Huggin' Trees

When we bought our house in westside Mount Vernon about 17 years back, she sat lower than the road. This gave you a strange feeling that you needed to duck when you walked through the front door, while at the same time also making you feel shorter than you really were. It wasn’t that she shrunk with age, as so many of us will, but more like the road got taller inch by asphalted inch. Like any house built in the fifties, she had a list of needs, but we quickly decided giving her a new foundation with some added height would be a top priority. 

We hadn’t lived here very long and found out pretty quickly that raising a house and rebuilding the foundation was a spectacle. It was common for a dusty truck to pull up with the window down and a friendly face of a stranger popping out to comment on our house sitting up on a stack of really big Jenga pieces. We got a whole new perspective, but it came at a cost: trees.

There was the hazelnut tree that had a cluster of trunks and provided pounds of nuts for the neighborhood squirrels (who liked to keep them toasty under the hood of our Trooper), the craggy apple tree whose fruit I do not think I ever saw, and two massive rhododendrons (we know some call them a shrub) that our oldest son mourned the loss of because they were his favorite trees to climb and hide inside to watch the world whiz by. 

Since then, we’ve managed to plant some trees and have loved the remaining ones. And as we come up on the 150th anniversary of the National Arbor Day on Friday, April 29th (Washington State also has our own Arbor Day on Wednesday, April 13th, so we get double the fun), my hope is to convince you to plant at least one tree. 

One massive tree still growing in our yard is often referred to as a Tulip Tree, or sometimes called a Tulip Poplar (Liriodendron tulipifera), because both her leaves and her blooms are tulip-like. She’s a hardwood from the East and is considered a fast-growing shade tree in the right conditions. Her large, creamy yellow blossoms produce a sweet nectar that humans, honey bees, and hummingbirds enjoy. Herbalists report a wide host of uses from the inner bark and leaves, although it is not a common tree or remedy in our neck of the woods. 

The flowers of her close cousin, the magnolia tree (Magnolia officinalis) is often used in remedies for seasonal allergies causing sinus pressure and headaches. These become a popular item in Wellness every spring, as do the trees themselves. Skagit is home to many of the eighty-plus varieties that grow well here, although they are not native. Their fabulous show of blooms before leaves makes them especially dramatic in comparison to other great growers. Speaking of Magnolia, have you met the Co-op’s own? She is now the head of our Garden Department, and rumor has it, we should be seeing even more native shrubs and trees available to buy along with your eggs and potatoes. 

I’m optimistic my family will buy me another tree for Mother’s Day. Last year we planted a hawthorn tree and that’s when I learned there are over a thousand types of hawthorn trees. So, when you say, “I want a hawthorn tree for Mother’s Day!” you may not get the exact one you were expecting. What I was expecting was a Crataegus monogyna (or was it a Crataegus oxyacantha?) because I once laid down under one and a chipmunk came and stared at me.  It was the first time, and only time, I ever made eye contact with a chipmunk. It made my heart happy. Turns out hawthorn makes lots of people’s hearts happy as it’s a very common herbal remedy, our best seller being Gaia’s Hawthorn Supreme.

I did once meet some of those trees at the Gaia farm and saw some of the famous white squirrels of Brevard, North Carolina (yes, you do want to google that). Thankfully, I didn’t make eye contact with those rodents, and that also made my heart happy because I think in a fight, a squirrel could take me out. Anyway, those hawthorn trees are planted next to ginkgo trees there because the heart also needs the head. Ginkgo is often associated with increasing memory, but I never could get my family to remember where it was planted so they mowed down more than one. Then I tried to keep it in a pot, but I forgot to water it. Maybe I should start by taking it internally, and then see if I can figure out how to keep one alive. 

One tree medicine I am fairly good at remembering to take is willow because it treats pain, and it’s hard to forget that you’re in pain. Most folks know that willow contains salicin, and when we ingest that it turns into salicylic acid, a main component of aspirin. Willows love to grow near water, and so, we have over thirty species that are native to this region. They want to take over the world, so they are easily propagated by clipping a branch and putting it into wet ground.  And what will we do with all this willow? We’ll weave baskets! Check out Dunbar Gardens in Mount Vernon to see the basket mastery of Katherine Lewis, and yes, she did used to work at the Co-op. 

Seems like all trees are giving trees. Above all else, they give us peace. I’d like someone to invent the word to describe the way sunlight illuminates tree leaves as you lay on the ground and look up into the canopy. The kaleidoscope of colors and shape with overlapping shadows that none of us have watched enough. I’d like to capture that magic in a bottle, and I wouldn’t even charge for it. We’d have a big stack of it in Wellness to give away for free. I’m not afraid to admit that I’m a dendrophile – we do have a word for that – a lover of trees and forests. Let’s go dig some holes and plant some trees and rest in the dream that one day it will be hugged by some Co-op’er. Yes, that means you.