All of these short-term benefits can compound in the long-term, even if we aren’t consciously seeking out exposure to nature. Urban green spaces are known to increase a community’s sense of…well…community. A park is open to people regardless of cultural and social group, and mingling with people both inside and outside your personal circle is vital to combatting loneliness.

There might also be something to the shape of trees. The straight up-and-down growth pattern of trees is visually pleasing (as opposed to, say, a mess of tangled vines). Humans, on average, tend to prefer order to disorder. Trees also offer a pleasing mix of colors, with a range of browns and greys in their trunks, and a wide variety of greens, yellows, oranges, reds, and purples in their leaves.

Author

Emily Casuccio is sister and sister-in-law to Rebekah and Scott Rushing, and has over half a decade of experience in copywriting, copyediting, proofreading, and developmental storyboarding. She's worked with both published and undiscovered authors on both fiction and nonfiction, and takes pride in supporting local businesses. Her passion lies in the written word and helping authors of all capacities realize their dreams and achieve their fullest potential. To learn more about her, read samples of her work, or contact her, visit her online portfolio. 

​But the real Thanksgiving tree tradition has much more behind it than just a pretty decoration.  As far as anyone can tell, the concept of the Thanksgiving tree started circulating the internet sometime in 2018. The idea is pretty simple: make some kind of tree with leaves you can write on, so you can write what you’re thankful for on them. Basically, you’re making a physical representation of your blessings.

​There’s a couple schools of thought on how best to achieve this. Typically, you start by having every guest (friends and family alike) write what they are thankful for on a leaf, and attach those leaves to the tree. At the end of the activity, you have a tree whose branches are laden with the blessings in your life and the lives of those you love. Some families disperse these leaves to their owners at the end of the day, so they can take them home as a reminder of what they are thankful for, but some families recommend writing down the date on each leaf and then leaving them attached to the tree. That way, every year, you can see your tree grow and grow with all the things your family is thankful for, and you can watch how blessings only continue to multiply.

Every family’s Thanksgiving tree will look a little different—they aren’t something you can just go buy in a store, and there are lots of different ways to make one. Some people just use paper, drawing the branches of their tree and using Post-It notes for the leaves. Craftier families have made an actual miniature tree with dried willow bunches you can get from the craft store, and then decorated it with silk leaves written on in fabric marker.  The level of effort you put into creating the tree is up to you, but no matter what form your Thanksgiving tree takes, it will always be a beautiful and tangible representation of the things we have to be grateful for, the blessings we may otherwise take for granted, and the joys that make life worth living.

Author

Emily Casuccio is sister and sister-in-law to Rebekah and Scott Rushing, and has over half a decade of experience in copywriting, copyediting, proofreading, and developmental storyboarding. She's worked with both published and undiscovered authors on both fiction and nonfiction, and takes pride in supporting local businesses. Her passion lies in the written word and helping authors of all capacities realize their dreams and achieve their fullest potential. To learn more about her, read samples of her work, or contact her, visit her online portfolio. 

​But black walnuts aren’t just pretty as furnishings. The trees themselves are beautiful and larger than life. Young trees can grow up to 2 feet per year until they reach maturity after 12 to 15 years. Their crown spread tends to mirror their height, meaning they grow out just as much as they grow up. How far out, and how high? On average, we’re talking 50 to 75 feet when grown out in the open. When left to their own devices in the forest (or lovingly cared for on a plant farm), black walnuts have been known to reach heights eclipsing 150 feet.  ​Black walnuts generally reach about 6 feet in diameter, their trunks covered in medium brown bark with thick, interfacing ridges. Their branches will happily grow low to the ground if there’s room, but in more crowded forests, they’ll self-prune up to about 2/3 their total height (basically, they’ll let lower limbs die off to direct energy upwards, where leaves have the best chance of getting sunlight, and therefore nutrients). If you’ve got one out in the open and you’d rather not have huge branches growing out into where you’d like to walk around, you can prune them yourself. Black walnuts are bleeders (which means sap runs from any wounds), so be sure to prune during the dormant season, not spring.

Did You Know? ​The wood of the black walnut is very easily worked, and is prized in the furniture industry for its attractive color and exceptional durability. So much so, in fact, that thieves (called “walnut rustlers”) will steal and then make off with with whole black walnut trees in the dead of night. They’ve even used helicopters in their operations!

