Snowdrift Saplings

Change.  I'm not a fan of it.  My daughter's not either.   It used to be that I was the only one who tried to hold on to the way things are with both hands, but now I see that tendency in her, too.  I'd like to save her 40 plus years of stress and tell her to relax, that change is inevitable and she can't control it, but I'm still working on that lesson myself.

Sometimes, the changes are big and obvious.  The trees I wrote about a few weeks ago, for example, now look like this:

The sad oak stump

Even though we planned it, it's a shock every time we look out the window.

But sometimes, change just sneaks up on you, so stealthily you don't even notice, and there's nothing you can do. Day by day, I tell her, the saplings that we planted to replace the oaks are growing, are stretching and reaching tall.  In a few years, they'll be big, even though the changes are happening so slowly  it looks as if no change is taking place at all.

Little snowdrift crabapple sapling has a lot of growing to do.

When she asks me how I know, I just shrug.

Trust me, I tell her. I just do.