|
|
|
|
There are many acorn trees near Saratoga senior apartment which I reside at. I guess that is the reason why the nearby West Valley Community College’s logo is the acorn leaf. I believe there were many more acorn trees before people started to move here.
About 4 years ago when I first moved in, several of the elderly Korean ladies who were residing before us picked up many of the acorns and had made dotori muk (a type of jelly made from acorn) and shared with others. The following year my wife and I would walk under the acorn trees and picked up many of the acorns. We made acorn jellies and gave away to brothers and sisters in Christ. After doing this for 2 years, we had stopped doing this because the noise the blender made. The reason was because we lived on the 2nd floor, and I did not want to disturb those living on the 1st and 3rd floor.
One strange thing was when the weather was so dry, the acorns were in plenty. However, with this season being mostly rainy, almost no new acorns were produced from the tree. Some of them instead, had grown new branches at least 2 feet long! I think the trees were not able to grow for some time, and after the rain and the moisture had started to grow en-mass. I watched the trees sprout so many new branches this spring and expected they would drop a lot of acorns this autumn. But the guess was completely absurd. There were so many trees barren with fruits.
I was wondering what the cause was and, guessing from the timely drought and witnessing my daughter’s garden slowly go barren into a wasteland from cutting off the water supply (as the state was in severe drought, a warning was set to not water gardens). In the midst of this dry, yellowness I was able to see some of the grass leave a seed pod behind and die out. I think it is the nature’s reason for leaving its next seed behind. I think the same principle went for the acorn trees as they left their seed and the next generation behind to struggle with this drought.
I did some searching on the plant encyclopedia, and there are about 28 different types of acorn plant family. While walking around, I also happened to stumble upon 6 variations. Small leafed, broad-leafed, long leaf, short and round leaf, a very small tree, a very large tree. Finally different textures on the tree bark, soft and hard. They all have different types of fruiting acorn. Many of the acorn trees that do not shed its leaves have small acorns. But the ones those are much bigger and look like broadleaf tree tends to shed a lot of leaves. They have much bigger and fuller bodied.
A month or so ago, my wife wanted to show me something interesting and told me to follow. So I followed her and about 20 meters away from where we usually walk, there was an acorn tree that was 3 arms wide. She told me to take a closer look and see something ‘interesting’. I have seen this tree from walking all the time and never thought much of it. But upon closer inspection, something amazing was there!
The tree had so many small holes drilled into it. When I went closer to look, many of the individual holes had a small acorn fruit in it! I wanted to see how strongly it was placed so I wriggled it around with my finger but did not move. When I walk with my wife, sometimes I see the power line pole and also with very tall palm trees evenly spaced out. There is a woodpecker-like bird that made a nest within the power pole and flying around diligently. Some are climbing around the palm trees trying to catch bugs to eat. It is an image of a full life. The belly of the bird is white, the back is navy colored while the head is like the color of the azalea flower.
About 30 years ago during a summer retreat, I saw a blue jay pecking into the wood and putting an acorn into the tree. The reason is, the acorn would attract bugs and when the bug is well grown, the bird would come back to eat it. My wife recently saw that the same type of bird was doing exactly what I saw, diligently drilling a hole into the tree and putting acorns inside the tree I said about earlier. My wife went to see the birds closer but it did not fly away and was diligently focused on doing its work.
Those thousands of holes filled with acorns just to eat a fat, grown maggot! Seeing that many holes in the tree, I wondered if the amount of maggots it made would be far too much for 10 birds to eat. Perhaps it was carrying the extras for the baby woodpeckers to hatch and feed? When I read the bible, in Proverbs 6:6 “Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise!”
Yesterday I slightly strayed from the path and looked at the tree. Seeing the acorns in the holes, I thought, “Do I live like the diligent birds?”
(December 12th, 2016)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The Strange Acorn Tree
The Bitter Gourd