Recently I spent a few days in San Francisco, where in addition to work I was able to walk the streets and gawk at the incredible array of sculptural trees that can be found pretty much everywhere.
This being just one example of a tree — well, there were a line of them in the sidewalk — whose twisting branches recall the snaking hair of Medusa. If I were more motivated, I would learn the name of this tree, but as it stands, I have enough to learn about the trees of New York, and even the ones who live in our Washington Heights garden. You can’t know everything about everything, is one thing I’ve learned about gardening.
The common feature these San Francisco trees share with their New York City counterparts (besides being trees) a piece of garbage — an old shirt or sweater from the looks of it — that someone threw into the branches, someone who like most people was probably jealous of the offhanded but elegant beauty of trees, who inevitably grow more and more beautiful with each passing decade.
