Beauty of the woods will restore your mood
I am really rooting for the hedges. The cotoneaster shrub, the hedges you see all around Calgary — the ones that give us a much-appreciated splash of red in the fall — are under attack.
Tiny pests have moved in. The bugs hatch in June, feast on fluid in the branches, settle in and develop oyster-shell-shaped bumps to keep themselves cosy and safe from predators, which include heavily armed pest-control professionals. The bug is hard to get rid of partly because, often, it's not discovered until it's firmly entrenched.
Walking around the 'hood, you can tell some are hoping against hope the oyster shell scourge will just go away on its own. Their hedges are more dead than alive.
Others, recognizing the threat, give their hedges a crew cut; a drastic move needed to get rid of the bug.
I'm thrilled to report loads of hedges cut back last summer are growing back fast and furious. Healthy green shoots are sprouting up and heading off in all directions, like the spikes on a punk hairdo.
I don't have a hedge, just one spindly oyster-free cotoneaster that I plunked in the front yard for my personal leaf-peeping pleasure. But I am entertained by other people's hedges and the saga playing out across my corner of Calgary. When will they cut it down? How fast will it grow back? What to do about that neighbour's adjacent, dying hedge?
Who says you need to hop on a plane or drive anywhere to enjoy Mother Nature's wiles. She delivers plenty of drama right here in our own backyard.
Including my white spruce tree. I am ashamed to say it took the slo-mo pace of the pandemic for me to spot that halfway up, at about 12 metres, the tree splits into two trunks.
At first, I thought this was rare, but now that I've noticed my forked tree, I see them everywhere and always wonder what made the trunk decide to go separate ways.
It's like my very own pandemic Prairie forest bathing.
The original and much better-known version of forest bathing, or shinrin-yoku, began in Japan in the 1980s when the government encouraged people to take long walks in the woods. The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries reasoned it would be good for people to get out in nature, and good for the forests, as those who spent time in the woods would be more inclined to help protect them.
Scientists started researching the health effects. Dr. Qing Li, of Tokyo's Nippon Medical School, published research showing the “forest chemistry” we experience in the woods helps boosts our immune system.
In his book Forest Bathing: How Trees Can Help You Find Health and Happiness, Li argues we spend too much time inside, causing a nature-deficit disorder that makes us feel crappy. A few hours in the woods can “restore our mood, give us back our energy and vitality, refresh and rejuvenate us.”
In Japan, devotees flock to dozens of certified Forest Therapy Bases to get their forest bathing on. Here in Alberta, we don't need certified bases to feel the benefits of nature: We have a year-round weekend traffic jam to the mountains.
But I maintain you can feel better just hanging out in a backyard. Or pausing at a parkette: Just look around and admire the underrated and often forked spruce tree.
Sure, they're not as exotic as fruit trees or as extravagant as a birch. But the good old spruce tree is ideally suited for Calgary; drought-resistant, goes with the flow of heavy winds and just shrugs off snow any time of year.
“They're so tough. We take it for granted and it just keeps growing,” says Victor Lieffers, professor in the faculty of agricultural, life and environmental sciences at the University of Alberta in Edmonton.
“Calgary is noted for its wind. That's one of the reasons why spruce is one of the only trees that can grow there. And you have tremendous troubles with snow loads in Calgary because of spring and fall snowstorms. With the broadleaf trees, when they have leaves on them, snow is really dangerous. But branches in the spruce tree just droop and drop the snow.”
A good spruce tree, like most of us, just rolls with the weather. And just like us, they need a little maintenance now and then. My tree is getting a good haircut later this summer, an undercut, and a band around the forked trunk for safety.
In Japan, they refer to yu-gen: “A profound sense of the beauty and mystery of the universe.”
I get that looking into my spruce and listening to the chatter of critters flitting about the boughs and between the twin trunks.
I also feel it cheering for neighbourhood hedges to grow big and tall in time to show off their red leaves this autumn.