SPRING LEAVES

Nope, not the leaves of Spring.

This is the last day for a while that our BabyGirl will be staying with us, so we took her to breakfast this beautiful morning. When we returned, Chris glanced up when he was getting her out of her car seat, and saw THIS.

(Please click on pictures to enlarge)

Yep---a SPRING in the Leaves. We cannot think of ANY circumstance which would have put a little spring up above our heads---the leaves could never have touched the ground, even in the highest winds, and unless the little fellow took a mighty SPROIIINNNNG from a piece of equipment Chris was working on in his open-air workshop some time ago, and it somehow stuck into a baby leaf, which grew around or through it---we’re stumped. (To round out the tree symbolism).

And nobody did it for a joke---how in a million years would they think we’d SEE it up there, on the bottom side of the leaf---and besides, the leaf is totally undamaged. The spiral winds round the leaf in one place, with no room for having been put there by human hands.

It’s as great a mystery as THIS---far back on the same limb in the same tree:

Caro went out to go to work several days ago, and scuffed her feet through a great pile of fresh-peeled tree bark---it was green and pliable, as if just skinned off the tree. She looked up, and way over her head, the underside of one curved limb was entirely bare of its bark. And aside from lightning, we cannot fathom the mystery of this one, either.

I’ve seen a lightning-struck tree before, and it’s been exploded by the great heat steaming all the sap and juices, and blasting the limb apart---this time, it’s as if someone stood and painstakingly peeled it from one end to the other. Which would have been an impossible, crazy-making task, for it’s a curve UP AND OVER on the underside, about eight feet up.

We used to have a pet house-rabbit who completely denuded a bathroom of its wallpaper, to a height of about three feet---she’d nib-nib-nibble at the baseboard, get those tiny teeth into a tooth-lock on about an inch-wide piece, and S-L-O-W-L-Y back up, paper peeling gently from the wall all the way, until it gave way and tore off like a long strip of ribbon, curling to the floor.

This looks kinda like that---but a troop of squirrels would have to have DAYS to accomplish this, and it occurred in one night. And I understand SQUIRRELY, but WHY WOULD THEY? And why beneath, and not on top, where the purchase was better?

Well, at least only a stranger would find any mystery in THIS: