On Sunday, a big woodpecker was enthusiastically hammering at the tree in my 1/2 acre of front yard. That tree was planted shortly after I bought the house in 1983. I watched it grow from a five foot sapling to a fine example of treehood providing shade and wind resistance. I grew to take for granted its always thereness. But no more. The woodpecker was a symptom of sickness. The tree is a white ash and the plague of emerald ash borers is killing it. I ordered belatedly a batch of injectable insecticide, which can be added to the list of things I SHOULD have already done. I doubt if it will work but what the heck. Amazing what can happen in a couple months to something that took 37 years to grow to magnificence. Another occurrence suitable to a year that started afresh with the death of my mother then turned into a plague year for people and plants alike. During a hike up Mount Minsi at the Delaware Water Gap, I spotted the first of another gift of globalization, the Spotted Lantirn Fly. I guess it's here to eat what the borers don't get. I really need for Trump to lose. SOMETHING has to go right this year, if only by accident.
If anyone is worried about my state of mind after all the above, I'm actually not that bad. I've been doing some vigorous hiking. I hiked up 1000 feet to the top of Mount Minsi in about 75 minutes without feeling bad at all. I bought one of those fancy smartwatches to monitor my signs and not go too far outside my specs. I've been physically active and I'm starting to get things done again around here. All in all, I think I'm getting in pretty good shape for the Apocalypse. There's certainly enough time left in glorious 2020 for one or two of those.
Geez, maybe I should take another look at the trees in our yard that the woodpecker likes. I hate these messy soft maples, but the arborist who works on them says they're still viable. The trees are a major reason we have never had central air installed, though this summer was pretty bad.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, hope you can save your tree.
We have nothing resembling a mountain or even a good sized hill around here. I make myself do two miles between normal running around, walking, and the elliptical. I do yoga twice a week for strength and balance. Vegas odds are that I have about four years left, so I can't see the point of doing more at the expense of reading books just to make a nice-looking corpse. I just need enough strength to get up if I fall down and paddle a kayak.
Everybody has their own priorities and personal situation. I don't give others advice on what to do with exercise, health and such. I was barely physical in my teenage and college years but was delighted by the results when I started karate, running and weights in my early twenties. The change was so rapid, I felt as if I'd been transported to a low gravity planet and I loved the experience. It also seemed to fix a depression problem.
DeleteWe have a maple in our back yard that people have told us was near death for 20 years or so. The woodpeckers have been feasting on it too for all those years. We just wait. It seems to be a lot tougher than everyone, including an arborist we called in to look at a different tree in the yard, thought. I hope your tree surprises you and everyone else, Stanley.
DeleteI hope so, Anne. We'll see what the imicide treatment does.
DeleteYes, exercise does really help with depression-related lethargy. It also helps with the chemo brain fog. I'm always amazed at how much pay-off you get by even a few minutes time-out for some deep breathing and stretching. The experts studied the effects of a yoga routine for people with my type of cancer and found that, in older patients (who maybe have settled too far into sedentary habits) it had measurable benefits insofar as quality of life was concerned.
DeleteWe've been walking out by the lake north of town (Named fittingly if not creatively "Lake North"). I try to get outside every day, at least a little. There are silver linings to the quarantine, people are spending time outdoors, and working on hobbies or projects they wouldn't have time for otherwise.
ReplyDeleteWe have two slash pines, fore and aft, that the arborist says are going to make it. I doubt it. My wife prays for them. I think it is a sign that the arborist never sends a bill when he comes and says, yup, they don't have to go yet. Is he implying that his advice is as good as what we pay for it? Something got a lot of the palms a few years ago. Then there was something after the popular bushes. Something is after the pines now.
ReplyDeleteIt would be nice if the iguanas that moved up here from Miami after one of the hurricanes would go home again. We don't have a swimming pool, so we don't have to deal with iguana removals, as those who have pools do. Another day in Paradise.
