In the round
Pick it up. Turn it.
Slide to turn it, or drag on the wood
Photographed the whole way around. The piece you are hearing was written for it.
The dark heartwood in this ash ran thicker than almost any I have worked, so I carved to accentuate it. I kept the bark all the way around, a live edge, as a tribute to the tree and what it endured. I love how the creamy outer wood makes a perfect ring around it. Everything about this piece was done to show off the grain and to honour the tree it came from.
For generations, a grand old tree stood sentinel before the house, its mature canopy and unmistakable presence serving as a familiar landmark by which the property could be recognized. More than simply a tree, it had become part of the character and identity of the home, a quiet, enduring marker that had stood there for decades. Its absence has left the streetscape noticeably changed, as though a piece of the property's history has been removed along with it.
K loved this tree. As a boy, he had dreamed of one day having a tree with the helicopter seeds, the winged ones that spin as they fall. This was that tree.
This piece came from a limb, not the base of the tree. So the rings here do not measure the whole life of the tree. They count only the years since this limb grew from a stalk to a bough, reaching out into the light beside the house. Slide through them from the heart outward, and read the years it lived alongside him.
Every ring is a year this limb thickened and reached a little further out, a year of sun and drought and snow laid down in the wood. Some of these years the whole world remembers. Some belong to K alone.
By the end it carried numerous vertical cracks, and its heavy boughs leaned out over the house. It could not be trimmed without butchering the shape and the beauty that made it what it was; a crown cut back years earlier had already thrown its growth off balance. Arborist after arborist said the same thing. It was only a matter of time.
In July of 2026 it was taken down. Only when it was opened did the truth show itself, wood rot running through the heart of it, hidden completely from the outside. Days later a violent storm tore through Winnipeg and took trees all across the city. Standing, this one would almost certainly have come down on the house that night. The danger passed. A beautiful tree gave itself up so the home it had guarded for decades would be safe.
Before it was hauled away, Betty had a length of the trunk set aside. She did not say why.
The wood will preserve the past, but it does not have to hold us there. We can honour the roots that made us, release what no longer serves us, and choose to grow again, stronger, wiser, and in a new direction.