Nurse Log…

…or, more accurately, nurse stump.

Some years back this silver maple in Vi’s back yard lost a limb and took out most of the garden and half the compost bin. Several years later the remaining tree had to be removed. And, for several years since, the old stump has been slowly rotting away.

It’s a prominent part of the back yard view, and I’ve had my eye on it for quite some time—several years at least. Today, Vi’s daughter, Anna, and I turned it into a nurse stump.

I had previously hollowed out the rotten core. Today we filled it with compost, sand, and soil, and then planted Mugo pine, and Juniperus horizontalis, along with a bit of yarrow and a clump of fescue.

This will be fun to watch over the years.

Yard Work…

…at last, among other things.

Shadbush, serviceberry, saskatoon leafing out—a sure sign of spring. The little strip outside to the west of the garden has been planted in zinnias and other cut flowers. Squash seeds have been planted in the year-3 compost bin (which they seem to like real well), and…

…the seeds started inside have been moved to the great outdoors. (Cloudy today, so hardening off, not being sunburned.)

Improvement

Warmer, and mostly sunny all day. While Sue went visiting with old teacher colleagues, I did some library time in Fort and later rode my north-of-town 13 mile loop.

The photo of Heliotrope, above, arrived by email this afternoon from Mike Coomes, formerly of Kagawong but now of Calgary. Interesting timing. We have recently been thinking about getting ready to start arranging things to prepare for the trip north—with plans already in place to get Heliotrope back into the water after three years on the hard.

Sold Out

Big internal debate about scrambling to find more inventory. I lost, but that might have been a good thing. Next year, even bigger variety (including evergreens) and lots more sugar maple, redbud, pagoda dogwood, along with oaks—chinkapin, swamp white, and burr. (I’m also going to push for American sycamore, and hackberry.) Furthermore, it will probably be best to hold the sale over one weekend (Friday, Saturday, AND Sunday), and to demand that Mother Nature provide better weather.

Tomorrow is our Arbor Day kid’s activity, and the forecast is for thunderstorms (potentially severe) and winds up to 40 mph. We are planning to move inside, into the Senior Center, alongside the International Children’s Day program. Might just be a great move.

Cold Fire

Sue raked up a bunch of back yard detritus, and this evening, wearing full winter garb, we, sitting on the back patio, incinerated it. At least the fire was warm.

Here is a copy of my remarks at Friday’s Earth Day celebration.

A Sacred Place?

I suppose it might seem crazy for me to suggest that The Arboretum At Starin Park is a sacred place. After all, it’s is just a city park.

But I’ll call it sacred anyway.

For one thing, it’s an ancient place; the park’s big hill was created by a departing glacier 10 to 15 thousand years ago. A glacial kame, quite possibly.

It’s almost certainly a place visited by the first people—perhaps the Hopewell, certainly the Mound Builders, and likely the Potawatomi and Ho-Chunk. I try to imagine what it was like back then.

As UFC member Nick Alt has suggested, the stand of Norway spruce up to the west of the water tower was likely planted by European settlers to remind them of home.

And, even after the ravages of the emerald ash borer, the park is still home to over 700 trees, some of them well over a century old.

Trees have been held sacred in many cultures. There’s Yggdrasil, the sacred tree that supports the universe. There are warden trees, which defend against bad luck and evil spirits. There are the famous sacred oak groves of the Druids. There are the Ents of Middle Earth.

Just saying out loud the names of trees is a kind of poem—
oak, willow, ash, hawthorn, holly, hazel. 

Or this line from Edna St. Vincent Millay’s Counting Out Rhyme:
   Stripe of green in moosewood maple,
Colour seen in leaf of apple,
   Bark of popple.

Trees are an essential element of our outer and inner lives. A first step as stewards of the earth is to learn about and then teach the sanctity and importance of trees—by respecting, planting, and maintaining them—appreciating all that trees do for us, in their silent, woody ways.

Clearly, trees have had great importance to the first people of Wisconsin, even to the extent that trees are thought of as Tree People.

But as poet and nature writer Gary Snyder says,

“we are all indigenous to this planet, this mosaic of wild gardens we are being called by nature and history to reinhabit in good spirit. Part of that responsibility is to choose a place. To restore the land one must live and work in a place. To work in a place is to work with others. People who work together in a place become a community, and a community, in time, grows a culture. To work on behalf of the wild is to restore culture.”

Gary Snyder, 
The Rediscovery of Turtle Island
A Place In Space, Counterpoint (1995)


Forty Isn’t High…

…at least for the 26th of April. But that’s what the thermometer said.
Lunch with fellow old-time jaded Democrat, Steve, for some political discussion, and then a hike along the Lake Geneva shore.

On the hike we came across lots of slunk cabbage or Symplocarpus foetidus. Notice the specific, which means fetid, which means extremely foul smelling, which is pretty much the state of right wing politics.

Sold Out

Incredible demand. We started with 156 trees, and, in spite of Friday’s deluge, ended up this afternoon with only six left. Furthermore, we could have sold very many more if we had had more oaks, more sugar maples, more redbud, more serviceberry. Now the quandary is what to do next weekend when we have noting left to sell.

It was a fun time, chatting with a great many people who love trees, most of whom know way more than I do.

Also of potential interest, we sold out of bluebird boxes, and then had several disappointed customers. Who would have anticipated that?

Tree Sale…

…in a deluge. Heavy, cold rain all day long.

But we sold many trees, and more than half of the bluebird boxes. The Arboretum Earth Day program, though chilled and splattered, went pretty well. Thanks to Sue for preparing a beautiful spread of tree treat refreshments.