Reverend Lovejoy’s chilling words echoed in my mind this morning as I looked out the kitchen windows and realized that winter, despite all this tantalizing teasing about global warming, is upon us. Sure, most of the trees still have most of their leaves, and a lot of them are still sorta green. But my sickly ghetto trees, those that famously grow in Brooklyn, are bare. They were already half-dead, of course, as most of them are. But I swear they had leaves on Wednesday.
Last night, the goofy schmuck on TV for the 5 seconds it took me to press the DVR button says it might snow on Sunday.
So that’s it, I guess. Now it’s just an inexorable, depressing march toward the time when I will once again be spastically trying my best to shovel snow off the sidewalk like the Person of Tropics that I am. And the world dies for six months.
Matt November 16th, 2007 at 3:19 pm
yuuup. My similar tree dropped pretty much all of it’s remaining leaves yesterday. Sadly it’s right next to another, way cooler tree in the neighbor’s yard that doesn’t even look to have turned colors yet.
When I first moved in I assumed my tree was dead or on it’s way. I think they just have a shorter cycle in general. Bloom late, die early.
Xris (Flatbush Gardener) November 16th, 2007 at 5:10 pm
Hehe. “Ghetto trees.”
Some ecologists call them “opportunistic species.” Make of that what you will.
All are welcomed at Brooklyn’s Trees.
Brooklyn Peter November 20th, 2007 at 4:35 am
The so called Tree of Heaven always among the last to bloom and the first to shed its leaves every year. My grandmother has had one in her backyard for over 50 years and every year she thinks it has died but it always comes back.Although I have read in recent years that many of them are succumbing to a fungus that is slowly killing them off, usually the older ones. Very surprising for a tree that is native to China :)
Jeremy November 20th, 2007 at 12:11 pm
Nah, mine are definitely half dead. I’m gonna cut them down, since I have a mulberry growing at like the speed of light right up against one of them and I’d rather have it than their ugly asses.