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The Utility of Trees

The Utility of Trees

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Thinking this morning of the utility of things and how they change through time.

The tree that once shaded the backyard, whose sturdy trunk supported first a baby swing and then a porch swing, has been a branch-less trunk for more than a year now. It’s the Venus de Milo of the backyard.

But what it lacks in shade and stability it makes up for in bird habitat. No branches for nests but a great tall expanse of trunk for woodpeckers. I heard the birds yesterday, rat-tat-tatting for insects and grubs, and thought of the tree’s gracefulness in good times and bad.

“I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do,” Willa Cather said.  She could have been thinking of this noble, denuded, pockmarked oak.

Weeds: What Are They Good For?

Weeds: What Are They Good For?

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Here in the rainy East, it’s a good summer to be a weed — or most any kind of plant, for that matter. But I’m thinking more about weeds this morning because I pulled so many of them over the weekend.

The soil is moist and they’re easily uprooted. Plus, there are so many of them to banish. I would no sooner finish one patch of yard then I’d spy another plot of stilt grass a few feet away. Let’s just say that no weeder will be idle this summer.

One can’t help but wonder when weeding: What is it that separates the weed from its more accepted cousin? Or, put another way: Why do we cultivate one set of plants and get rid of another?

Beauty has a lot to do with it, of course, and utility.  And then there’s basic economics: We value less what we have in abundance. But isn’t there some arbitrariness to it all? After all, a weed can also be a flower.

Tender Earth

Tender Earth

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I walk carefully through the meadow, choosing grass clumps and leaf piles and anything else that will keep the mud off my shoes. The snow and rain have saturated our soil; to walk on it now is to sink a little with each step.

Aren’t we all a little tender this time of year? Coats cast aside, jackets unzipped, the feel of the sun on newly bared skin.  There’s a freedom but also a sensitivity.

So it is with the earth. Clover and fescue just starting to take hold. Even the lightest of foot falls leaves an imprint.  I tiptoe to the trampoline to give the grass a chance. I watch with dismay as Copper scrambles after the ball, his every feint and skid leaving deep tracks in the mud. The yard is marked with our play.

But this tender time will pass, I tell myself. Even now new plants are anchoring themselves in the ground, their roots spreading. Soon they will weave a net, a home, a bulwark. Soon the land will be less impressionable. Until then, I’ll tread lightly. 

First Bounce

First Bounce

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I arrived home in the afterglow. The sun had set but the western sky was still blazing.

Copper had been cooped up all day and was happy to see me. We went outside for our little ritual: First I throw day-glow orange tennis balls so he can fetch them — and then I bounce on the trampoline while he runs around the yard as if I’m still throwing the day-glow orange balls.

It was my first bounce of the season, my first bounce of 2015, for that matter. The tramp has been snow-covered for a month.

It felt good to be jumping; the world has that soft edge that it has when one is moving or bouncing through it. The house glowed yellow, a beacon in the dusk. We stayed out till the light left the sky. 

Begonias: The Sequel

Begonias: The Sequel

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Were the begonias reading my blog? If so, not anymore. On Sunday morning, less than 24 hours after I wrote about their bravery and their continued existence, they finally succumbed to the low night temperatures.

I knew their time was up when I wrote about them, am surprised they lasted this long. It’s the life of an annual, as brief as the autumn leaves that I notice are so much more a part of this photograph than they seemed to be when I snapped the shot.

We know what happens next. In a few days or weeks I’ll rip out the old plants and let the soil rest until spring.

A few late roses are clinging to life, but for the most part the growing season is over. The begonias lasted from late May through mid-November —not a bad run.

Brave Begonias

Brave Begonias

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Annuals don’t expect immortality, so I don’t give it to them. When the temperatures dip into the 20s and teens, I let them go gracefully, don’t bring them inside for the winter. I’ve seen enough thin, leggy geraniums to realize when a flower is past its prime.

Which is not to say I don’t care. This time of year I often look outside first thing to see if the begonias have made it another night.

And last night, for one more night, they did.

Autumn Planting

Autumn Planting

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There’s a delicious irony in autumn planting, a slap in the face to fall. All around me leaves are yellowing, dying, flaming out, and here I am plying the soil, ripping out the summer flowers, putting fall ones in their place.

I chose mums and ornamental cabbage, hearty plants that can bear a hard freeze and stff wind. I forgo the pretty pansies with their thin stems and hopeful faces.

Planting in the fall is a vote for life. It’s thumbing my nose at winter, saying (if only to myself) maybe it won’t be as bad this year.

Tangled Harvest

Tangled Harvest

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It’s harvest time on the back deck. The thyme is thriving, the basil is bolting and the cherry tomatoes are tangled up with the climbing rose (which I’m training to clamber up the balusters).

There’s not enough sunlight in the backyard to put tomatoes directly into the ground, so they grow in pots. And the most successful pot-grown tomatoes, I’ve learned, are these little guys. They’re as sweet as candy and taste great in salads or pasta or right from the vine.

The only problem, every year, is that they really get the hang of it in September. There are green tomatoes aplenty on these vines. Will they ripen in time? Some of them, probably. The rest will harden, their stems will shrivel — and then — and only then — I’ll untangle them from the rose.

View from a Hammock

View from a Hammock

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Speaking of (pictures of) hammocks, I spent some time in one yesterday. I’d been looking at it longingly all week but there was no time to partake. The weather was summer but the work load was decidedly back-to-school. By this weekend, though, with a big project completed and the house (relatively) clean, I had no choice but to relax.

It’s funny that hammocks are so often the symbol of carefree existence. Perhaps it’s their weightlessness or their airiness, the fact that they swing.

Or maybe it’s their contours and mechanics. While I’ve often heard of folks flopping into a hammock, you cannot flop into mine. The contraption is not easy to get into or out of. In that sense it holds me captive. Once I get into it, am I  really going to try and get out very quickly?

Take yesterday, for instance, I had my pillow, my journal, a book, a phone and of course, the requisite glass of iced tea. Imagine the logistics of assembling all that within arm’s reach. I didn’t stir for an hour. Then again, why would I want to?

Power Weeding

Power Weeding

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It’s an ancient rhythm. Step, bend, pull. Weeds figure prominently in some Bible verses — they’re always choking out the good plants, being bundled and burned at harvest time — and there must be references to them earlier in human history, too.

Yesterday we tackled the weeds in our yard. They were not quite as high as the ones in this picture (taken in the woods) but high enough. I started late in the day, rushed through the back garden in time to start dinner.

Power weeding: Stooping low, gathering the slender stalks of stiltgrass from the bottom, twisting, pulling and tossing.  (At least this invasive plant separates easily from the soil.)

Before long I had piles of weeds scattered around the cone flowers, piles I gathered and stuffed into the big bag in the front yard. A harvest of greenery. A happier garden. And this morning — ouch! — aching muscles.