THE ENCHANTED NATURE NEWSLETTER
THE ENCHANTED NATURE NEWSLETTER
Issue 4
February 2021
Greetings fellow nature lovers
Welcome The Enchanted Nature Newsletter
How A Tree Grows
by Christopher & Victoria Vacher
If you've seen the news, you know that winter has been wreaking havoc in the south. We recently had a rather large Pine tree limb drop and pull down our cable. The phone, internet, and television not working is an inconvenience, but thankfully not life threatening. We called our provider and a technician came to mount the cable back to the phone pole. Being that we live in a forest, trees and limbs are unavoidable.
As I was helping him get the line past some tree limbs, over a creek, and up the telephone pole, he mentioned that I might want remove the small sapling that you see above. My first thought was maybe he's worried about it blowing around and rubbing through the insulation coating on the outside of the line. The line isn't actually touching the tree and has plenty of space right now. His reply was that as the tree grows and that limb gets higher up, it will eventually lift the line and tear it off the house or phone pole.
The tree may eventually cause problems and need to be pruned or possibly removed but not because the branch will continue to grow upwards. Trees do not grow upward from the roots or trunk. Trees grow from the tips of their branches. This is a principle known as "apical dominance". One way to illustrate the principle would be to imagine that you carved your names into a tree...
(PLEASE DON'T DO THIS! IT CAN HARM THE TREE TO THE POINT OF KILLING IT!)
If you come back to that same tree fifty years later (assuming it is still alive and that you are too), your initials won't be somewhere over your head. They will be at the same height that you carved them fifty years before.
The trunks and limbs will become thicker over the years, but remember, the upward and outward growth comes from the tips of the branches. We want to encourage all of you to plant a tree.
Herbaceous plants like you might plant in your vegetable garden will germinate, grow quickly, fruit, and die all within a season or two. Not so with our long term shrub and tree friends. There is a saying,"The first year it sleeps. The second year it creeps. The third year it leaps." The first year that a tree is planted, most all of the growth will be hidden underground. You might wonder why the tree isn't putting on any size. The tree is building a strong foundation to anchor itself and access water and nutrients in the soil. The second year you will begin to see some growth above ground. By the third year, it is ready to start reaching for the sun.
NATURE IS CALLING, WILL YOU ANSWER
There are many proven health benefits to spending time in nature. It has also been proven that just looking at images of nature can provide multiple health benefits including: reducing depression, speeding healing, improving your immune system, preventing dementia, improving your mood, and increasing happiness. We plan on ending each newsletter with a short video of a natural scene. Hopefully the videos will provide you with some of the benefits listed above.
Stretch Your Wings!
is this month's video theme
A nice warm winter day gave our honeybees an opportunity to stretch their wings and get out for an afternoon. Honeybees won't come out until the temperature reaches 50º-55ºF. We all complain about quarantine, masks, and Covid-19 getting in the way of our fun. Imagine being cooped up for months, in a dark box, with thousands of others crawling all over you. In winter, bees form a ball to keep warm. They rotate who is inside (warmest) of the ball and who is on the outside (coldest) of the ball. You will notice that we tape additional insulation around our hives and reduce the entrance to help them stay warm.
I imagine that it must be a welcomed change to get out of the hive.
If you're ready to stretch YOUR wings,
come out for an adventure with us
If you don't see the video, link to the it here: https://vimeo.com/517545679
Stay safe, warm, and enjoy nature.
If you haven't taken the time to explore our website, please do.
There are a lot of free educational resources to enjoy:
https://www.enchantednaturetours.com
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with the word, "unsubscribe"