​The leaves of the black walnut tree, though skinny, are proportionally just as large as the tree they grow on, reaching anywhere from 1 to 2 feet long! Leaves grow in pairs down a single stem, sometimes ending with a singular leaf at the tip. Leaflets, on the other hand, have toothy ridges—not that you’ll ever see them. They’re usually hidden by their larger, older brethren. This fern-like foliage offers mottled shade that filters harsh sunlight, making them a popular addition to parks and along sidewalks.

​These nuts don’t start out looking like what you buy in the store. As they ripen in early- to mid-autumn, they’ll look like lime green, fleshy baseballs. Black walnuts aren’t usually harvested off the tree, but are instead collected from the ground after they fall. They’re just as heavy as they look, and those with black walnuts near their house are more than familiar with the intermittent thudding on their roof that signals ripe fruit.

Did You Know? ​With a higher protein content than most nuts (7 grams per serving), high levels of Manganese, Omega-3, and antioxidants, and a range of other nutrients, black walnuts are considered a superfood. They support the metabolism, encourage healthy bone structure, and can even help protect against cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and certain neurodegenerative conditions.

Fallen black walnuts are known for littering sidewalks and bruising innocent passersby, and are even more notorious for staining any surface they come in contact with. ​ ​ Black walnut tree owners may spend hours picking up the fallen fruit (wearing gloves, of course, because those green husks will stain skin just as readily as clothes). Even if they have no plans to eat it, the tripping hazard alone is worth putting in the work. The fallen fruit will also attract animals like squirrels interested in an easy meal, and will eventually rot and mold.  ​After harvesting, the green baseballs are broken to reveal the corrugated, thick black inner shell. This is the part you think of when you think of walnuts. They’re left to dry out, and can be stored for up to a year. When you’re ready to eat them, you may find them tough to break, but the effort ends with a delicious, sweet nut. Be careful at this stage too, though, because these inner shells, when crushed, can also stain pretty much anything.

​Juglone is emitted in large quantities from black walnut roots, which may stretch out 50 feet or more from the base. The substance can also be found to a lesser extent in the leaves and fruit husks, but there’s still enough to harm anything growing beneath the crown of the tree.

Author

Emily Casuccio is sister and sister-in-law to Rebekah and Scott Rushing, and has over half a decade of experience in copywriting, copyediting, proofreading, and developmental storyboarding. She's worked with both published and undiscovered authors on both fiction and nonfiction, and takes pride in supporting local businesses. Her passion lies in the written word and helping authors of all capacities realize their dreams and achieve their fullest potential. To learn more about her, read samples of her work, or contact her, visit her online portfolio. 

Did You Know? Georgia is home to approximately 250 different tree species. That’s no small number, but it’s nothing compared to the whopping 60,000 different species of trees on our planet!

​Beyond the simple satisfaction you get when you look at a tree and know what it is, recognizing the different types of trees can help you assess the ones you have on your property, or the ones outside your in-law’s house. Knowing a tree’s species means you can look that specific tree species up, and learn what to expect from them. Will they drop all their leaves in the fall? Should you worry about them in a heavy rainstorm?  There are too many species to know all of them by heart, of course, and certainly too many to recognize even half of them on sight. But there are a few main types of trees you’ll find around Georgia, and more specifically, the Athens and Watkinsville areas.

​Maple

​Maples are easy to spot thanks to their palmate leaves. That’s a fancy word for a leaf stem that has multiple lobes spreading out from the base. If you’ve seen the Canadian flag, you’ve seen a maple leaf!  ​The most common maple trees in Georgia are the sugar maple, red maple, and striped maple. All three lose their leaves in the fall, but not before offering a stunning display of oranges, yellows, reds, and even rusty purples. Their fallen leaves make great leaf piles for children (and fur babies) to play in.

​Hickory

​All hickories have similar leaf patterns, making them easy to identify. They grow stalks, each of which will have anywhere from 5 to 17 leaves on it. Barring mutations, the leaves grow in oppositional pairs, which means they mirror each other along either side of the stalk. One leaf grows from the end of the stalk, making the total number odd. The pair of leaves closest to the base of the stalk are usually much smaller than the rest.

