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Monday, December 19, 1994     Page: 3A

Nurturing touch comes naturally
   
That’s my spot, says Beatrice Ray, pointing to a work table in a sun-lit
hoop house crowded with pots and dirt and toolsA once yard-bound Japanese
maple she rescued from hungry rabbits and moles shows encouraging signs of
life from its new home in a sturdy pot near the door.
    “It wants to live,” she says.
   
Beatrice grows conifers, occasionally dabbling in Japanese maples and
beech. She specializes in dwarf, rare and unusual species she coaxes to grow
from her hoop house on Windy Hill Farm in Jackson Township.
   
A hoop house is a plastic-covered greenhouse without heat. Beatrice fills
hers with hundreds of exotic seedlings boasting glorious names: Dragon’s eye
and witch’s broom. Mountain fire and skyland. Nana grace and golden candles.
   
“Where’s my baby?” she asks, looking for a Balkan pine she grew from seed
in 1989. She knows her trees like she loves her children: completely.
   
“That’s the fun,” she says. “To know what you have.”
   
Beatrice is 78. She’s been growing beautiful things since 1960, when she
moved from Philadelphia back to the century-old family farm with her ailing
husband and four kids.
   
At that time, the former dairy and beef farm was used primarily to grow
hay. Beatrice looked at the wide open fields, interrupted only by stone fences
laid by hand long ago, and saw potential.
   
She was inspired to plant trees during long daily drives to her job as a
dietitian in White Haven.
   
“I had lots of time to think while traveling along roads lined with trees,”
she says. “I realized how little I knew.”
   
She stopped at a nursery and began asking questions and buying books.
Eventually, she began planting trees like some gardeners plant perennials.
Tall and droopy, squat and dense. Bright yellow and deep green, radiant blue
and posh purple. The many shapes and colors form pleasing pine gardens in a
once-empty yard Beatrice can view from her oversized picture windows.
   
Stands of sturdy hemlocks break stiff winds that sweep across barren
fields. Roots reach deep to suck up rainwater.
   
Beatrice is certain her trees helped her husband, who suffered from
emphysema, live 15 years longer than expected.
   
“Trees give off oxygen and purify the air,” she says. “This is my own
particular ecology. You can’t change the world but you can put your beliefs
into little areas that grow.”
   
A member of the American Conifer Society, Beatrice swaps seeds and trees
with aficionados from as far off as Japan and Russia. During the Cold War,
when trade with the Communist country came nearly to a standstill, seeds
continued to filter in and out.
   
Good seeds, she says, are as coveted as shining diamonds.
   
In addition to growing trees, Beatrice also experiments with grafting to
create new colors, shapes and sizes of pine.
   
She demonstrates how she snips off a branch, cuts a notch in another
seedling and fastens the pieces with rubber and wax, sealing impurities out
and moisture in. Once grafted, the new branch is shielded until new life
forms.
   
“You need patience and time,” she says. “It takes years.”
   
Most of the pines inside the hoop house are but three inches high, grouped
neatly in rows.
   
As she shows off each seedling, Beatrice runs her fingers lovingly along
long soft pine needles. She picks up a dawn redwood, a species thought extinct
until a single one was discovered in Tibet in ’36. Beatrice now has two of the
tiny marvels.
   
“Isn’t that beautiful?” she asks, her deep pleasure obvious.
   
With Christmas coming, Beatrice is busier than ever, wrapping copies of
books on local history, one of her favorite topics. Instead of store-bought
bows, she tops her gifts with dried milkweed pods.
   
“January is dream time,” she says of the seed catalogues that crowd her
mailbox during the long, wicked winters on top of Windy Hill, where she lives
in an 1840 Connecticut salt box crowded with books. Son, Jim Billings, and
dogs, Samantha, Tramp and five new puppies keep her company in between family
visits.
   
Beatrice is originally from Glen Summit, where her dad, Herbert Williams,
worked as manager of the water company. Beatrice was named after her mother.
Both parents were teachers, who met at the Loyalville country schoolhouse and
married in 1908.
   
A Daughter of the American Revolution, she rattles off with ease the names
and genealogies of all the original Connecticut families. One of her favorite
places is the Wyoming Geological and Historical Society.
   
“You have to teach the young,” she says of her efforts to pass her
considerable knowledge of cherished family stories to her four children, 13
grandchildren and 13 great grandchildren.
   
Son Walter Billings, a retired policeman, now lives next door and has
embraced his mother’s love of soil and seed. The two work side-by-side and
Walt is hoping to open his own nursery.
   
For a time, Beatrice sold her beauties. But she lost her heart for commerce
when 12 trees she sold were neglected and died.
   
“If you love something, you have to take care of it,” she says.
   
“This is life.”
   
TIMES LEADER/CLARK VAN ORDEN
   
Beatrice Ray