I was at my parent’s house this weekend and holy smokes.
The three tiny evergreens out the back window have now bloomed into thirty-foot monsters shading half the backyard.
Driving by your old school, visiting relatives you haven’t seen in a while, or just walking around the neighborhood you grew up in can give you that sudden sense of life slowly moving onwards and upwards.
AWESOME!
Photo from: here
There’s a tree like that in my backyard. Though the reason it shot up so much is because we had to cut another tree down. Also, I’m suddenly thinking of things that used to seem huge but aren’t anymore. I remember once when both me and my sister could fit in the dryer (we were probably 3 and 4). Now I could maybe fit in myself if I contorted myself in an odd shape, but I’d have a tough time getting out.
This sounds like an exceptionally dangerous past-time. Your parents just let you kids hang out in the dryer? There wasn’t any fear that someone would forget about you, and turn on the permanent-press cycle? Yikes.
Are you saying your parents were watching you 24/7? That’s some crazy Big Brother stuff goin’ on. I feel bad for all the kids who grew up in the city and never knew the joy of ‘be back by sundown’.
Ours was, “when the streetlights come on”.
Also interesting: Seeing the trees in pictures of Disneyland in 1955, then looking at the trees in current pictures. Amazing.
This was always fascinating. I would love to go back to my childhood home in another state and see if our garden is still there! Massive trees just know how to wow people.
I want to plant one when I finally settle into my very first home and see how long it stays up!
reminds me the childhood…
Some trees grow a lot over the years.
I remember when my neighbor planted a frail looking little Maple tree. It is a huge shade tree now. Makes me wish I had also planted one back then.
My grandma passed away recently and looking through her things, I came across a picture of her and my grandpa in their front yard apparently when they had just moved into their home as a young couple. Beside them was a little fir tree, about two feet tall. That tree now towers over their home; it’s the tallest tree on the block. Awesome!
I planted a sycamore tree when I was about 5, by planting lots of ‘helicopters’ (the seeds) in the little piece of waste ground behind my parents’ garage.
It’s been about 25 years and it’s still there, only now around 25-30 feet tall. It brings back a lot of memories for me, looking at that tree.
That IS awesome! We planted a tree when my son was born eight years ago and it’s so cool to see how huge it has grown since then. He loves looking at it because we tell him that it is his tree.
We planted another tree of the same type about 1.5 years ago (Christmas 2007) and it’s a little taller than my son already.
I planted a tree when I was in kindergarten at my grand parents’ house. It’s big now and whwn I planted it, it was pretty much just a branch with roots
The trees in my front yard are HUGE. I looked at a picture of me standing in front of my house when we moved (around 6ish years ago?) Yeah, I was small, and so were the trees and bushes, but now… not so much. Anyways, I’m thinking of taking a picture similar to that as like a comparison. I should’ve taken one every year… oh well.
My parents bought and planted an elm tree in our back yard in the early 80’s. I don’t know why I’ve always loved that tree, but I have. Maybe it’s because it was the first one that I’ve seen from it’s beginning (at least in our yard.)
I remember a day it fell over due to a storm, and I made us all go out in the rain and tie it back up to it’s post. I yelled, “But we’ve GOT to save it!!!” Considering I’m afraid of thunder and lightening, I don’t know how I got the strength. But I loved that tree.
A few years later, it was struck by lightening. My father cut it down to a 2 foot tall trunk. We assumed it was dead. My father said he’d put a picnic table on it, but he never did.
A few years after that, two little branches came out perfectly across from each other. My father wanted to cut them because they were ugly; two scrawny branches coming from a tree trunk. I told him, “God didn’t cut you down and you’re ugly.” (I momentarily lost my mind, but I loved that tree!) He looked at me like I was crazy, but he didn’t cut them.
Fast forward about 20 years. That tree is taller than our 2-story house. It grew from those two scrawny, ugly branches. I call it “The Tree of Perseverance.” It’s an inspiration to me. I still love it, and I visit it whenever I’m home. I know when my parents sell their house and move after retirement, I will still come back to visit my tree…
BEAUTIFUL sharing:)
The house I mostly grew up in had a hedge. Chinese Elm.
Grows stupid fast, you had to trim that bugger every week or so or it would grow into a tree. I never believed it cause they never got more than 3 feet tall before we took the hedge clippers to it.
At least 3 or 4 times my Mom hacked those things down to stumps, and they still grew back.
THen she had to sell the house in a bankruptcy claim and the people who bought the place NEVER TRIMMED THE HEDGE.
I had moved away from town by this point, and about 8 years after she sold the place I went back and decided to visit the old neighbourhood.
I nearly fainted when I saw that the “hedge” had now grown to be 30 foot trees. My mom knocked on their door, doing the “I used to live here and planted those trees 30 years ago” thing, and the guy said, yeah, they were pretty big, the ones that had overgrown the smaller, weaker ones, but that they had wreaked havoc on the plumbing, something about monster roots.
That was another thing that struck me about that old neighbourhood, All the trees got bigger and the streets got smaller.
here’s a link with google street view. Yes, those trees used to be a hedge kept no taller than about 2 feet.
http://maps.google.ca/?ie=UTF8&layer=c&cbll=49.31297,-123.140959&panoid=t-nC2GCvprCZ9Z102cPhrg&cbp=11,10.85,,0,0.8&ll=49.310351,-123.125153&spn=0.111917,0.441513&z=11&utm_campaign=en&utm_medium=ha&utm_source=en-ha-na-ca-bk-svn&utm_term={keyword}
Also Very Cool Tree sharing story.
When I went back to the house in Vancouver, I was brought home to at birth, I thought it was gone. There are so many huge and gorgeous Holly’s, hedges, hemlocks, Hazel nut, fruit trees, etc. still there only now touching the sky. We got out of the car and walked closer; there was the old house; now a heritage…”we just couldn’t see the house for the spectacular trees!”
Hear: “Honey” by Bobby Goldsboro
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This blog is awesome and I love this post. I planted a tree once and it doubled in size so fast!
I ❤when I see trees that used be so small and r now huge
I love when I go somewhere and I see a small tree and then I go back another time and its huge!