The American Beech

I noticed a beech tree down the hill from my back door. Leaves from every other deciduous tree have long since fallen to the ground but the beech tree holds on to it's leaves till Spring. Gary went down the hill and brought me back several beech leaves to use.

See the beech tree at the edge of the woods. The leaves are faded to tan and brown now but still clinging fast to their stems. The leaves are serrated and have a nice veining to them. American beech are slow growing and can take up to 40 years to produce their fruit with three nuts inside. The beech nut is edible and provides food for many vertebrate species such as the ruffled grouse, wild turkeys, raccoons, red and gray fox, deer, rabbits, opossums, pheasant, bear, porcupines, and humans.  Many lepidopteran caterpillars (butterfly larvae) feed on beech. Every time I write a blog post I learn something; today I learned about the American beech tree, Fagus grandifolia.

I know the beech leaves are green in the Spring and yellow in the Fall, but I couldn't resist making them a lobster red mason stain color and then using other stain colors over the top. I'm not sure what will happen with the other colors. We shall see after firing.

Yesterday I woke unable to walk on my left foot. How that happened I have no idea. The top of my foot was extremely painful. I read the pain was a tendon strain. Today it's  much better. When you're young you're invincible, when you're old not so much. All I can do is try to be like a beech tree, providing sometime useful after so much more than 40 years of life. Thanks for reading and for all your comments.