Quercus Agrifolia, The California Live Oak

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Today I nurture
Saplings, that will grow quite tall.
Shading grandchildren.

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My property only had two oak trees. They were at the back of my property where it drops off into the canyon. At the Santa Barbara Botanical Garden I purchased 4 oak saplings which I have planted bringing the total oaks in soil on my land up to 6. Then my son in law, kumar, hearing of my wish for more oaks gave me some in gallon pots. Then a friend from my pottery class gave me more in small quart pots. The oaks in quart pots, I will be putting into gallon pots before late spring. Now I have a plethora of beloved oaks that will be ready to move from pot to land in about a year. 

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I carry the long vision for this land. 

Oaks will hold the land. Oaks will protect. 

They will be a place for great grandchildren to climb high. Perhaps the great grand will take a book along – find a strong sturdy bough – lean back into the trunk and read. Or perhaps my great grand will sit quiet on a bough feeling oak’s life coursing up the trunk. My great grands will look out with far vision to the Santa Cruz Island, breathing in the peace that permeates the land. Fox, coyote and deer will pass below and perhaps pause for shelter now and again. So, I smile, feeling this is legacy enough – taking care of future generations in some small way. 

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Quercus agrifolia, the California live oak or coast live oak, is an often shrubby evergreen oak tree, a type of live oak, native to the California. It grows west of the Sierra Nevada mountain range from Mendocino County, California, south to northern Baja California in Mexico.
Coast live oak typically has a much-branched trunk and reaches a mature height of 33–82 ft. Some specimens may attain an age exceeding 250 years, with trunk diameters up 10 or 13 ft. The trunk, particularly for older individuals, may be highly contorted, massive and gnarled. The crown is broadly rounded and dense, especially when aged 20 to 70 years; in later life the trunk and branches are more well defined and the leaf density lower.

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I took the photo posted here of grandmother oak

it grows in my daughter Crystal and son in law Kumar’s yard. 

Some of the saplings I grow come from this family.

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...with one of my grands ... Kai .... the trees are for Kai and all the grands .. all the generations