We moved to a new house in July. Our new place is just two blocks away from our old house, but we now have enough bedrooms that the kids don’t need to share. And the new house has more than just one, small bathroom for all four of us to squish into each morning. We’re mostly unpacked and now focused on finding the right shelves and chairs to make it our own brand of cozy. Our mattress might still be on the floor (since the box spring didn’t fit up the stairs, rendering our old bed frame pointless), but each day we feel like we belong here in this lovely space a little more. 

Of all things I miss about the charming Chilcombe Avenue house we left behind, the old white oak in the backyard is at the top of my list. It is a beautiful tree, leaning gracefully out to the east, balanced by a full crown that stretches wide and way to the west. In the spring, blue squill bloom at its base. And in the winter it holds onto just enough rusty leaves to contrast with the bright snow.  

I did a lot of yoga in the living room on Chilcombe Avenue and spent a lot of time gazing out the window, upside down, admiring the way the oak’s branches turned and twisted for no clear reason. I wished I could do the same as gracefully.

In the winter, owls would rest on those twisting limbs. I remember my whole family rushing out one summer evening to admire a Northern Harrier that was admiring our flock of backyard-hens in a hungry sort of way. The tree was home to Cooper’s hawks, gray squirrels, red squirrels, cardinals, blue jays, chickadees, and probably many more I was too busy to notice.

It pelted the house- and us sometimes- with buckets of acorns every year. For a couple months early each fall, the acorn deluge sounded like a slow motion hail storm.

Years ago, on the evening of my brothers’ wedding rehearsal party, held in the Chilcombe house’s backyard, the oak did gorgeous work holding multiple strings of white party lights. The same week my grandma died, I found comfort in a rarely-spotted-by-me scarlet tanager that sang from a branch over my kids’ sandbox. Our oak was great at hosting a hammock and my kids’ tree fort snuggled up right to its trunk.

It was surprisingly hard to say goodbye to that tree, among all the other things. 

Before the Twin Cities metro became an urban space, it was an oak forest. There are still many native oak species here; white (whose leaves are rounded), red (whose leaves are pointed), and burr (whose leaves are super wide on top and skinny on the bottom). Oak forests are home to many creatures, thanks mostly to the acorns which are a great food for turkey, wood duck, deer, etc. (According to John Moriarty’s book, A Field Guide to the Natural World of the Twin Cities, “The now-extinct passenger pigeon was the dominant bird species in the oak woods of the Twin Cities prior to the 1850s.”)

So, I shouldn’t have been surprised to discover that our new backyard is also home to a white oak. From the kitchen window, this oak looks like it has sprouted from the foundation of the house itself. It slowly reaches to the south, curving away from my bedroom window and giving that room the feel of a treehouse. Honestly, it’s a bit dreamy.

So far, it looks healthy- the bark isn’t flaking and there aren’t any dead limbs near the top which would be a sign of dreaded oak wilt. I’ve watched white-breasted nuthatches hunt ants on its trunk. We found bits of a whippoorwill egg under its branches early one morning. And every day so far one fearless chipmunk scales its vertical rise, peeking into our kitchen window on its way.

Moving is a lot of work, a lot of cardboard, and a lot of feelings. But it’ll be worth it. And I’m excited to get to know this tree better.