Palm Frond

Think about a palm tree.  The tall tall trunk, the tuft of leaves at the top.  They're pretty thin, as trees go, what with not having a spread of branches and all.  Even so their trunks grow to have a pretty respectable diameter.  It's just that the height and lack of branches make you think the trunk is really skinny.

Looking at a palm tree it's obvious that it's leaves are larger than those of your average branchy deciduous, but just how big are they?  I'll answer that for you now: bigger than I thought.

This happened a while ago, May sometime.  We (Enzo, Moo, Duke and myself) were on our way home from my morning run at the park.  Maybe there had been a storm recently or something because when we passed the house on the corner with the palm trees Enzo found a dry palm frond in the yard.  He thought it was the coolest thing ever.  He loved the palm frond and he wanted to take it home with him.  Oh, and by the way it was as big as he was.

It was a hot morning and Enz was on his bike. He asked me if he could keep the frond and I told him if he could get it home himself he was welcome to have it until trash day. (confession: I didn't for a minute think he'd be able to drag that thing all the way to our house)

Enz shouldered the frond, climbed on his bike and carried it home.  The journey was not without it's challenges.  The Palm frond was unwieldy and Enzo didn't have much experience with steering his bike one handed. He stuck it out though, proved me wrong and kept that palm frond in the back yard until his father spotted it and tossed it on the fire. Enzo was sad when he noticed it was gone but his sadness was assuaged by his father's description of the fire ball it had made when it burned.