Post trauma

Crimson red leaves, tattered, torn, are scattered among the other leaves still whole and green on my plum tree. The trunk is clearly thicker and the branches longer and more numerous than it had been after the decimation of the spring, but the survivor foliage, perforated, jagged, gnawed, seems to have given up: it's time to turn color and toddle off. Some fall colors, I guess, mark old massacres.

My little pear tree, denuded in May, after struggling successfully to releaf, is now dying down from the top of its central stem. The leaves, once bravely green there have turned yellow, then sere. I cut off the dead section thinking lower down the stem was healthy. More will have to go. Let's hope the side branches are okay.

Clearly the injury these trees suffered from their predator worms was profound and even a summer's worth of sun wasn't enough to restore the status quo pro ante. You've been limping gamely along, pear, plum, but now it's time to own the pain.

Tree pain? Did you suffer as I know suffering? Maybe not. But I feel for you; I too have hidden injuries and carried on. At the moment you're committed to stoic indomitability, but afterwards you feel pity for what you endured..

My late father in law recovered from an iron lung bout of polio and went on to live a vigorous life as camp director, coach, father. When old, however, the effects of the disease became visible in the form of extreme muscle weakness, fatigue, atrophy. His middle years gave lie to the trauma of his youth, but the insult had been too deep, and finally caught up

You are trees not people, it's true, but you strive to survive as vehemently as I do. To live is to accumulate scars, and not all of them quiescent. Now my scars are just patterning on my skin; there may be deep forces perhaps I can't detect yet that will determine if they stay so.

I plan to inspect the leaves of both trees before winter for insect egg masses. Next spring, I want them to leaf out and flower fresh, innocent, and joyous, finally recovered.