​The leaves themselves can range from 2 to 8 inches long, depending on the age and size of the tree, and have little serrations all along their edges. These serrations can be sharp and pointy, or more rounded, but they’re almost always subtle.

​Oaks

​Again, there are a few different types of oak trees native to our area, including white oaks, scarlet oaks, water oaks, willow oaks, and live oaks. Live oaks are probably the most widely known; they’re the ancient behemoths that grow along Georgia’s coastline, like Savannah, and are always dripping with Spanish moss.

​Pines ​And last, but certainly not least, come the pine trees. Pines make up the large portion of Georgia’s forests, and are probably the most easily recognized. Though there are dozens of pine species, like the loblolly, eastern white, and longleaf pine, all of them have the characteristic, evergreen needles that serve as leaves. When young, pines grow tall and skinny. Once they reach maturity, they’ll start filling out near the base and end up with a more triangular shape that you might associate with Christmas trees (although real Christmas trees aren’t actually pines). Learn more about loblolly pines here!

Author

Emily Casuccio is sister and sister-in-law to Rebekah and Scott Rushing, and has over half a decade of experience in copywriting, copyediting, proofreading, and developmental storyboarding. She's worked with both published and undiscovered authors on both fiction and nonfiction, and takes pride in supporting local businesses. Her passion lies in the written word and helping authors of all capacities realize their dreams and achieve their fullest potential. To learn more about her, read samples of her work, or contact her, visit her online portfolio. 

Whereas in many of the States of the Union some tree indigenous to the soil of the State has been chosen as an emblem of its sovereignty; and

Whereas hitherto the General Assembly of Georgia has made no such selection; and

Whereas the live-oak, being a tree indigenous to the soil of our State and especially flourishing along the Coastal plains and islands thereof where the first settlers and founders of this State resided, and which tree is so closely associated with our early history, and particularly with the lives of many famous Georgians such as General James Edward Oglethorpe, John Wesley and Sidney Lanier;

Be it therefore resolved by the House of Representatives of Georgia, the Senate concurring, that, at the suggestion and request of Edmund Burke Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution, the live-oak be and the same is hereby adopted as and declared to be the official tree emblematic of the State of Georgia.

​Live Oaks (also known as Virginia Live Oaks, thanks to their scientific name, Quercus virginiana) are well-known for their looks. They grow just as wide as they do tall, which is saying something, considering mature Live Oaks can reach heights of 65 to 85 feet. Their trunks are usually so big around that multiple people would have to join hands to fully circle it.

DID YOU KNOW?  The largest Live Oak on record was discovered in 1976 close to Louisburg, Louisiana. Its trunk diameter measured 11.65 feet across, and its branches reached 55 feet into the sky. But what made this tree a national champion was its crown spread, which stretched 132 feet wide!

​On average, adult Live Oaks stand around 40 to 50 feet tall, with a crown spread around 80 feet and branches that measure up to 5 or 6 feet in diameter. They’re considered one of the faster-growing trees when young, clocking around 2 feet of height per year. Once they’re established, however, that growth rate slows down significantly. The growth rate of fully matured Live Oaks is almost entirely stalled, as they devote most of their energy to supporting their massive size.    As you might be able to guess, Live Oaks grow best in well-drained, sandy soil with plenty of moisture, and prefer high humidity and full sun—exactly what you find along the coast. They can tolerate drier climates and more compact soils, but they will grow much slower and likely won’t reach their full potential. Live Oaks that do grow in their favorite environment are one of the longest-living oak species. On average, any given Live Oak you see is probably 200 to 300 years old.

​Though they often appear lighter green thanks to the interspersing of Spanish Moss, Live Oak leaves are actually a dark green, and covered with a waxy coating that protects them from salt spray. Unlike other oak species that lose their leaves seasonally, Live Oaks are nearly evergreen. Old leaves will yellow and drop only when new leaves begin to push through, sometime around late winter to early spring.

