Loose Leaves

After passing the rapids, the river widened into another small lake, perfectly round in form, and having in its center a tiny green island, in the midst of which stood, like a shattered monument of bygone storms, one blasted, black ash tree.

— Susanna Moodie, “Roughing It in the Bush”

Along the edges of the forest, where there’s open sunlight, there are chokecherry trees. The red chokecherries ripen and turn translucent. They’re so sour they dry up the inside of your mouth.

— Margaret Atwood, “Cat’s Eye”

She ought to have stayed away from this neighborhood. Everywhere she walked here, under the chestnut trees with their flat gold leaves, and the red-limbed arbutus, and the tall Garry oaks, which suggested fairy stories, European forests, woodcutters, witches — everywhere her footsteps reproached her, saying what-for, what-for, what-for.

— Alice Munro, “Differently”

When I was a boy I fell out of a crabapple tree and broke my arm. My mother had three words for me: Can you write? For some odd reason I cherish that moment. I have never felt closer to her, before or since, except for maybe when she added “ice cubes” to what not to give the baby.

— Miriam Toews, “Swing Low: A Life”

Then he caught sight of a small pine tree. He stopped dead, stared, and walked out of the circle. Breavman followed him.

“Are you okay?”

“Oh yes. I believe I’d better count these.”

Until supper he amused himself by discovering how many needles there were on an average pine tree.

— Leonard Cohen, “The Favorite Game”

If Lily had seen him sitting there, she would have known he was up to something. His expression would have told her this. It was fixed and glassy-eyed and murderous. Even Mrs. Carmichael, dozing in the next-door garden, must have felt his violent emanations. Her hammock beneath the chestnut tree had stopped its swaying.

— Timothy Findley, “The Piano Man’s Daughter”

First of all Carrie Sloane dared Ruby Gillis to climb to a certain point in the huge old willow tree before the front door; which Ruby Gillis, albeit in mortal dread of the fat green caterpillars with which said tree was infested and with the fear of her mother before her eyes if she should tear her new muslin dress, nimbly did, to the discomfiture of the aforesaid Carrie Sloane.

— L. M. Montgomery, “Anne of Green Gables”

The snowbanks are melting, the sound of water on its gushing, gurgling journey to the drains is beautiful. I plan to buy a book of trees, so I can identify more than the maple as they begin to bloom.

— Rohinton Mistry, “Swimming Lessons”