Tree Sweaters

It's getting cold here. The days are still warm, but at night it gets really chilly. When it started getting cold we noticed that most of the trees here had been wrapped with this straw strap. The strap has the name of the part of town we live in. I thought it was just a festive decoration for the tree.

It isn't. Apparently these are put on the trees in the winter time to keep them from dying. Yes, this small strap has enough heating power to keep this tree from dying. We started to notice that rose bushes have the same sweaters on them as well. I'm no botanist, but this seems a little silly to me.

Trees are treated differently here. Old trees often have strong metal cables attached to them, forcing them to grow in certain directions. Big trees are constantly being relocated, and so there are wooded crutches surrounding them to keep them upright until they take root. There aren't very many big, old trees because the landscape here is still very new. Wherever we go, the trees rarely look like they just happen to be there, it all feels very intentional.