​Live Oaks are generally pruned when young to establish one strong, central trunk structure, but otherwise require little to no maintenance. They are susceptible to a fungal gall called leaf blister, but this usually only disfigures a few leaves and doesn’t cause any serious damage. You can rake up and burn or otherwise dispose of infected leaves to help reduce the chances of a tree contracting the fungus again. While other oak species are at a high risk for oak wilt disease, which can kill even the largest of trees, there have been no documented cases of oak wilt in Live Oaks, potentially because of their salty surroundings.

Author

Emily Casuccio is sister and sister-in-law to Rebekah and Scott Rushing, and has over half a decade of experience in copywriting, copyediting, proofreading, and developmental storyboarding. She's worked with both published and undiscovered authors on both fiction and nonfiction, and takes pride in supporting local businesses. Her passion lies in the written word and helping authors of all capacities realize their dreams and achieve their fullest potential. To learn more about her, read samples of her work, or contact her, visit her online portfolio. 

Trees Clean the Air

​Trees Reduce Water Pollution

​When it rains, water runs down the sides of the street and through various ditches and drains until it reaches the nearest creek, river, or lake. Eventually, that water will either make its way to the ocean, or to the groundwater supply. This wouldn’t be a problem, except ​ this water will encounter oil  build-up on

​Trees Save Water

​Trees Prevent Soil Erosion

​Trees Offer Shade

Whether you’re walking on the sidewalk in the park or enjoying an iced tea on your back porch, having trees around to shade you from the hot sun is always nice. Shade is also important for children playing outside, because it not only helps prevent energetic toddlers from overheating, but it also helps filter out harmful UV rays that could burn their skin. Shade is also a good thing to have if you have pets that you let spend time outside, so they don’t get too hot and have a nice, cool place to relax.

​Trees Cool Down the Streets

Trees Save Energy – and Money on Your Power Bill With all that shade and helping lower the temperature around you, trees help keep your home cooler. A cooler home doesn’t need to run the AC as much. In fact, just three strategically-placed trees around your home could cut up to 50% off your monthly power bill.

Trees Provide Wood

Trees Provide Food

Fruit trees are a great source of nutrition, not only for the animals in the area, but for us as well. A single apple tree can grow between 15 and 20 bushels of apples in a year, which is more than enough to supply your family with applesauce, apple cobbler, and apple butter for the winter. Fruit trees don’t have to take up much room, meaning you can keep them even in a crowded neighborhood.

​Trees Create Jobs

​Trees Generate More Business 

Trees Increase Property Value

​Trees Act as Barriers Trees are valuable as both visual and auditory barriers in a variety of situations. Cities will often plant rows of trees to obscure unsightly concrete walls, or line them up between a neighborhood and nearby highway to help reduce the sounds of cars on the road for families. Most parking lots are also broken up with trees, which can help mark the lanes and flow of traffic.

Trees Reduce Violence

Trees Are Playgrounds for Children

To a child, a tree can be almost anything. A sentry guarding the magic castle, or a tower concealing a sleeping princess. A wild jungle with new species to discover, or a private escape to take a quick nap under. Trees have fostered creativity in humans for ages, and help improve a child’s creativity, logic skills, problem-solving, and critical thinking, all of which are vital to their development.

​Trees Are Green

​Trees Can Heal

Trees Make You Smarter

​Trees Foster Community

Author

Emily Casuccio is sister and sister-in-law to Rebekah and Scott Rushing, and has over half a decade of experience in copywriting, copyediting, proofreading, and developmental storyboarding. She's worked with both published and undiscovered authors on both fiction and nonfiction, and takes pride in supporting local businesses. Her passion lies in the written word and helping authors of all capacities realize their dreams and achieve their fullest potential. To learn more about her, read samples of her work, or contact her, visit her online portfolio.

​Why Should I Leave A Review? ​Reviews give us the kind of feedback we need to improve ourselves. Your feedback lets us know how we’re doing. Customer satisfaction is of the utmost importance to us—if you’re not happy, we’re not happy! ​Why Are Reviews Important? ​On top of helping us improve, reviews are one of the biggest ways we grow. Small businesses like ours live off word of mouth and personal recommendations, rather than targeted ads or fancy billboards. Reviews allow potential customers to get a sense of the quality of our service directly from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.  In the last decade or so, reviews have become even more important. In this new technological age, people rely on customer reviews to make decisions about product purchases and service providers. The younger generations especially tend to put more of their faith in reviews than product descriptions or advertisements. ​ Do You Actually Read Reviews? Yes! We read each and every review submitted on each and every platform, from Facebook to Google to our actual website.

