Trees of My Acquaintance and Other August Adventures

 

I was sitting on the porch one afternoon early in the week, watching the rain fall and the wind blow through the trees, and in keeping with the way I think, I began to take a mental inventory of the trees that grow in my domain. I am a list maker. It’s how I attempt to impose some sort of order on my world. And I am a tree hugger – not in the pejorative sense used to describe fanatic environmentalists, but rather, as a lover of trees. Although I have actually hugged a tree on more than one occasion. I love trees.

From the front porch I can see all nine of the big sugar maples that grow on this property. Four of them are very old, about a hundred and fifty years by my estimate. They stand in the front yard in a zigzagged row. They began their long life as small trees lining two sides of a long-vanished dirt road. There used to be five of these trees, but the easternmost one blew down and was cut up and removed just before we moved here. My children used to play on its enormous stump, which has now completely rotted away. I like to think of these four huge maple trees as symbols of my grandfather and his three sisters, who once lived in this house and knew those trees.

The four oldest maples.

There are two other maples that are big, but not as old, maybe eighty or ninety years, that stand just off the front porch. They tower over the house and cause us some concern. They would wreck the house if they ever fell. But the thought of removing them is inconceivable. At this point, they are healthy and they bring welcome shade to the house in the summer. Unfortunately, they also drop a lot of leaves in the fall that collect on the roof and clog the rain gutters, a trade-off for their beauty.

Two maples by the house.

There are two more maples further down the yard. They are the last two in the line of trees that stand along our road. They are the youngest maples. The year we moved here, I decided I wanted a row of trees along the road. There were some young maple saplings growing in the jungle growth on the bank down by the barn (it was a garage then). Stacey and I dug two of them up and transplanted them. Twenty-five years later, they are good sized trees. One of them acts as the corner post of the chicken yard fence. It’s the tree that housed the attack robins I wrote about a few weeks ago. The robins are gone and I removed the nest to prevent any future occupation – and attacks.

One of the trees in the middle of the road row is a bit exotic for these parts. I love tulip trees and, although we are on the northern edge of their preferred zone, I planted one twenty-four years ago. It’s a pretty tree with big leathery leaves. It hasn’t bloomed yet, but tulip trees don’t begin to flower until they are twenty to twenty-five years old. Maybe next year.

The tulip tree.

In the meadow beyond the four big maple trees, there are five red oak trees. Two of them I dug up in the woods and transplanted when they were tiny seedlings. They are big trees now and will be magnificent as they get even bigger. The three other oaks are from acorns I planted. They are still pretty small, at least when compared with the giant trees around them. I also planted a catalpa tree in the meadow. It grew well for several years, but began to die back each winter. I keep it cut to shrub size now. I don’t know if sumac counts as a tree, but I have lots of it – smooth sumac in the meadow and on the bank by the barn, and a small patch of staghorn sumac at the edge of the lilac hedge. I couldn’t begin to count how many there are.

Three of the red oaks in the meadow.

The shrubby catalpa tree.

Back before disease killed all our spruce trees, I had what I called my woodland garden on the west side of the property. After those evergreen trees were removed, I decided to replace them with deciduous trees. There are dozens of them growing there now, mostly volunteer wild cherries and maples. I also planted some trees there – a hickory, a dogwood, a pair of witch hazels, and a gingko. They are all very small trees. Until all those trees grow big enough to cast some substantial shade, the “woodland garden” is mostly bracken fern and goldenrod. The ninth of the big maples, another eighty or ninety years old one, is the only big tree in the woodland garden at this point.

There are other trees in the front of the property. There’s the old crab apple tree near the west end of the house. It’s the tree that I hang my bird feeders on. It has been declining for several years. It doesn’t bloom anymore and it loses all its leaves in midsummer. I might have to take it down, which makes me sad. Beside that tree and next to the woodpile, there is a hawthorn tree that I planted to feed birds with its fruit.

I have other volunteer trees here and there in the meadow and the woodland garden – a few little June berry trees and a mountain ash tree planted by birds dropping seeds, a black walnut planted by a squirrel where the old outhouse used to be, and dozens of little hazels also planted by squirrels from nuts they took from the hedge along the edge of the orchard.

And then there’s the orchard. In the orchard I have thirty-three apple trees, two pear trees, three peach trees, two sweet cherry trees, three crab apple trees, a plum tree, and a persimmon tree. They range in size from two huge [eighty year old?] apple trees to spindly new peach and cherry trees planted just this year.

Those are the trees that I share my life with. I like to think of myself as a tree steward, or maybe a tree shepherd, like an Ent from Middle Earth, but not quite so arboreal. These trees delight me in every season of the year, from their bare fractal branches in winter, to their tender new leaves and beautiful flowers in spring, to their shade in high summer, their fruit, and their autumn splendor. I feel lucky and blessed to live among them.