"Arborist", I guess that's what one would call Millard, the 70-something guy who still works on small stuff for his old customers. He gave up the big tree business several years ago. Every time I call him to cut back bushes or deal with a fallen branch. I ask if he's still in business. But so far he's said yes. His working equipment is a chainsaw, lopping shears with a long handle, and a 50s era Chevy pickup with a jerry rigged lifting thingy on the back end.
ReplyDeleteDon't ever plant a Bradford pear. We didn't, it came with the house. It has beautiful clouds of white blooms in the spring. And every time a halfway stiff wind comes up, it drops one or more branches. And I call Millard, and he says, "Thought I would probably hear from you this morning."I
And the Bradford pear drops myriads of worthless little hard berry things on the ground in late summer which are a mess. If you plant a tree, get an oak. The oak in our backyard never causes any trouble. Maples have these helicopter seed pods that clog up roof gutters. They grow roots into sewer lines. One of our friends was trying to save her ailing maple. Her arboreal consultant hung what looked like an IV bag on it, with some kind of health giving solution. It died anyway.
If I lose it, I was thinking of an oak. I'll certainly look at disease and pest resistance.
DeleteStanley, don’t get a pin oak. Fast growing but subject to disease. Ours died in less than ten years, as did a whole lot of them in the next neighborhood over, where they had been planted as the community street tree.
DeleteOurs is a burr oak. It is at least 60 years old and still healthy. Hope I'm not jinxing it by saying that! Sometimes the acorns are a bit of a nuisance, but usually the squirrels get most of them. This tree is squirrel heaven.
DeleteAnne, I'll certainly make a note of what you said. You too, Katherine. Thanks.
DeleteI have a very tall and wide River Birch Tree on the SW corner of my house. When she was young she had very beautiful bark that pealed like a White Birch but her branches are still beautiful in maturity. She sheds a lot of catkins that create a mess on my extended driveway in the Spring. (The original owner had an RV) She also sheds many small branches especially during storms.
ReplyDeleteAlthough River Birches contain both male and female catkins, I think of her as Mother Birch because she now has four children and this year about twenty grandchildren.
Her first child whom I call Junior is now a young adult who lives within her shadow. I think of Junior as male because there is no evidence of children from him.
She had two daughter River Birches whom I moved a far distance over on the other side of the property away from the house. I call them daughter birches because this year they have about twenty infant birches growing up around them. I have visions of creating a River Birch grove on that end of my property.
Also this summer I discovered a rather young River Birch that must be two or three years old on the NE side of my house. I plan to move him to the SE corner of my house once his leaves have fallen. Maybe he will mature into a female and have children there.
Besides creating a River Birch grove on the North side of my property, I plan to grow all future seedlings until they get to the size that I can harvest them as walking sticks.
I also have a White Birch on the NW corner of my house. No evidence of children. He gets preventive medicine each spring and is doing well.
Welp, other things to expect in 2020: Trump has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for normalizing relations between Israel and the UAE, and he has been busy re-tweeting congratulations from his fawning sycophants all day.
ReplyDeleteConservatives are all gleefully predicting that when Trump wins the election and the prize, all the libtards are going to fall down dead of rage and envy.
Also, he is going to lower Medicare premiums and drug prices. He just said it, so it must be true.
News flash, Don: Medicare premiums are cheap. It's the supplementals that us po' folks can't afford.
Peace prize? Seriously??
DeleteYup, at the risk of making Stanley throw himself off Mr. Minsi. Deacon Jim needs to show up with one of his "stop whining/do not despair/reconciliation" sermons about now to buck us all up.
DeleteSorry, no homilies forthcoming at the moment, as they require the gift of gab, and I'm struck speechless at learning about the Nobel nomination. I'm kind of like Zechariah but without the angel or (I'm pretty sure) the pregnant wife. Oh well, I have seen some grudgingly positive comments about that Israel/UAE deal. I hope it's a step toward peace.
DeleteYes, we all hope that the Middle East will someday settle down, but odd that someone whose urban areas are burning and who is throwing gas on the racial fires is up for a Nobel.
