the top 2/3 or more died. You can see from the pictures that we’re starting to lose a little color from the leaves now; it’s a little behind, considering we’re rapidly coming into peak foliage season. Given the fact that it lives in a corrugated plastic tube (to keep it safe from browsing deer, rabbits, etc.), it may actually be a little warmer than the surroundings, and perhaps less stressed, competition wise.

And we’ll add another view from another angle:

Not bad, eh? The new leader didn’t put on a whole lot of length, maybe 4″, but again, considering that I had this little tree written off at the end of May, it didn’t do so badly, did it?

And now, one other shot that came out surprisingly well:

The picture is a little large for the frame, but I’m going to leave it for now.

The web is not particularly large, maybe 6 inches across or so. The spider is that little black dot in the almost center of the web. Quite a difference from the giant one we had on our garage at the end of August–the big ones all seemed to disappear when we had a couple of consecutive nights of temperatures in the mid-30s in early September.

Hope y’all had a nice weekend!

5 Responses

  1. Spiderwebs are cool. As long as I'm not walking THROUGH them! And they're OUTSIDE!

    I still think you should have planted the tree in a pot so you can take it inside the garage (or whatever) during the winter. I hope it survives!

  2. -Lexa–nope, it's the same one from the spring. I got it in the fall and planted it, thought it was dead, but it has lived. The top part of the stem died; however, trees are resilient.

    -Stacy–in hindsight, a full year in a protected pot probably would have been good. Maybe next time (though I'm told I shouldn't have two on my property, as the chance of spreading blight goes way up that way).

    -Donna–Thanks! The web does look too thick, doesn't it? It's morning dew, however.

    -Jemi–Me, too!

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