After all that thoughtful reflection on trees, you might think things were calm and quiet here all week, but not so. We had a little thunderstorm on Monday, nothing exceptional, except that it caused a power outage. We were without electricity from 3:30 on Monday afternoon until 8:45 on Tuesday morning. So it was quiet, but not in the way I like. It’s amazing how much electric noise there is in the house. The refrigerator and the computer hum quietly, the well pump in the cellar comes on now and then. And when those noises stop, I start to feel uneasy. I like to think that we are prepared for such situations, but going seventeen hours without power was a reminder of how vulnerable we are. What would we do with all the refrigerated and frozen food if it thawed? I guess the pigs would have a feast. Without the well pump, we have no water in the house – no water to drink, no water for bathing. We have jugs of water we’ve saved to use to flush the toilets, but they will only last so long. I woke up during that night and tried to make my way to the bathroom. It was very dark. I bumped into the end of the bed. I ran into a dresser. I went into the living room, which still has kitchen stuff piled everywhere and collided with a table covered with cookware. I turned around and went back to my night stand and got a headlamp. It amazes me how much I am a creature of habit. All during the blackout, I turned on light switches automatically when I came into a room. I kept thinking I should check the computer. I turned on the faucet to brush my teeth. All of that on autopilot and, when the realization that nothing worked kicked in, I laughed at myself, but kept right on doing it. I was so glad when the power finally came back on. The first thing I did was get a big drink of water and then I took my delayed morning shower. And now, after seeing how difficult just seventeen hours without power was, I’m analyzing what we need to do to be better prepared for such things in the future.

Work on the kitchen continued all week, also not quiet. Sanding and painting went on through the first part of the week. They put down the new floor on Thursday. The new counters were supposed to go in and the sink and appliances were supposed to be installed on Friday, but the forecast called for heavy rain all that day so the schedule had to be adjusted. The appliance delivery was moved forward to Thursday afternoon before the floor was done. They couldn’t install the washer/dryer because of unforeseen gas and water line problems due to the age of this house. Our neighbor Ray the plumber came on Saturday and fixed that. So we are able to do laundry again. The workers will be back tomorrow to replace the counters, install the sink and dishwasher, and put the cupboard and drawers back. Then we can start putting the kitchen back together and clean up the chaos. I hope it will all be done before we leave for the family reunion on Tuesday. We’ll see.

New floor in the kitchen.

August is the month when my flowerbeds give their last big flush of flower. The poppies and other early summer flowers are done. Now there are bright patches of zinnias, rudbeckia, coneflowers, and helenium, but this the time of the tall phlox and it dominates the garden. There was one patch of phlox growing in a little flowerbed in the back yard when we moved here. It was pink with a darker eye in the middle of each flower. I expanded that little flowerbed into my long border and the phlox expanded with it. Over the years I’ve added other colors, different pinks, white, and hotter reds. They are beautiful flowers. Some of them reach five feet tall. Their sweet honey cut-hay fragrance pervades the garden. As with most flowers that I like, I want more. I want to get other colors. There are deeper purples, oranges, and even bicolored varieties – and I want them all. Next year!

Phlox in the long border.

Different colors of phlox in the long border.

Out in the big garden, my row of dahlias is in full bloom. There are so many flowers that I can hardly keep up with tending them. For once I’ve realized that, although it’s startling to admit it, I have too many dahlias. There are too many of them and most of them are the same two varieties. This fall when I dig them up to store them, I will give away or discard many of them. I want to have half of what I have. But I also want some different colors. That means I’ll get to order a few – just a few – new plants in the spring.

The aftermath of deadheading the dahlias.

The rain that arrived on Friday that disrupted all our schedules was the remnants of Tropical Storm Debby. It dumped four inches of rain on us over the course of a few hours. In Gold it wasn’t too dramatic – just pounding rain. Puddles formed in the usual places. The little creek across the road overflowed its banks. The beaver pond overflowed. But just to the east of us in Ulysses, Harrison Township, Bingham Township, and Tioga County, there were flash floods that caused a lot of damage. Roads were washed out in several places. Homes and businesses were flooded. They had to rescue people stranded by the rising water. Things like that don’t happen here very often – actually this is the first time in all the years we’ve lived here. By the afternoon the rain stopped and things started to drain. It will take some time to repair all the damage that was done.

The village of Hickox, just north of here.

Later on Friday afternoon, after Stacey got home from work, we went up to Wellsville to run errands. The road was blocked at Shongo because the river was up. We had to take a long detour through Alma to get to Wellsville. The Genesee River, which flows through the middle of Wellsville, was running high, but hadn’t overflowed its banks. Coming home, they were letting cars through on the road that was closed before. We went to the dairy over the hill from us and the roads were damaged up through Pushersiding. We drove into Ulysses to look around. The water had receded, but there was damage and debris everywhere. We stopped to talk to our friend Benj Olney at his funeral home. The water came right through his business and did a lot of damage. Tropical Storm Debby was bad news for Potter County.

Saturday was a lovely, breezy day. The sort that often comes after a stormy day. I walked the garden in the morning to assess any damage done by the rain. It was the usual – many of the top heavy plants toppled over under the weight of the rain. The pigpen was a complete bog, mud from one end to the other, but they didn’t seem to mind. I made a list of things I’ll need to do on Monday.

The mucky pigpen.

This weekend was our Stake Conference. We had meetings yesterday in the afternoon at our Stake Center in Jamestown, New York, so we were gone all afternoon and evening. We didn’t get home until 11:00. Our Stake Center is two hours away. Happily, they broadcast the Sunday meeting on Zoom today, so we didn’t have to drive four hours round trip again to attend it.

This week one of the year’s Big Events will take place – the Rathfon Reunion in North Carolina from the 13th to the 17th. We are leaving Tuesday morning to drive down. It’s a nine hour car trip. It will be great to be with so much family. I’ll tell you all about it next Sunday.