Wildflower Writes

Do you remember your first lost tooth?  Do you remember wiggling and wiggling it, maybe before it was even loose?  Did you ever go to extreme measures, like pliers or a string tied to doorknob?  My son’s first tooth is loose.  He’s in no hurry for it to come out, although he played with it all through the church service this morning.  He first noticed it while dining out a week ago.  He complained of a sore tooth while biting into a slice of pizza.  “Is it loose?” I asked.  He wiggled it, and sure enough, it could bend to a 45 degree angle.  At 6 1/2 years old, it had been a long time coming.    His older sister was adorable.  She put her arm around him, and with a knowing smile, asked to see and touch the premier tooth.  Apparently, her cousin reacted the same way when his younger sister had her first loose tooth.  She’s only 5 1/2, but lost her third tooth today.  It was barely hanging on to begin wi...

How does a treeline form? I’m looking at the trees surrounding my kids’ school, and the tops form a fairly smooth line. You would think, with the wide variety of trees, it would be more uneven and choppy at the top. Instead, the line itself rises and falls in a series of shallow undulating waves, with all the trees right next to each other coming up to approximately the same height. I wonder if it has to do with the amount of sunlight available to the leaves. Maybe once the tree grows to the height of the surrounding trees, it no longer has to fight for sunlight. Maybe all the trees were planted at the same time, although my guess is that they were here before the school or the playground. Maybe the slope of the land affects the height of the trees, since it might affect how much water is collected in each place. I’m always thinking. It’s like the little “why” that started when I was a little girl never died. Usually I think about people or relationships or problems. Someti...