HALLOWEEN AND MY FATHER

Left to Right -- my fraternal grandmother, my young father, and my fraternal grandfather

Rosemont Avenue, Berkley, Michigan

Celebrating Halloween when I was young in the forties and fifties was not only celebrated by kids but by my father. The reason being was that he was born on Halloween so our family celebrated the whole month of October with porch pumpkins, cardboard images tacked to our windows of spiders, black witches and cats. Topping it all off was a five foot cardboard skeleton hanging from our front door. We were the most "ready for" Halloween house on our block. 

Today of course houses can be decorated like stage plays with full size plastic devilish figures dancing across yards. 

I took this photo as it closely resembled my memories of Halloween. Not so plastic but imaginative creations.  

 A real spider that I noticed a week ago while checking out an old school. He was travelling across the old porch boards probably choosing a place to hide where he could jump out and scare children on Halloween night. Of course I enlarged him in Lightroom

This house would have made a great haunted house for us kids to scream and run through and maybe a few adults too (like my father).

SHAGBARK HICKORY TREE PROVIDES BANQUET FOR WILDLIFE

SHAGBARK HICKORY TREE NEAR AN OLD COUNTRY CHURCH

A few weeks ago, I was meandering around a piece of property where an old country church stood  but was now abandoned. I had been to this property before and thought I could capture some better photos of the church than I had taken previously. 

As I wandered about, snapping photos, I nearly bumped into a tree. The tree that I had almost bumped into was a majestic Shagbark hickory tree that was back-lite by a dark blue clear sky. Its shaggy appearance was humorous yet appealing and its height and girth told me it was middle aged to elderly, appearing quite healthy. 

SHAGBARK HICKORY NUT HUSKS CRACKED OPEN 

ON THE GROUND BY THE TRUNK OF THE SHAGBARK TREE

I instinctively looked down at the ground to search for hickory nuts that I knew would have dropped  from the tree around  this time -- providing a rich food source for wildlife.  

There appeared to have been a banquet on the ground around the base of the tree. Nut husks were cracked open in fragments, fragments that once contained white nut meats. It was evident that some wild critters had certainly enriched their diets. It could have been any of the wildlife that can be found in the area such as Gray squirrels, Eastern chipmunks, White Footed mice, or wild turkeys -- all known to devour Shagbark nuts. 

Missing from the Shagbark hickory banquet were  bears that love the nuts as well as the native American population that used the nuts in their diet. 

This very Shagbark could be almost 200 years old as they are known to live that long. If it is, that means that it actually could  have had in its early life a few bears and native Americans feasting on its bounty. Perhaps these former area residents did visit this tree at one time. If only this tree could tell us its story.

RESOURCE:


Hilton Pond, Center for Piedmont Natural History