How Trees Grow - Laura Lush
Between bark and wood, the secret cambium layers keep growing. Each dark ring adding a new layer of wood to the older wood. (As if what grows new will never have to suffer.) But it's the darker interior portion, the heartwood that deceives the most. Even the hollow trees, leafy impostors, go on living year after year. How do such things continue? It's because, like all great survivors, the living is done on the outside, in the tenuous outer few inches of trunks until they are found out, until some storm breaks them. But for now, they are everywhere, dusting the hills with their lush green tresses, so tall and woman-thick, fruit-heavy with plum and peach. Their hearts tucked in dark spidery knolls. In each of the seasons, trees are the only thing worth looking to. Listen to the trees. They are never wrong.
