No Acorns This Year from Our Old Oak Trees!

No Acorns This Year from Our Old Oak Trees!
~By Indigenous Shamanic Winds
Date Composed:  Monday, 05 December 2011

"Our old Oak Tree with barely any leaves left on it. This is one of the trees in our yard that usually produces an abundance of Acorns and turning leaf colours -- this year, I didn't see one Acorn fall to the ground, which is amazing because in past years since I've been a child, we'd always been out in the yard during the Fall stumbling upon the acorns and darting from Squirrels dropping them on our heads!"

The trunk of our old Oak Tree has been singing an old favorite song of that my Mother loved -- time in seeking out a YELLOW RIBBON! -- when she was alive: "Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree":

I'm comin' home, I've done my time
Now I've got to know what is and isn't mine
If you received my letter telling you I'd soon be free 
Then you'll know just what to do
If you still want me
If you still want me
Whoa, tie a yellow ribbon 'round the ole oak tree
It's been three long years
Do ya still want me? (still want me)
If I don't see a ribbon 'round the ole oak tree
I'll stay on the bus
Forget about us
Put the blame on me
If I don't see a yellow ribbon 'round the ole oak tree
Bus driver, please look for me
'cause I couldn't bear to see what I might see
I'm really still in prison
And my love, she holds the key
A simple yellow ribbon's what I need to set me free
I wrote and told her please
Whoa, tie a yellow ribbon 'round the ole oak tree
It's been three long years
Do ya still want me? (still want me)
If I don't see a ribbon 'round the ole oak tree
I'll stay on the bus
Forget about us
Put the blame on me
If I don't see a yellow ribbon 'round the ole oak tree
Now the whole darn bus is cheerin'
And I can't believe I see
A hundred yellow ribbons 'round the ole oak tree
I'm comin' home, mmm, mmm
(Tie a ribbon 'round the ole oak tree)
(Tie a ribbon 'round the ole oak tree)
(Tie a ribbon 'round the ole oak tree)
(Tie a ribbon 'round the ole oak tree)
(Tie a ribbon 'round the ole oak tree)
(Tie a ribbon 'round the ole oak tree)...

~Irwin Levine and L. Russell Brown
*(Photo taken by )O( Indigenous Shamanic Winds, Tuesday, 22 November 2011)

This past year I had noticed that our one particular Oak tree in our yard that generally produces more than enough Acorns for our wild animal critters, had dropped absolutely NONE AT ALL. Even the leaves on the tree didn't seem to reach their usual vibrant colour of potential!

From one of our other younger Oak trees (and ours have been around here at least before the late 60s when my parents first built their Home here) had a huge branch and fallen over the Summer in a heavy windy rain storm -- I was looking at one of the leave-stricken branches of it, and noticed that the buds that produce the Acorns were very, very tiny and hadn't even looked like they were going to fully reach their potential of growth.

We have lived here now for almost three years, and the two years prior to moving in when my dad was still living at the house -- you couldn't even walk through the side of the yard where the old Oak is, was so swamped with Acorns, and I'd even remembered picking some up that were fully grown and already starting to 'sprout' on the ground!

In a posting prior to writing this Blog, I'd told a friend:

"The Acorns have always been falling from this tree -- as a kid, I remember how many times I went out and collected the very Acorns to play with; I found them being more abundant than money themselves! And since my mom passed and when my dad still lived at the house here, the past couple years he was here and then when we moved in two years back, we were just rolling on the Acorns, and surprised that the Squirrels hadn't gathered them off the ground to bury in the yard and woods for their Winter food storage! I think the Squirrels had more fun when I'd walk Bandit and last year, my head was the target for the acorns, can't tell you how many times in one outing he tried bouncing them off the top of my head!!!"

Maybe with some research, I can learn how to give a little more nourishment to these trees in our yard, and if we ever get a clean-up done in our yard next Spring -- see if I can re-generate some of the fallen acorns that are left (weird, that year when there were so many of them, the Squirrels were out and about, but hardly harvested any of them; I remember I'd been visiting my dad one day and was out in the yard, and left a 'Blessing' to our Squirrel friends: a few handfuls of the acorns on an old stump where they always would run up and sit upon to eat their collected food. It took a little while before there were crumbs of the acorn nuts left on the stump, other times, the Squirrels would not even touch it!) 

I love Oak trees in and of themselves in all their beauty.

~)O( Indigenous Shamanic Winds