DeleteApparently the Norwegian guy who nominated him is part of the extreme right wing there.
DeleteAccording to the BBC:
Delete"Adolf Hitler was nominated for the peace prize in 1939 by a member of the Swedish parliament. Reportedly submitted in satire, the nomination was withdrawn soon after. A few years later, the Soviet leader Josef Stalin was nominated for the same award, twice, garnering nods in 1945 - for his efforts ending WW2 - and again in 1948."
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-54092960
Stanley, I am so glad you are doing so well, considering 2020. I've been in a self-pitying mood today because the @#$%^ day job kept me from being able to hop on the bicycle today. Another sign of aging is that my indoor workout routines now are mostly cribbed from physical therapy I've received over the years. I am a big believer that physical activity is an antidote to depression, or at least a way to keep it manageable. I think some sane election results also would be good for the country's collective mental health.
ReplyDeleteWe have a maple tree on our property, in our backyard. It's kind of magnificent: five full trunks emanating from a single root system and base. It's shade pretty much covers the backyard portion of our quarter acre plot. It does cause the helicopter gutter issue, and drops a lot of branches over the course of the year, but seems to be pretty healthy, from what we can tell.
When we bought this place, we had two trees in the front, a sort of crab apple that blossomed beautifully (some years) for about a week in the spring and then dropped hard red pellets of fruit during the late summer. It was infected with worms; many neighbors had the same trees in their front yards, apparently planted by the builder when the subdivision was built in the early 1960s. They all had the worms, too. Our irascible old codger of a next door neighbor (now in heaven) beguiled a summer afternoon for us once by tossing infected branches from his crab apple tree into the gutter along the curb in front of his home, squirting them with lighter fluid, and then burning him. There was something very American about that. Our tree declined for about the first 20 years we lived here, and then one day my wife decided she had enough and called the tree guy, er, arborist, and made it go away. That day gave me some rough idea of my wife's answer to the newlywed quiz question, "How much would you spend without consulting your spouse?" We never replaced it - a landscape guy we hired a couple of years ago told us that the house looked better without the tree - made it seem more open.
The second front yard tree, a nondescript deciduous, was on the parkway (at least that's what we call it around here - the strip of greenery between street and sidewalk, owned but not mowed by the city). Some 20 or so years ago, a hellacious storm blew through town, and the tree got knocked down. It fell right toward our house. If it was about 3 feet taller, it would have hit the building and presumably caused damage. We were still sort of rookie homeowners in those days and weren't sure what to do about it; we reasoned that, as the tree was on the parkway, it was the city's responsibility to do something about it (this based on the data point that the city would come by once a year or so and trim its branches that were blocking a street light). So we literally let it lie. After about a week, a city wood chipper pulled up and took care of it. A few years later, the village planted a red maple of some sort in roughly the same spot. It looked like a dead stick, kind of a Charlie Brown Christmas tree, for the first year, but has been growing like gangbusters ever since.
Interesting about the city owning the parkway. It's what we would call a terrace here, and it's the homeowner's responsibility. The city does trim tree branches around street lights though.
DeleteMy all time favorite trees are cottonwoods, but would never plant one on our little lot. They're more country trees. They get huge. The wind makes nice rustling sound in the leaves. The leaves are never still, and are glossy, reflecting the sunlight. A drawback is their shorter lifespan, only about 120 years. It's sad that the ones on the old home place are dying now.
My second favorite tree is the catalpa, which I would plant if we were starting over, but we're not. Elegant and stately without getting overpoweringly large.
Jim, I may compensate by planting a few trees to replace the one. I have forest in the back half acre of my property where I never go. But the white ash was an intentional tree.
DeleteI hope you can get yourself a good exercise routine. Walking is always good.
Katherine, yes, we're responsible for mowing it, but the town is responsible for the trees, which it planted. Our town actually is relatively high-service. The 'burbs usually are thought of as conservative bastions, and I guess we are in some ways, but not really over the top about it. There are some tax revolts from time to time, e.g. refusing the library's or park district's requests to issue bonds for improvements and maintenance, but even then they usually pass after the 2nd or 3rd try. The towns around here which have too many tax revolters sort of suck when it comes to basic services, e.g. they don't adequately plow their streets after a snowfall, which not only is inconvenient but also dangerous.
