Life Is Hard

Life is hard sometimes, especially when you don't do everything perfectly and to everyone's taste, or do or say anything without first considering every person's experience in life and their personal needs and opinions and how they might feel or react. Makes it kind of tough to actually do or say anything.

And I've never understood how people put a lot of stock on what is said rather than what is done. That's why you have miserable people saying, "He said he loved me, so I know he loves me, but he never calls," "I know she will make good on her promise because I made good on mine," "My boss told me a year ago I was up for a promotion and a big raise; he must be getting ready to promote me." Or the classic "Check's in the mail."

That's why I live in the woods, where right now a few cedar berries remain in areas, such as deepish road shoulders, where birds aren't finding or getting at them. They aren't true berries; they're actually little tiny cones, because cedars are conifers. I must remind myself that things aren't always what they look like -- but most of the time they are.

The Survivor

I admit trying to kill this red-cedar tree for the sake of the native oaks and hickories the invasive red cedars are displacing. Baby cedar trees plant themselves mere inches in front of baby oaks, choking off  their sunlight and selfishly drinking all the water. In spring I chop down or uproot any young cedars endangering the oaks.If they're too big to chop, I might strip some or all branches so at least they won't block sunlight from the other trees that deserve to live here.

I learned from red cedars that everything in nature wants the best for itself and will do all in its power to survive.

Don't recall exactly when and what I did to this tree, but it outsmarted me. It looks very happy and blithe. As you see, there are still plenty of grown red cedars around for them that likes 'em.

Everything and the 10-inch Kitchen Sink

October 1 is my 13th anniversary on the Divine Property, and it's 14 years 2 months if counting subletting from June 1998 to August 1999. (The only place I've moved into twice.) I will never leave this place where the extraordinary happens every day and the rent, plus 99 acres of land and an ideal neighbor, is $502 a month ("as is").

Inconveniences and Oddities:
-Single-pane windows, plus a concrete slab foundation, ensure that the cabin is a freezer in pitiless winters despite every strategy known to humanity.
-If it's humid, the living room carpet -- even though cleaned -- stinks of pee from a cat who died of bladder cancer in 1999.
-!$%&*!$!!! mice, termites, snakes, skinks, spiders, bats, crickets, etc. for roommates.
-Kitchen sink measuring  13" x 10," x 7 inches deep: smaller than a shoebox.
-No bathtub.
-No library serves this location.
-$30 a month trash service.
-A fallen tree on the gravel road means you stay home until the chainsaw guy gets there.
-Bizarre, intermittent wireless service.
-Six miles to the nearest doughnut.

True Loves:
-Shade trees.
-Peace and quiet
-Native stone screened porch with wooden screen door, furnished with picnic table.
-House aligned east and west so equinoctial sunlight shoots through perfectly.
-Bringing and inviting people here.
-Wildlife, flora, and most weather.
-Birds of the day and birds of the night.
-Most amazing neighbors.
-Landlord to call when something's wrong.
-Two-car garage.
-Red flag on the mailbox.
-Wild foods.
-Propane tank. I love the stupid thing and the blue flames it makes.
-Unable to see neighbors but sometimes hear their roosters or fireworks.
-99 acres of meadows and woods
-Conservation areas nearby.
-Well water.
-Gorgeous, vivid moonlight and night sky.

Beautiful Horrible

A new low: People throwing spaghetti from their cars into the roadside trees, I thought. But this showy jellylike ornament on a cedar branch, common after heavy spring rains, is Cedar-Apple Rust, not a fungus but a gall that grows only in the presence of both red cedar trees and trees in the apple family (including the hawthorn tree, bearer of Missouri's state flower). The same spherical gall can flower brilliant pumpkin-orange like this repeatedly during the spring, when rainy days alternate with dry. In a sinister and monstrous way it's pretty but not good news for the tree, and it's contagious.

A website explains: "Spring rains cause horn-like structures, called telia, to extrude from galls. When these horns absorb water, they become jelly-like and swollen. Between rains they dry to dark brown threads. The telial horns are comprised of thousands of two-celled spores called teliospores. Swelling and drying of telial horns may occur 8-10 times during the season. Each time, the horns push out further and expose more teliospores until the supply is exhausted."

I suppose it's just trying to make a living like everybody else.

That Sound of an Oncoming Train. . .

The weather man said afterward that the storm had 100-mph winds. When that horrible onrushing-train sound that means a tornado arrived and persisted about 7:45 p.m. last night, I took cover in my 5 x 4.5-foot bathroom, with my laptop and phone. That's probably how the Apocalypse will find me: Huddled in the can, not with family photos or a bankbook, but with the tools of my trade.

Tornadoes touched down east and north of here, wrecking 100 houses, but no one died. The storm came in darkness and left in darkness, so dawn was everyone's first chance to see the damage. The roaring winds tore off the top of the tallest and oldest cedar on the cliff edge behind my house. This exposed the tree's rosy  heartwood, both sad and very beautiful. The brave tree, to its last moment, kept the house safe. Now we must face future storms without it.

Heartwood

Somebody sawed down a red cedar. Inside is a heart red and blooming just like ours. A botany teacher once told us that plant cells and animal cells are alike, except plant cells have walls, and animal cells don't. What does that mean, we asked. "It indicates a common origin," he said.

The Trespasser

My first autumn here, in 1998, a red pickup tore out from the woods through the meadow, skidded in a spray of gravel onto my lane and down and away onto Highway F. Caught a glimpse of the driver -- a bald old man with his mouth gaping like Pac-Man -- and the license plate: New Mexico. I followed the tire tracks and crushed grass back into the woods. The trespasser had made my woods his dump. He hadn't dumped anything identifiable, though, just cans, bottles, rusted oil drums, old miniblinds, an old sink, and so on.

Called the sheriff. Two deputies came and asked me everything except my personal body measurements. I led them into the woods and showed them the fresh dump. They knew who the dumper was but pretended they didn't; only one old bald guy around here had a big brand-new red pickup with a New Mexico plate, and if I hadn't been so new I would have known him, too: the area's biggest landowner and richest man.

Every day I marched back into the woods and hauled out heavy bagsful of his trash. I did it 18 times before I got tired of it, and some of it is still there. At the spot where he'd driven across the meadow and between trees into the woods I wanted to erect a barrier. I couldn't haul stones big enough. Finally down near the road I found sawn pieces of a tree trunk. I couldn't lift them so I lugged and dragged five pieces uphill and down my lane one by one. It was the hardest physical labor I have ever done. Set up four of the pieces in a row.

The photo shows three of them. All four are are still there, and behind them, instead of open meadow, are young oaks The oaks are my work, too. While hauling trash I noticed that the red cedar trees, nice enough but an invasive, non-native species, were choking off the young oaks and hickories. So every possible day for several seasons I went into the meadow and yanked, chopped, clipped and uprooted all red cedars I could. If the cedar trunk was big enough, the stump wept sticky red tears like blood. I did it for the native oaks and hickories.

Today the barrier of stumps still stands and behind it are several stands of young oak trees gaining strength every day, and no one's going to be driving his pickup truck between them anytime soon.