Yeah, trees are amazing creatures.

You can have big old ones, like the one next to your house, and like some of the humungous trees up in Killingworth, that are probably first growth. Country trees live nice lifes. They get rain, and sun, and natural fertilizer from their decaying leaves, and kinda mellow out.

Then you have the city trees and you wonder how they ever survive.

They get planted in a 3 foot square in the middle of the sidewalk. There can't be much decent soil underneath. Fire hydrants get protected with steel encased poles embedded in the bed rock so trucks can't back over them.

But the trees are on their own. Trucks knock their leaves off, snap their branches and bend them over. The only fertilizer they get is when dogs pee on them. People use them as poles and lean all sorts of stuff against them, some temporary, some permanent.

Right now I'm planting two crab apple trees up on my new terrace. They'll be up on the 21st floor, next to the Hudson. What happens some times, I'm told, is that the west wind comes off the New Jersey Palisades, whips across the Hudson, bounces off the face of the building and creates a funnel that comes whipping across the terrace.

The crab apples have just moved down from Litchfield, so I'm hoping that they can adjust to city life.

I don't think they can get to be as big as your old maple, but I can try to cheer them on!