The giant black locusts wave vigorously in the 9 mph wind. Their leaf clusters at the end of each large branch gesture in the style of the wee royal hand flutter. In my anthropomorphism, I imagine they are waving at me from across the railroad tracks. The sumac has grown wild and dense between the black locusts and the track; their wave is full-bodied. Within that entanglement and in the canopy above, a lone maple is now brown. Diseased? Otherwise the chaos of life surrounding the dog park is still green, green, and more green.

Not so the poplars, over in the far corner of the property. Along with the neighbor’s river birch, they’ve been turning yellow and dropping leaves for weeks now. Poplars are the harbinger of change, announcing the coming of autumn even in early August.

According to one estimate, there are 881 kinds of trees in the contiguous........

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