My beautiful Georgia is the first daughter to be laid to rest at the historic Odd Fellows plot at Cypress Hill Cemetery in Petaluma.  The first Odd Fellow buried there goes back to the 1860’s, and I like to imagine that 165 years ago, the acorn of Mother Oak nestled herself deep into the soil at the top of that grassy knoll.

Mother Oak stood front and center of everyone’s view at Georgia’s funeral. Sitting in plastic chairs under her branches, in front of the many stricken faces bowed down and crushed by grief, a brave and feisty squirrel, peaked its head out of a hole in the main trunk, curiously looking around to see what was happening. Unfazed, the squirrel stayed present for most of a eulogy being delivered, looking to and fro, while people whispered, “Look! Look at that squirrel!” and “It’s Georgia, come to see us.”

For more than a year afterward, Mother Oak and I became dear friends.  On the grass, I laid beside Georgia’s marker,  looking up innumerable times into her tall branches, studying their complexity, noticing all of the twists and turns they made.  So many creatures called Mother Oak their home.  The black crows, woodpeckers, and sparrows flew in and out, while I studied their shapes and I listened to their calls.  One day a hawk was waiting for me silently, watching me change the flowers, dusting the old blades of dried grass from the words Georgia Riley Pellkofer, 4-16-97 - 7-21-22  Loving Daughter, Sister, Aunt, A Bright Light for All. When I finally laid down and looked up, our eyes met, and I gasped.  She was so close, fierce and beautiful.  On Mother Oaks branch, she told me she was Georgia, and I understood my first hawk.

Georgia’s dad Frank, her brother Evan and I drove together to Cypress Hill that Saturday in October, a sunny day after many days of rain.  I heard Evan say, “Oh no!”, before I looked up and saw blue sky, uninterrupted where her beautiful branches once stretched.  Shards of tree limbs poked this way and that.  Mother Oak had split in half, right down the middle of her trunk, and fell in a huge strewn out slam of broken limbs spanning 75 feet across the lawn.  The grief that I hold for Georgia, the grief that lives just a hair under the thin shell of my projected normalcy, spilled out of my heart, just like those limbs.  

I came back the next day and wandered around the circumference of the fallen branches.  It was then that I l noticed  Mother Oak had been ladened with acorns, and acorns were everywhere I looked.  Green, healthy, so numerous that my hands were full in three short steps.  I drove back home, and grabbed the biggest basket I could find.  I filled and filled until I had hundreds of acorns, and still there were more.  On my phone, researching anything I could find about acorns, I read that the ones that sink are potentially viable.  Excitedly, I came home to soak them in water. In the end, I had just twelve that sunk, and I planted them carefully.

Two months later, the first green shoots appeared!  I had twelve babies!  I carefully watered and checked them, so happy that a part of her was still with me.  I told everyone about my success and wondered where I would plant my babies, and to whom I would give a part of Mother Oak, if I had any baby trees left to share.  

Evan and I went to visit Georgia at Cypress Hill around this time.   Spring was coming and the sun was shining after another stretch of rain.  As I walked to her marker I noticed the first little branches of a baby oak were pushing out of the grass on the knoll.  I bent down to examine, and I saw another nearby.  I told Evan, and we started to look around.  They were everywhere!  Hundreds of babies!  The sound of the lawnmower came into my awareness, and I saw the familiar cemetery gardener driving the big lawnmower in a plot far below us.  

“He’s going to mow the lawn here soon!  We have to save the babies” I say, becoming aware of  how incredible this was.  I started to try to pull one out, but I realized the thick turf protected them and I was pulling out their roots by being so rough. Rushing home we grab our tools, including my special hori hori trowel from Japan that cuts like a knife through soil. With a huge metal bucket, we sped through the streets of Petaluma to beat the lawnmower.  

“They’re okay!” I yelled from the passenger’s seat, when I saw the tops of their little shapes in the thick uncut lawn as we pulled up.  We got right to work, cutting around the starts, pulling them out of the grass in plugs, three inches across and 5 inches deep.  We crawled and crawled across the lawn, making small stacks of oak cones, one after another, eventually picking and choosing the healthiest looking ones, as there were too many to cut out.  I looked around often, wondering if the workers would notice us, or see the polka-dotted pot-holed lawn we were leaving behind.  The gardener was still far away on plots below, and we start counting out our haul, 70 oak trees in the bucket. 

At home, I soon realized I had a problem. They were drying out quickly, so I put them in the shade of our olive tree, and found a water spray bottle to spritz the dirt encasements. I found every pre-used, black, plastic pot I’ve ever gotten from home and garden stores stacked in the yard, and started to transplant.  It soon became clear that I was breaking roots pulling them out of their capsules, so I plunged them into a galvanized tub of water, letting the soil slowly bathe and loosen the soil in the water until I could pull out a small wet spindly root with the acorn still attached to it. 

I tucked them into fresh soil, four to five in the biggest pots, and lined them up like soldiers against our vegetable garden boxes.  After losing a handful,  and counting my original twelve, I now had 63 oak babies.  Some are planted in town, some are promised. 

Since then, I’ve learned that oaks develop acorns each year, but only every three years, they have an abundant crop.  

Thank you Mother Oak for waiting for me to share your abundance. 

Thank you Georgia for choosing me to share your abundance.  

Someday, some of these trees will drop acorns, a connected string of babies that will both live and die, and live again.

❤️❤️❤️

Trinity Pellkofer 

Georgia’s Birthday 

4-16-2025