Wednesday
5/7/23
Wellfleet,MA
1:00 pm
I can hear many different types of bird just trilling away, including the chickens next door. The most identifiable noise is the distinctive bark of a crow. There are lots of chirps, tweets, and trills of animals living in the tree filled backyard of my house. The trees are slowly swaying back and forth in the calm summer breeze. Vines are covering the trunks of every tree, some going as high as the top branch. There are many different types of trees throughout the backyard, especially many pine trees. Many branches on the trees are broken due to the recent storms that we have been hit with, the branches are strewn across the backyard.
One thing I’m wondering about is why there are so many Pine trees in the area, which led me to do some research on why this is. Luckily many sources had an answer. The most dominant tree species that are on the cape are the Pitch Pine, Black Oak, and White Oak. Early deforestation, coupled with intense forest fires in the 1700s decimated the Cape’s bigger and older trees. That then left room for the Pitch Pine to move in and take over. Pitch Pines put out lots of heavy low branches to crowd other trees out. Oak trees have a lifespan of 350 to 450 years so they grow more conservatively. It sheds lower nonproductive branches each year so it grows taller and its larger branches at the top will receive the most sunlight. Pitch Pines only have a life expectancy of 75 years, so there’s not much long term planning from their end. Pitch Pine doesn’t only push other trees with their branches, but they also blanket the ground in needle clusters that release a chemical which makes the soil undesirable for other rooting trees.
I noticed the light in different ways as I was taking these photographs, some trees or plants let more sunlight through than others. I also really loved taking pictures from different perspectives, going under bushes to take photos or squatting under a tree in order to make it look intimidating through its size.
In some ways it was similar to sketching in how much time it took and finding the right angle, I think it was similar in ways because you took pictures of something that caught your eye just as you drew things that caught your eye.
Throughout this exercise I learned a lot about Pine trees, I didn’t know how much space they took up compared to other trees. I think I noticed more about it when I was observing the trees through the lens of a camera, it made me notice more about my surroundings than if I was just looking at it through my eyes.