​What About Bad Reviews?

Do You Approve or Alter Reviews Before They’re Posted?

​How Can I Leave A Review?

​Where Can I Read Reviews?

Author

Emily Casuccio is sister and sister-in-law to Rebekah and Scott Rushing, and has over half a decade of experience in copywriting, copyediting, proofreading, and developmental storyboarding. She's worked with both published and undiscovered authors on both fiction and nonfiction, and takes pride in supporting local businesses. Her passion lies in the written word and helping authors of all capacities realize their dreams and achieve their fullest potential. To learn more about her, read samples of her work, or contact her, visit her online portfolio.

Overgrowth

​Sometimes, trees get a little overzealous in the spring and grow too many leaves. When summer comes, with its drying heat and reduced rainfall, your tree has to backpedal.  Since it isn’t getting enough water to support all those leaves, it will let the least  productive ones yellow, die, and fall off.   Basically, your tree eliminates the weakest link(s). ​​​ It’s pretty easy to determine if this is what’s happening with your tree—just look at the color of the fallen leaves. If they are yellowed or browned pretty evenly, with no consistent spotting, then they are definitely just the tree doing a little healthy maintenance. To help it out, consider giving it some water once or twice a week. This should stop the premature dropping and get your tree back to tip-top shape.

​Disease, Pests, and Decay

On the other hand, if the leaves appear to be unevenly yellow, or have clear spotting or pockets, or are fully dead and dry, this might be cause for concern. There are a lot of environmental and health factors that can lead to a tree losing its leaves like this, not all of which are cause for concern. To figure out whether or not you need to worry about your tree in this case, first determine a rough percentage of how many leaves it has lost—is it closer to 10%, or 90%? If you feel like your tree has lost over half its leaves prematurely, it might be time to call your friendly neighborhood arborist.

​Verticillium Sometimes, rather than seeing leaves dropping prematurely, you see trees coloring prematurely. This isn’t always cause for concern, but keep your eye on the location. If the color is concentrated to a chunk at the crown (the top of the tree), or is clearly only along one branch, your tree might have a fungal disease called verticillium. Essentially, this disease impacts the vascular tissue of the tree and prevents water from getting where it needs to go. Verticillium is, unfortunately, usually fatal to the tree, but you’ll still probably want to have a certified arborist take a look to confirm that’s what’s happening, and assist you in figuring out how to take care of the situation.

​Dormancy

Some species of tree go dormant in the late summer when the days get longer, hotter, and drier. These trees will lose most, if not all, of their leaves fairly quickly. The easiest way to tell if this is what happened to your tree is to, again, look at the new growth. If the twigs and buds look green and healthy, then your tree is still alive and just taking a little break. But if the twigs and buds are dead, your tree might also be dead, and you may need your local arborist to come examine it and determine whether or not it needs to be removed. ​Dehydration

Author

Emily Casuccio is sister and sister-in-law to Rebekah and Scott Rushing, and has over half a decade of experience in copywriting, copyediting, proofreading, and developmental storyboarding. She's worked with both published and undiscovered authors on both fiction and nonfiction, and takes pride in supporting local businesses. Her passion lies in the written word and helping authors of all capacities realize their dreams and achieve their fullest potential. To learn more about her, read samples of her work, or contact her, visit her online portfolio.

Next up for Tree of the Month is sassafras albidum. Sometimes called America’s “only native species,” and more commonly referred to as just sassafras, these trees have a wide distribution that reaches as far south as central Florida, as far west as Texas, and as far North and East as Maine. You might know them by their unique, bilobed leaves. The asymmetrical dual lobes mimic the shape of a winter mitten, and can be left- or right-handed. This prompts children to hold their hands against these leaves to compare size and see if the “mittens” will fit their hands. Though the bilobed leaves get all the attention, sassafras leaves actually come in two other shapes: unlobed and trilobed. Unlobed leaves look like simple ovals, while the trilobed ones look like a rounded-off trident. You might even find a five-lobed sassafras leaf, but this is pretty rare (and might be lucky, like finding a four-leaf clover!).

