Trees have birthdays too

In 1961, my family bought their first and only home in Hanford, CA. I was the third of what would eventually be four sons and we moved in to this brand new house on the edge of town before I turned one.

In August of 1961, my Dad could be seen shoveling dirt into a hole while planting a tree in the back yard. My five year old brother Andy held it up while my 21 month old brother Jeff watched from his seat on the pile of dirt.

At nine months old all I could do was sit there somewhere off camera. Maybe I slept through this momentous occasion. Planting a tree in a new home is a very symbolic act. You are doing something for the future, and probably other people.

I’m glad my Mom captured the tree planting on film because I derive significant meaning from this picture.

The first tree planting tree didn’t last long.

It was replaced by roses and eventually some spa equipment for the in-ground hot tub my parents put in the backyard after all the kids moved away from home.

Because things were always being planted and grown around us we did have a bit of a hard scrabble life at times. Dirt and mud were everywhere around and in the house.

By the time I reached the age of about 4 there were still vacant lots across the street that had been crops just a few years earlier.

I recall a time we were running in the backyard and a rattlesnake came into our midst.

Mom took a shovel to it and chopped off its head.

We had a constant change in trees around our house, especially in the front yard where my Dad would take out an old one about every 7 to 10 years and plant something new.

But trees were always very important to our family and the ones that did best were longest lived and most revered. That meant they didn’t get pulled for something new.

We grew very nice fruit trees there in California’s big, warm San Joaquin Valley.

The navel orange was just such a tree. It was planted not long after we moved in and it was still producing when we sold the house 50 years later. It was common for us to harvest more than 700 pieces of fruit from this tree, every year.

The backyard trees became my realm at some point. It’s more likely that I chose to do it as opposed to being assigned to do it by my Dad. I was already in charge of mowing the lawns—but I also loved doing the work.

You can see how I shaped the tree over the. years and the size of the grapefruit tree next to it. By 2008 all the other trees, including lemons, tangerines, and nuts had been pulled to make room for these two trees to grow.

When my kids were still pretty young we would usually wait until the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr holiday weekend because we knew all the fruit would be ripe and we could pick it in just three days.

We ate and drank as much as we could and made lemon meringue pies.

Then we gave away the rest.

If the weather cooperated, we could have a bbq to celebrate the winter harvest. One of my favorite harvest bbq memories was when the opossum would walk by along the top of the back fence near where my friend Joe Babin and I were working the bbq. It happened pretty much every year and was usually a small family with four or five of them going by.

“Still—in a way—nobody sees a flower—really—it is so small—we haven’t time—and to see takes time like to have a friend takes time. If I could paint the flower exactly as I see it no one would see what I see because I would paint it small like the flower is small.

So I said to myself—I’ll paint what I see—what the flower is to me but I’ll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking time to look at it—“

Georgia O’Keeffe—About Myself, 1939

I believe most artists draw, paint, sculpt, and photograph what they see in their world—and in their mind—with the intention and desire to share their creations with others.

As a photographer and a human being, I always look for images everywhere I am. As an artist and urban farmer, I learned to grow the objects that become part of that art.

Last year I opened up my new urban farm with a focus primarily on flowers, fruit trees and photography.

Previously I grew mostly tomatoes, peppers, plums, and berries. There were roses and sunflowers and I had only four fruit trees. Here on my new version of the Lakritz Farm, I planted 17 fruit trees in late 2024 and early 2025. I also added 14 rose bushes and have new clones growing in pots for the future.

I went over top last year with more than one hundred sunflowers and there are new seeds already in the ground today for this year’s crop. Because sustainability and the environment are very important to me I always collect the seeds. The 2025 crop of sunflowers came from seeds gathered in 2021. I used 2025 seeds for the 2026 crop.

All the food and flowers we grow on the farm are important, but this year I was able to focus on my photography of flowers in several new and exciting ways.

One of the most important opportunities I had was to point my lens at the fruit trees.

The results were surprising.

I have an extensive archive of landscape images focused on trees so I know I’ll be doing more of that in the future. This image was captured in 2015 and created as art in 2025.

Today I spend a lot more time looking closely at the flowers on the fruit trees.

About two weeks ago I received an invitation.

The invitation arrived inside an email from one of the gallery curators at the Blue Line Arts Gallery in Roseville, California. The email included the subject heading:

Subject: Art at Work-Chamber of Commerce Invitation

Normally, when I receive an invitation like this it’s sort of an automated message or it might come through the CaFé website. Usually a message like this is a call for entries that goes out to the general membership of local artists or through CaFé which broadcasts more widely.

This message was different. It was a personal invitation to a solo show of my work with at least 20 pieces.

The curator of the gallery wrote: “Let me know if you are interested.”

I dropped my phone where I was sitting at a glass table reading my email. There was a loud bang when it hit. I really was shocked but not by the loud noise.

It was such an incredibly positive feeling like I have never felt before.

“If I am interested”?!!!!

Yes I am.

“Do you have 20 to 25 pieces of art?”

Yes, I do have that many! It turns out I have 24 available for this show.

Over the past year I had created 29 new pieces of art with two pieces I had created about 15 years ago as a template for artwork I might do in the future when I thought I would have more time.

It turns out I liked that style and I found the amazing Noel Flynn Gallery in Roseville, CA where they hand make the museum quality framing for all of my work.

During this past year I was fortunate enough to be invited to show some of my work at several different shows at Blue Line Arts, the Sebastopol Center for the Arts, and the Citrus Heights Arts Council.

My Art at Work solo show will be the biggest one for me in 50 years! The last time I showed more than one piece in a show was 1976.

I’ll tell you more about that next week.

True story:
This week it is the Tu B’shvat holiday for Jewish people also know as the Birthday of the Trees. Among the holiday traditions is planting a tree and thanking God for the fruit of the earth that grows on trees.

This week I was fortunate enough to plant an Eastern Red Bud tree, and a new rose bush grown by hand from another plant, at a friend’s farm. I am looking forward to the first flowers coming from those two additions.

I wish you a flowery day and thanks for reading!