DeleteStanley, you have forest on your property? Cool. I would totally be exploring that.
DeleteWe don’t have sidewalks on our street, but the county owns the 30’ from the curb to somewhere in our front yard. Our community chose the Bradford pear to be our community street tree. Katherine, this was almost 50 years ago, and you will not be surprised to learn that only about a third of those trees are still here. Every thunder storm brings the risk of huge limbs breaking off.
DeleteI love birches, Jack, but the mid-Atlantic climate is not good for them and few survive around here for more than ten or so years. I love eucalyptus trees in California. My favorite tree in our yard is a pink dogwood. Our extremely hot summer and lack of rain have disrupted our trees a lot. Many are dropping leaves - green leaves. The leaves on our dogwoods are already turning brown. Not a good sign.
Our house does not have its own woods, but it backs to one owned by the county. We used to hike in it, but stopped after two encounters with deer ticks, one of which led to having a doctor remove the head of a tick from my back, and putting in two stitches where it was removed. P,us a course of antibiotics. Fortunately I never developed Lyme disease.
Katherine, not easy to explore. Actually, grown over farmland. I leave it to the critters to have their fun.
DeletePoison ivy and rattlesnakes, in addition to ticks, are sometimes obstacles to exploration here.
DeleteMichigan had a big push to save the Massasauga rattlers. I understand intellectually why it is important to preserve wildlife, in my heart of hearts, I have to ask myself why ...
DeleteOn the list of thing I worry about, preserving rattlers has got to be towards the bottom. The ones here do very nicely at preserving themselves. One of my brothers used to annoy Dad by having some rattlesnake rattles in his hat band. And shaking them for effect.
DeleteMy kids used to love the museum display case with a taxidermied rattlesnake coiled up. You could push a button and make the rattles rattle.
Oh, and in case you didn't have enough creepy things to think about, rattlesnakes can swim. Some fishermen on Lake McConaughy were dismayed to find that out.
DeleteWe have rattlers in the Poconos. Never saw one in 40 years here but I did encounter a Copperhead once. I like the display with the rattle button, Katherine.
DeleteI think most snakes can swim. When we camped on Beaver Island in Lake Michigan, which at the time was pretty isolated, the place seemed to be a refuge for these big black Great Lakes water snakes. Totally harmless, but quite large and disconcerting if you were taking a dip on some deserted beach and one went swimming by.
DeleteFunny story I heard from my sister this morning. She was talking to her friend who is an art teacher. Her school's classes are partly online now, and her Zoom connection went down. So she told her class that their assignment was to do a self portrait, thinking it would keep them busy for awhile. They were finished in 15 minutes, they all drew themselves with masks on.
ReplyDeleteGreat story! Thanks for the laugh of the day.
DeleteThat's pretty funny. It occurred to me that if I wear sunglasses and a mask, I really don't need to wear any make-up! So there's a slight silver lining.
DeleteJean, when I go to the grocery store ( the only place I go outside of our neighborhood walks), I wear sunglasses, a mask, AND a baseball cap! To hide my hair which has not been cut since the end of January.
DeleteI finally got out Raber's Wahl barber clippers and a No. 10 cutting guard and buzzed mine off. It was an improvement! I did venture to the beautician in July to get it evened up. The shop was doing a good job meeting the state requirements, and I figured I'd be safe if I waited in the car to be called in. However, they called me in too soon, and there were too many people sitting too close together in the waiting room, pulling their masks down to talk, etc. I became hyper aware of touching surfaces, and even my hair after the stylist cut it. It just didn't seem worth it to go back. Maybe not ever!
DeleteMy daughter-in-law hacked my hair back to manageable. I could stayin masks if I could keep the hair where it isn't a problem. Another advantage of masks: I don't have to shave.
Delete