Perseverance like an old oak tree..

Old oak tree in Brownstown Twp., MI 

Our subdivision was built in the 1990's, carved from undeveloped forest and land that tends to be a swamp in the Spring.  On our lot we kept most the original trees in the back and have a mixture of oak, cotton, maple, and shag-bark hickory trees among others.  The most impressive and oldest of the bunch is the large old oak tree pictured above.  I first noticed this tree when my wife and I walked around the empty lots in a new development where we were considering building a new home.  We eventually did buy into the subdivision and chose the lot with the old oak tree in the woods out back.   A tree I call Perseverance.  Click twice on the picture to enlarge it and you see why the name fits.


Every branch below 20 feet and some above that have been broken off in some violent storm over the last 100 years but the tree just survives and keeps coming back. You can see the truncated limbs all around the trunk of the tree and more bare branches weakening and falling down over time and yet at the top of the canopy new growth shoots out from the dying branches every Spring. That's inspirational.