An arcane art I’ve been reading about and now plan to try.

This tree, which I recently came across on campus, is one of the few examples I’ve seen around here. It could be beautiful when in foliage. Now that I know that it’s here I will be watching closely to see how it grows, and how the arborists tend it.

And this stump used to be a wild, snarly tangle of shoots, new ones each season growing three feet or more. I thought is was some kind of arboreal corona virus. But then the tree man who took down the big ash said “Hackberry,” and I, immediately thunderstruck, knew he was right. I love Hackberrys, and this poor stump just wants to be a tree. My plan, now that I know what it is, is to work with it, hoping that together we can grow into something fine. It’s the wrong place for a towering hardwood, but a likely spot for something carefully pollarded.