Eastern White Cedar – thuja occindentalis
In my world, Eastern White Cedar is holy. I have probably sawn & milled more cedar then any other type of wood. It seems in this part of Ontario, every 50 or so miles down the highway someone is making at least part of their living harvesting cedar. It is so usable. It is the MOST outdoor rot resistant wood. It becomes boards, posts, poles and even the greenery is harvested for oil of cedar. It smells so good. These stick/twig arbours are made from dead cedar I harvest from a couple of cedar bushes on our property except for the large pieces on top which were harvested as logs and split into thirds for large fence rails over 100 years ago by local farmers. In the arbour structure I consider it the young holding up the ancients. Some of those old pieces and quite a few 2×6′s have traveled to Newfoundland to become arbours & decks (bridges) at my place out in Exploits. The last section of my deck in Exploits was transported there by a tall ship schooner just like my ancestors. So it is also well traveled.
There is an old cedar bush in a corner of our property, where the cedar grows on top of marble rocks that have cascaded down the north side of a ridge into a hollow. It is concentrated cedar. Ancient trees to youthful striplings with symbiotic green moss feet. Dead trees, dead branches and dead leaf matter….cedar litter fills every contour. All of us here think it is a special place. We like to visit it. So today I braved the bugs and this bush is the where mosquitoes come from and created this photo essay.
