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. 

​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.

​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.

​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. 

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.