Spring Rain
Spent the last three days pruning apple trees. Pruning trees is a yoga for me.
Did five very overgrown very old trees. Three were vigorous, four were healthy, five were lovely, and one had lost its heart to rot ... it had rotted from root to treetop.
Springtime and pruning are a linked experience for me. Usually this work is done before the buds explode, but these last few trees were done long after the trees have leafed out and the blossoms have come and gone. I don't know exactly the effect this will have on the trees. I have read, on-line at some univerisity URL related to pruning, that pruning a fully-opened tree does no harm other than retard regrowth somewhat. In this case, that retardation might be an advantage.
I cut the hell out of those poor trees. Removed a lot of wood.
They have been properly pruned long ago, in the darkly composted past, but the latest prunings have not been prunings at all, but 'trimmings' ... work by someone who thought the trees were merely ornamentals. The trees did look nice, but the limbs were insane, going in all sorts of directions with crossings and in-growings and nearly inpenetrable to light. This magpie-nest of limbs, branches and twigs would have killed the trees sometime in the future.
I was ruthless. A surgeon with a saw-gun.
A heavy cut. I bet I terrified the trees ... it wasn't quite a prefrontal labotomy, but like a mind power-washing. If they live (and I am sure that they will, the weather (cool and wet) will be a great aid in this) ... and there is more tree to open as the season passes. ...if they live they will be saner and stronger ... so it wasn't a holocaust, but a cleansing by steel.
I worked for a man, Tim, whom I have known since he was a young boy. He was a hell-raiser but I believed in him. There were few that did. He loves me for it and calls me his Dad ... I have told him I would rather be an uncle so that my responsibilities would not be so onerous.
I loved Tim's mother, Rosalee. You know, dear reader, that there are people walking this good green Earth that have no choice but to love you ... they are bound by genetics to love the way you talk, the way you walk, they way you sparkle ... that is if you are at all true to yourself. Other than friendship, and one kiss (another blog), Rosalee and I never physically consummated our love ... and it is a wonderful thing! She died some years ago of breast cancer and I still have that relationship, like a prized token, in the Plunder Hall of my mind.
The trees will be glad of my visit. It might take two years.
Chickadees carried on conversation with me, sitting alertly only a few inches from my eyes. They seem unafraid of anything up in a tree. A racoon carried on in the yard. I saw him duck beneath a large shed. I thought it odd that he would let me see his home. I gave him a doughnut later ... thinking that he'd like the sweet but that it would rot his teeth. This was my first chance to observe a racoon closely. My impression is, "Egads! Those things are smart as hell! And able!"
So ... I made about $50 a tree for four of those trees, then cut the fifth tree for free. The heart of this tree had rotted out and Tim wanted to cut it down for $100 or so. The little ol' lady who owned the trees might have gone with his request ... a request, incidentally, that was impatient and a little bit greedy. Tim could make $100 in a few moments and be done with it. I spoke to the little ol' lady, Betty Dahlstrum, and told her the situation. I said I would try to talk Tim out of it. When I talked to Tim, I offered to do the tree for free. Time was running out when I got to the rotted tree. I cut the big water sprouts that were dominating the upper story, cleared a bit of the twig madness, and had to leave it. Honestly, I was worried about taking too much off of this damage tree. It is hardly more than thick bark. I think in human terms it must be like someone who has suffered terminal depression ... the blood veins are there, the life goes on, but the heart is gone.
And so I left the orchard. Now it stands, shaking its greatly thinned out crown, shaken but clean, clear-headed, and enabled.
Perhaps it will think of me as the Steel Wind.
Did five very overgrown very old trees. Three were vigorous, four were healthy, five were lovely, and one had lost its heart to rot ... it had rotted from root to treetop.
Springtime and pruning are a linked experience for me. Usually this work is done before the buds explode, but these last few trees were done long after the trees have leafed out and the blossoms have come and gone. I don't know exactly the effect this will have on the trees. I have read, on-line at some univerisity URL related to pruning, that pruning a fully-opened tree does no harm other than retard regrowth somewhat. In this case, that retardation might be an advantage.
I cut the hell out of those poor trees. Removed a lot of wood.
They have been properly pruned long ago, in the darkly composted past, but the latest prunings have not been prunings at all, but 'trimmings' ... work by someone who thought the trees were merely ornamentals. The trees did look nice, but the limbs were insane, going in all sorts of directions with crossings and in-growings and nearly inpenetrable to light. This magpie-nest of limbs, branches and twigs would have killed the trees sometime in the future.
I was ruthless. A surgeon with a saw-gun.
A heavy cut. I bet I terrified the trees ... it wasn't quite a prefrontal labotomy, but like a mind power-washing. If they live (and I am sure that they will, the weather (cool and wet) will be a great aid in this) ... and there is more tree to open as the season passes. ...if they live they will be saner and stronger ... so it wasn't a holocaust, but a cleansing by steel.
I worked for a man, Tim, whom I have known since he was a young boy. He was a hell-raiser but I believed in him. There were few that did. He loves me for it and calls me his Dad ... I have told him I would rather be an uncle so that my responsibilities would not be so onerous.
I loved Tim's mother, Rosalee. You know, dear reader, that there are people walking this good green Earth that have no choice but to love you ... they are bound by genetics to love the way you talk, the way you walk, they way you sparkle ... that is if you are at all true to yourself. Other than friendship, and one kiss (another blog), Rosalee and I never physically consummated our love ... and it is a wonderful thing! She died some years ago of breast cancer and I still have that relationship, like a prized token, in the Plunder Hall of my mind.
The trees will be glad of my visit. It might take two years.
Chickadees carried on conversation with me, sitting alertly only a few inches from my eyes. They seem unafraid of anything up in a tree. A racoon carried on in the yard. I saw him duck beneath a large shed. I thought it odd that he would let me see his home. I gave him a doughnut later ... thinking that he'd like the sweet but that it would rot his teeth. This was my first chance to observe a racoon closely. My impression is, "Egads! Those things are smart as hell! And able!"
So ... I made about $50 a tree for four of those trees, then cut the fifth tree for free. The heart of this tree had rotted out and Tim wanted to cut it down for $100 or so. The little ol' lady who owned the trees might have gone with his request ... a request, incidentally, that was impatient and a little bit greedy. Tim could make $100 in a few moments and be done with it. I spoke to the little ol' lady, Betty Dahlstrum, and told her the situation. I said I would try to talk Tim out of it. When I talked to Tim, I offered to do the tree for free. Time was running out when I got to the rotted tree. I cut the big water sprouts that were dominating the upper story, cleared a bit of the twig madness, and had to leave it. Honestly, I was worried about taking too much off of this damage tree. It is hardly more than thick bark. I think in human terms it must be like someone who has suffered terminal depression ... the blood veins are there, the life goes on, but the heart is gone.
And so I left the orchard. Now it stands, shaking its greatly thinned out crown, shaken but clean, clear-headed, and enabled.
Perhaps it will think of me as the Steel Wind.
posted by Thunderpen | 8:41 AM
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