When i bought the property the sellers had pointed to a tree. Well, actually it was 6 trees clustered together but they were growing so close it seemed they were destined to become 1 tree in the end. They told me it was a spanish oak and to baby it and do whatever it took to keep it alive because it was visible through the kitchen window and its leaves would turn fire-engine red every autumn. Though i was excited by the information, a part of me was not sure the tree wasn’t already dead. All of the other oaks had leaves on them but this 6-trunked tree had bare light-gray branches. It appeared dead and continued to do so for months. Then one morning i looked over and noticed something different about the branches. There were little knobs of pinkish-brown color sprouting forth from each branch. The tree was covered with them! It was alive! The tree was really alive. Leaves were coming. Perhaps it would be an exciting autumn after all with this red-leafed tree in the kitchen window. I breathed a sigh of relief. At first i thought they were flowers, but they were actually the tiny folded beginnings of leaves. The whole tree was covered in little pinkish-brown bundles.