Did You Know? The largest known sassafras tree in the world is over 100 feet tall! Its trunk has a 21-foot circumference. You'll find this behemoth in Owensboro, Kentucky.

They generally reach around 3 to 7 inches in length, and give off a pleasant aroma when crushed or rubbed. The smell has been described as similar to things like citrus, root beer, and cinnamon. In fact, every single part of the sassafras is said to possess the scent! The fully grown sassafras is a medium-sized tree, reaching heights of 30 to 60 feet, and crown spreads of 25 to 40 feet. Slender, tapering branches grow in a generally rounded shape when left alone. They are sympodial, which means that, when the branch grows an offshoot, the main branch will end and growth will be left to the offshoot. Then, the offshoot will end and sprout another offshoot, and so on and so forth. This process creates horizontal, cloud-like tiers that are stunning to look up through. ​The trunk of the sassafras is rich, deep brown with red undertones and deep ridges and furrows. Without any maintenance, a sassafras trunk will grow many different shoots. This results in more width than height and the overall appearance of a large shrub. To prevent this, simply trim back any offshoots until the main trunk is firmly established.

Author

Emily Casuccio is sister and sister-in-law to Rebekah and Scott Rushing, and has over half a decade of experience in copywriting, copyediting, proofreading, and developmental storyboarding. She's worked with both published and undiscovered authors on both fiction and nonfiction, and takes pride in supporting local businesses. Her passion lies in the written word and helping authors of all capacities realize their dreams and achieve their fullest potential. To learn more about her, read samples of her work, or contact her, visit her online portfolio.

gardeners.com

How to Attract Deer

havahart.com

Feed Them, and They Will Come ​It might seem obvious, but the first thing you’ll want to consider cultivating to encourage deer is something they like to eat. Deer are notorious for grazing through gardens and feasting on flowerbeds, and the way to their heart is definitely through their stomach.

The biggest thing to keep in mind is that deer, just like us, prefer a little variety in their diet. Try to plant a range of different things for them to choose from. You may also want to look into what plants and crops are already available to them in the area; if there’s a huge corn field just down the road, then planting corn won’t be as enticing as planting something they don’t already have easy access to.

britannica.com

thespruce.com

The next thing deer will happily congregate to is a water source. This doesn’t have to look like an expensive, man-made pond or creek—anything that will collect or hold water will do. ​ ​For smaller yards, consider installing a little bird bath. Change the water every week or so, and you’ll help not only the deer, but also birds, squirrels, and more.

​The easiest way to do this is to plant at least one food source that is foliage-heavy and/or tall. Corn, sunflowers, hydrangeas, and berry shrubs are just a few examples of deer-attracting foods you can plant that will double as cover for the skittish animals. You can also choose to plant things that aren’t necessarily known for attracting deer for the sole purpose of providing them with a place to hide.

homeguides.sfgate.com

How to Repel Deer

An easy deterrent to the local deer population is to fill or border your yard with something they don’t want to eat. This isn’t 100% foolproof—if a deer gets hungry enough, she won’t be picky—but it’s a good way to discourage deer from wandering to the area. These kinds of plants include: lavender, catmint, garlic, chives, yarrow, and most all aromatic herbs.  If you do happen to have (or want to have) any of the deer-attracting plants we mentioned earlier, there are few things you can do. ​

indystar.com

songbirdgarden.com

We’ve established that deer are, by nature, skittish, so to discourage them from wandering your property, consider adding a kinetic or motion-activated ornament to your yard. These aren’t dangerous for the animals (or any animals, for that matter), but easily scary wary creatures without any input from you. Something as simple as a windchime can help, but there are also more complex devices, such as motion-activated noise and/or light makers. Any sudden movement, sound, light, or other sensory input will have deer immediately on high-alert, and they’ll high-tail it out of there.

Author

Emily Casuccio is sister and sister-in-law to Rebekah and Scott Rushing, and has over half a decade of experience in copywriting, copyediting, proofreading, and developmental storyboarding. She's worked with both published and undiscovered authors on both fiction and nonfiction, and takes pride in supporting local businesses. Her passion lies in the written word and helping authors of all capacities realize their dreams and achieve their fullest potential. To learn more about her, read samples of her work, or contact her, visit her online portfolio.