What Tree Do We Plant Now?

By John Kass

August 20^th, 2025

I’m a fool for not listening to the woodpecker. He was trying to tell me something. But I had fallen away from woodcraft and the natural world.

There was a time I was in tune with nature, but after a series of health issues, I could not walk to hunt a field or train a dog. I couldn’t climb a riverbank or step over those slippery river rocks in that river up north. And that’s when your hearing begins to go.

At dinner the other night with our wives, I was telling this story about the loss of natural language to two great fly fishermen, Steve the Pilot and Ross the Baker. I think they understood. I didn’t tell it for a pity party. I knew what the beeping monitors in a hospital were all about, but a woodpecker pounding his head against a tree was incomprehensible.

I had lost the language.

I suppose I know what woodpeckers were searching for, but I didn’t put together the pounding sound with the reason for the pounding. It was God talking and I was too stubborn to understand or listen to Him. Perhaps some of you heard my voice all agitated during opening monologues of the Chicago Way podcast I used to record while sitting under that great Tulip tree in the backyard when the woodpecker began pounding.

It wasn’t my first war with woodpeckers either. Our home back in Western Springs was targeted, and once at the paper I wondered aloud about getting a pellet gun and blowing them off the wall. That’s when a deranged leftist colleague and bird watcher threatened me with federal bird authorities that would cost me thousands of dollars and perhaps my freedom.

“You’d really do that to me Julie?”

“Yes, I would,” she promised loudly so everyone could hear.

The Tribune was going woke and I didn’t listen.

Woodpeckers are drawn to rotting wood. And leftists are drawn to decaying institutions. That’s also part of the natural world.

That magnificent tree was about 70 feet tall and the reason we bought the house. The trees reminded us of Western Springs. The reason they’re called Tulip Trees?

Every spring they produce delicate tulip-like blossoms.

Damn woodpecker.

That magnificent tree was about 70 feet tall and the reason we bought the house. We loved that tree. The trees of our new neighborhood reminded us of Western Springs. The reason these are called Tulip Trees?

Every spring they produce delicate tulip-like blossoms. And they give great shade.

We put two dark green Adirondack chairs at the trunk. Our patio was shaded, and we had put my parents’ heavy black wrought-iron table and chairs to enjoy that shade. You needed linebackers to move those chairs. From there we listened to Music of the Baroque.

And Sinatra.

We’d have drinks out there, and sampled many of Betty’s classic meals, from grilled Branzino to grilled Tuscan Chicken under bricks (rosemary, garlic, lemon) and sipped on ice-cold summer rosé . The boys proudly spit-roasted their whole Easter Paschal Lamb under that tree, and the Homeric Italian and Greek sausage from Joseph’s Finest Meats and the entire family would enjoy the summer shade.

And a dessert of Greek yogurt, honey and walnuts with strong coffee. Or perhaps just watermelon. And maybe a small cold glass of limoncello.

But then thunderstorms came.

That great, big Tulip Tree–that had withstood so many storms as it grew to lord over the house and the neighborhood–cracked under the strain of wind. We called three arborists and all gave the same diagnosis. It was terminal. There was no saving it.

So, we had it ground down to the stump.

The tomatoes and other vegetables seem happier. But we are left with a question the late great mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago asked of those leftists that vexed him:

What trees do they plant? They didn’t plant a damn thing. All they did was whine.

A great tree is a friend, like a great dog. We’re still not over the loss of Zeus the Wonder Dog. I know Betty won’t ever get over it.

There are various possible solutions. Now I’m asking you for your advice, and some people don’t care for advice. I could advise Ukrainians strongman Zelensky to get some proper British or American tailoring so he’ll look like a grown up man, and not some nervous kid aping a Eastern European gangster. I could advise the Democrats to stop supporting lawlessness and anarchy, but they won’t listen. And Zelensky won’t listen either.

I come back to the question about trees. Fruit trees? Flowering shrub or some other shade tree. Not a spruce. A tree I can look at through the seasons I have left. A tree that might welcome the forest-green Adirondack chairs, a tree that would give us shade in what summers to come.