Archive for the ‘Trees’ Category

The Fallen Sentries — Tornado Be Gone!

Tuesday, May 12th, 2009

Friday, May 8, was an unusual morning. We planned on some rain.  I’d been paying the price of an encounter with poison ivy.

But, the storms came into the country from the west and wreaked severe damage. I understand the need for nature.  I watch those African reports where they show wild animals doing uncivilized things to one another under the gaze of nature.  I am not a tree hugger. I believe that a tree is a plant which will either be harvested by man, the responsible party or by nature through disease, bugs, fire, etc.

But, the vision of what nature can do in what appears to be a weathery tantrum, otherwise known as tornado is so saddening and appalling.

While people were injured and killed in the tantrum.  While their homes and lively hoods were twisted and blasted away.  While the winds ripped and tore, the massive trees that have stood beautiful sentry watch for hundreds of years were swept as twigs before the storm.  Suddenly, without warning, they were changed from oxygen producing shelters of wonder to shambles.

I just have a hard time understanding how nature could turn on herself this way and ruin these wonderful trees.  It doesn’t fit my softy belief system.  There will be very little useful gain from these toppled trees except for the microbial decay that comes as their mouldering carcasses turn to dust on the forest floor.   Some of the rubble must be burned to make room for the people as they come back into the land.   True, some will be carried away to chippers to become mulch and dust in a more useful manner.

And, time will begin to move forward toward the next  hundreds of years when the little baby oaks just in their second leaf stage have grown to stand sentry and provide shelter, air cleansing and amazing beauty.  Nature is part of time, grinding the grist fine and tight.  Makes us believe, if nothing else, that we are specks on the face of time.

The storms passed. People moved in to clear the rubble.  The next days were balmy, chilly, rainy, and then balmy again. The weather people tell us it is coming again in a couple days.   We will hunker down, humbled and saddened, then go back out to clear away the rubble again.

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Paper, Paper for the Garden

Friday, January 2nd, 2009

 Today, a package arrived with laptop platforms.  Really cool ones that will be more comfortable on a lap than the big one I have.  They are the ones from Allsop that kind of clip onto the laptop when it is closed.  No place for the mouse like the one I have from LapWorks.  But unfolded, that one cuts into my hide so much that I have trouble appreciating the mouse.

 Anyway, the box was stuffed with delightful long sheets of brown paper…the kind I like to spread out in Garden rows to slow up the weeds.  This is in sections, like brown paper towels.  I wonder if this was the sort of brown paper Jack & Jill’s mom used to wrap Jack’s crown.

 Because I am a gleaner, I folded it all up very carefully to save for the garden next year.  It will join the package of newsprint and all of the old newspapers that I can accumulate to put into the rows and between plantings.  

 Some people are amazingly easy to entertain.  I enjoy shredding newspapers with the grain of the paper to make big confetti.  I have,  in the past used it on the worm bins.  This year most of it is going to the Chicken house.  I put it under the roosts where it builds a support system with the poop that the chickens seem to save for their roost time.  Paper and poop will fork out easier than poop that slips through the tines on the fork.

 I used to have only a long paper shredder, 1/4 inch cut that I put junk mail through.  The setup just wasn’t comfortable, but it did work.  The worm bins have gotten rid of a great deal of junk mail.  I tried putting the shreds in the chickens nests, but they weren’t impressed.  Then, someone gave me a bag of crosscut shreds.  The chickens LOVE that in their nests.  

 A trip to Walmart got us our own crosscut shredder so they have fresh bedding as much as they need.  Extra can still work out in the worm bed.

 Long shreds from the old shredder made a winter bed for the little Rose of Sharon plantings. But, the new day lily bed was happier with pages of newspaper between the lily plants.  Kept in some of the moisture, although this year, that wasn’t a big issue.  And kept the weeds OUT, which was good. 

 There is so much newsprint coming into the house; every surrounding community prints a ‘shopper’.  I buy a paper in town sometimes and subscribe to the Kansas City Business Journal.  I really think hard about buying a Sunday Paper because I know I’m going to have to shred it.  VERY seldom do I indulge.

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July 4 — Making a Family Tradition

Saturday, July 7th, 2007

We enjoyed a July 4 visit with family from North Carolina.  The day was a not-too hot, humid holiday that let us move around outside some to show off the garden and the horses, then duck back into the AC!

hpim3253.jpg  Our happy, sweaty, July 4 tradition ‘under construction’ was transplanting a Pawlonia tree.  Good grief!  I didn’t know the poor thing had filled the pot.  I’m sure it was getting too dry because the big leaves shed water instead of letting the soil in the pot get wet.

So, we justified getting the tractor out to dig a good hole and as a family, we planted the tree!  Little Oliver was the biggest help. The tree was a gift from the neighbors.  These neighbors drove by as we were planting and stopped to tell us how marvelously their trees are growing.  

The Pawlonia joins several redbuds, maple and small cedars moved from the woods that we have put out this year.   

Pawlonia Tree

There was so much excitement about the visitors coming that RL just had to drive around town.  He found produce from the BootHeel and brought home sweet corn and watermelon for the holiday feed!

C. found the first ripe tomato — then, she forgot to eat it!  It was an undersized Early Girl, but those plants have been through alot since we didn’t get them into the garden until about a week ago. I hope those Early Girl plants do well. I really like that size.  Maybe some of the ‘many’ volunteers we planted will be similar.  We were going to cut back this year, but so many nice volunteer tomato plants came up in the worm castings and compost that our plans were changed big time.  There is even a healthy tomato plant and watermelon vine buddying up to the little maple tree that we moved from the garden this spring.

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