The fifth grade class at Weston’s Field School is honored each year by the planting of a tree on the Case Campus or Legacy Trail. The tradition started six years ago, and there are lovely trees–a red oak, a red maple, a hawthorn, a redbud and a tupelo watching the kids grow while we watch them grow. Actually, the Class of 2029 tree, a tupelo, seems to be in a bit of despair there at the end of the Legacy Trail after last year’s drought…we’ll have to see how that goes.

The Class of 2027 of Field School, the members of which are now 8th graders and heading to the high school this fall never got to do a tree ceremony. They finished their fifth grade online due to the pandemic. Because of the situation, two redstick dogwoods were planted by Jackie Jackson, our town’s certified arborist, and her team at the wild area on Bogle Brook where a small bridge crosses from the middle school campus towards the middle school baseball field. It was purposefully decided to dedicate the two dogwoods on the middle school campus, since the kids would not again be on Case Campus as students. A plaque, paid for by yours truly, was placed at the base of one of the dogwoods.

On a walk around the campus yesterday, I noted there was no plaque at the dogwoods. I looked near the high grass at the shoreline. No plaque. And then I thought to myself…what if that plaque had a really bad day and had jumped from the bridge and into the clean waters of Bogle Brook? Did life get too hard for the handmade plaque? Was April too hot to handle?

And that, apparently, is exactly what happened. As Katie Puppy and I gazed into the rippled water, the plaque stared back at us from under six inches of moving water. Is it rescuable? Yes. I’ll put on my Wellies tomorrow and get it. I just haven’t decided if I’m giving it back to you, Weston, because that seems a bad way to treat a plaque. It, in fact, bums me out. If just one person sends me a note or writes a comment that it’s just a prank can meet me at the middle school at noon and fish it out yourself.

You can learn about the fifth grade tree in past Owls. Here’s how one of the two red-twigs looked in 2020:

Ummm….go ‘cats?