Last fall I wrote about a tree perservering even tho one might not expect it to.   https://sarasinart.net/2013/08/05/perseverance/  I had to have the tree cut down, and then it sent shoots up from the trunk, which is apparently alive although it was diseased and would have soon collapsed on its own.

We had the worst kind of Pa winter here:  the kind of sustained cold and ice and snow that will sometimes kill perennial plants that normally live thru our winters.  This was the winter that wouldn’t go away, and I’ve been out looking at things that should liven up each spring, hoping they all do.

So above is the old tree trunk, with the new growth from last year, a picture I just took today.  Below is a picture of new shoots coming out on that new growth, and the tree is trying to continue to grow.

The old trunk is serving a purpose of providing food for other forms of life:  bugs are eating the wood, and I often see a Carolina wren down in the hole in the center, looking for bugs and grubs.  Sometimes chipmunks come and go from down in the hole also.  So it is slowly being eaten up, yet still trying to grow back up to be a tree.  I’ll let the process alone and let everything be whatever  it is.