Our son and daughter loved listening to Rabbit Ears productions of children’s stories narrated by famous actors accompanied by wonderful musicians. One of their favorites was a story about Paul Bunyon narrated by Jonathan Winters with music by Leo Kottke. It was funny to hear Paul Bunyan talk about the assignment he got from the president to clear off all the trees from North Dakota. We could certainly relate, as we had a dearth of trees in our region.
Husband has really enjoyed walking the dog and seeing all the crimson and scarlet maple leaves in the neighborhood. We didn’t have these kind of maples in ND. He said the last time he lived in a place that had maples like this was 46 years ago in Madison, WI. The trees in Dickinson were mainly Green Ash and Cottonwoods. Their leaves were pretty blah in the fall.
We have a maple and an oak in the our front boulevard. We also have a Birch in the backyard, along with a Blue Spruce and a Flowering Crab. There are also all sorts of Arbor Vitae. We are well set for trees and bushes. The header photo is a tree across the street from us
What trees do you have in your yard? Any favorite Jonathan Winter or Leo Kottke creations?
Trail Baboon 
This is one of the first times I heard him play. SO amazing.
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Rise and Shine Baboons,
I was a great admirer of Robin William’s talent. And he loved Jonathan Winters. Here is a 1986 60 Minutes clip of the two:
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Tap on “watch on YouTube” to see it.
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Renee, enjoy those trees after years on the unprotected Great Plains and that wind.
We have a River Birch out in front of the house, and I love that tree despite its shedding of leaves and sticks. The bark is worth the trouble. Across the driveway is a Linden tree that has doubled in size since we moved here 27 years ago. The ash trees are all gone now, and the silver maple has been the source of drama for a year and a half now (We cannot remove the trunk of the tree without a crane thanks to the neighbor’s lack of cooperation). There is another silver maple left. Then we have a pussy willow tree, a Mountain Ash with berries birds love, a crab apple, and a pin oak, and my beloved Sour Cherry tree. Those are all smaller trees. None are showy autumn trees.
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More!
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I was locked out of WordPress yesterday. Finally got back in. The big trees at the edge of my ravine are a mystery. Cannot be what they seem to be. 12 of them.
I in fact have a day with no appointments in it. First weekday since she died. But tomorrow I have four medical appointments in a row.
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I am happy to see you back here today. I wondered how you were doing.
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I am doing just fine except for pain from collarbone.
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Well, WP… don’t you just out-do yourself every day! I wasn’t allowed to even read the post until I played an identity game this morning. I had to put my email in then put in a code to even read the blog post!
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Me too. It has given me an old identity.
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Where did WordPress send the code? Barb is having trouble getting in this morning.
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I use an old email address for my WP user ID. It sent the code to that old address after I put that in as my email.
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To my email
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I like my new place. It’s much easier to be here in so many ways, but the view isn’t as nice as I had in my old place. I had a red oak right outside my front door there, and I loved that tree. There was a Japanese tree lilac on the other side of the driveway that produced large, white blossoms every other year. There were white pines, spruces, a honeycomb locust, and a hackberry tree in the lawn in front of me. There was an oak woods directly across the road from me so my view was really very nice. I do miss that view!
There’s a maple tree and several spruce trees here. The lawn is flat and across the street are more townhomes. There were a couple of ash trees next door but they died of the emerald ash borer and were removed last week. I’ve noticed a lot of dead ash trees.
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Honey locust… not honeycomb locust. Autocorrect is getting really aggressive lately, and I’ll thank it to quit trying to think for me!
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The 12 trees by me appear to almost be cultivate honey locusts, which means somebody about 60 years ago planted a line of cultivated trees in the woods, not then likely near a ravine and definitely not near the edge of his field.
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As I recall, Steve Grooms was a big Leo Kottke fan. He would have had lots to say about Kottke.
Back in the late ‘60s, I was friends with Dennis Burch, who with Mike Justin formed Oblivion Records, housed in the West Bank iteration of the Scholar Coffeehouse. Burch produced the first Kottke album for Oblivion. While I admire his skill, Kottke’s playing never really connected with me personally.
All the trees in our yard are ones we have planted, a flowering crab, a pagoda dogwood and a thornless hawthorn. They’re all small trees befitting our small city lot and leaving some areas of sun for other plantings. Next door is a 77-year-old green ash and on the other side a large maple. This summer we optimistically planted two peach trees.
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I love pagoda dogwood. Such graceful trees, and they turn lovely colors in the fall!
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They also, like the flowering crab and the hawthorn, produce small fruits that help sustain the birds and squirrels through the winter.
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I, too, had a brand new sign-in page for WP. It was an invitation to “Subscribe” to see the rest of the content. Underneath the box where you enter your email address was a line that read “already a subscriber?”. I clicked on that instead of the “Subscribe” button, and voila! I was in.
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Me too PJ–sounds exactly like what you describe.
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You looked closer than I did, PJ. I didn’t see the “already a subscriber” link. I was stymied and fooled with the outrageous request that I had to “subscribe.”
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The new sign-in page seems to have restored my ability to like both the blog itself and the comments, at least for the time being. No getting my hopes up that it will last, but I’ll enjoy it while it does.
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Love this: Sandra received a notice from Blue Earth County that her benefits stopped on October 20, 2025 because she died.
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Oh, for Pete’s sake!
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Snort!
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Reminds me of time in Carbondale when I received a subpoena to appear as a witness at a coroner’s inquest. I was also named on the document as the deceased.
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I have no property but a hundred yards away is the Miami River.
The American Sycamore are spectacular. Ancient trees. 100 plus feet high that look dead with the bark off.
Eastern Cottonwood whose seedlings cover the footpath to an inch deep in “snow.”
Shingle Oak and Shagbark Hickory.
And a grove of Buckeyes that were planted high above the flood plain in honor of the football team.
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Afternoon-
Right around the house are Walnut and maples. There’s lots of Oaks nearby too. Mom and Dad planted a few rows of pine tree’s, but they were too close to a power line and eventually most were cut down. And most of the remaining are dying off now.
We have too dang many Chinese Elm, and Ash around the fields. Most of the Ash have died now.
A few of the oaks, have died, and as people cut them up for firewood, we’re counting over 100 rings. Pretty cool.
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A maple tree in Moorhead, we had a memorial tree. It had an obvious name with all the tall tales my Dad could tell about it.
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White pine, flowering crabapple, catalpa, red maples, white ash, mountain ash. The white ash gets treated to prevent emerald ash borer. The mountain ash doesn’t need to be treated – mountain ash is not a true ash, and not susceptible.
Sometimes horse chestnut seedlings pop up here and there, but so far none have survived more than a couple of years.
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Hmmm. We have the one big horse chestnut and get hundreds of seedlings every spring. But we dig them up. I should transplant a few dozen and see how many survive?
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You lucky duck!
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You could certainly try that – they seem to survive transplanting quite well when they are small, but usually they don’t live long term. Winter is hard for them.
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