TGIF! We’ve got more preseason games! We’ve even got the return of lesser footy! I’m sure there will be an uplifting and informative post in the morning covering that.

Word Count Filler Time

Before we get to all of that though, there’s baseball! Which uses bats. Which are made of wood. Which come from trees. So let’s learn about some significant trees!

Frederick Douglass’ White Oak
Frederick Douglas was a former slave tha made a good living in DC, and in 1877 he purchased a quite desirable house there that he named Cedar Hill. In the front of that house was a, you guessed it, white oak tree. In 1895, he left a conference feeling ill, walked home and sat down under that white oak tree and promptly died from a heart attack. Cedar Hill is now a National Historic Site and that white oak is still standing.

Stuart Roosa’s Sycamore
Stuart was an astronaut for Apollo 14. When it was announced he was heading to the moon, a co-worker from his previous job game him an idea. Turns ole Stuart used to work in US Forest Service as a smoke jumper, where he got his totally original and creative nickname “Smokey.” This idea was to take some tree seeds on the mission and then when he returned he could plant some “Moon Trees.” Of course, on return they found that most of the seeds were quite contaminated from the trip, but ole Smokey soldiered on and planted them anyway. The sycamore seed actually grew and still stands in from the Forestry Science Building at Mississippi State University.

Buddha Bodhi
Native to India, the most famous Bodhi resides in Bodh Gaya. It was under that tree that Siddharth Gautama sat, got enlightened, and became the Buddha. A descendant of that tree still stands there to this day. Another descendant of the Buddha tree was planed in Sri Lanka  and still lives over 2,300 years later.

Treaty Oak
This tree was one of 14 called the Council Oaks by the native Tonkawa Indians. Under that tree the tribe agreed to a treaty to cede the local land to Stephen Austin in what is now known as Austin, Texas. This was a huge tree being 500 years old and with a 127 foot canopy spread. Of course, someone tried to poison it back in 1989, but arborists managed to save it, though it did lose half it’s canopy. The tree appears to have made a full recovery as it is now producing acorns again.

Blew way past the word count there, let’s move on!

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Sexy Time

Enjoy the weekend, folks! Alright, now let’s get to the comments!