Happy Monday! I hope you had a lovely weekend. The weather in the Carolinas was gorgeous so instead of working on this post over the weekend I was playing in the trees. Not like hanging in them, but hacking away at them with the hacksaw and loppers.
If you’ve read my blog for any length of time you know my tree nemesis, the Chinese Privet or as I sometimes call it, the Chinaberry. Here’s a photo of the pretty white blossoms that fill the branches and cascade like a wedding bouquet. Each one of those florets is a berry hiding in a white dress.
This is a photo of one of the trees, easily 15-20 ft. tall or more, so you get an idea of how they fill the woods. And the potential of those berries becoming more trees, thanks to the birds eating those non-nutritious little BBs and redepositing them throughout the yard. From my kitchen window I can see these trees in bloom, like a wedding bower throughout the edge of my woods. I admit, it does look pretty. But looks can be deceiving. This year’s Chinaberry project was whacking down those trees before they produced the berries. Timing is everything.
When in a crowded space like the woods, Chinese privet grows straight up (along with accompanying offshoots) and opens like an umbrella once they find a gap and sunlight. It then blocks other trees from getting any of it. It’s a greedy one. As I sawed the trunks and pulled the trees out, watching for other crashing limbs in the process, I marveled at the patches of sunlight dappling through. A bit like being in a Monet painting. I could almost hear the skinny baby maples, oaks, dogwoods, and elms whisper ‘Thank you.’
After one big tree came down, it was obvious I’d closed up that chinaberry umbrella! I was standing in a sunlight spotlight. But what I thought of was last week’s blog post on grace. How bringing grace can mean doing the exhausting work of rooting out something that looks pretty, but is actually harmful, and how quickly grace fills the space.
This is one of the privet piles from the weekend. It’s about 30-35 ft. long, over 4 ft. high in some places. The other piles are a little smaller. Yesterday when we returned from mass, the leaves and flowers on the privet piles were already browning and shriveling. It didn’t take long, but timing is everything.
Now when I look out my window all I see is green. Well, mostly. My peripheral vision is pretty good so I can still see those few blooming trees I have to whack out tomorrow.
Last year’s Chinaberry project was eliminating the stumps after taking out the two largest trees. They towered over the house. The trunks weren’t single trunks but a flowering of mini trunks. We cut the trees down to ‘multi-stemmed’ stumps, then Hubby drilled holes, about an inch deep, in each stem. Since last fall, once or twice a month I pack the holes with Epsom salts and pour boiling water into them. Yes, I could’ve gotten someone to grind the stumps, but that doesn’t take care of all the tree-like roots that have spread across the yard and started their own little forests with shoots. The Epsom salt goes into the root system, drying everything out from the inside.
This is from this morning. The dark spot in the middle is a hole that’s now 8 inches deep. The rest of the holes are between 2 and 4 inches deep, but now there are holes Hubby didn’t make as bugs tunnel their way in and out. The bark chips off like dried paint. Instead of a solid thud when I hit the stump, it rings hollow. Yes, grinding the stump would’ve been quicker, but not as effective. Timing is everything.
I watch in fascination as the stump slowly dries up from the inside, and wonder if there’s a way to dry up hate from the inside.
A couple weeks ago I highlighted my friend Irene Blair Honeycutt’s book of poetry, Mountains of the Moon. One of her poems made me think of some of my Chinaberry stumps. Irene writes in ‘When You See a Shelf Mushroom’ ‘…Though the shelf rarely feasts/on living tissue, it can decompose/the heartwood of trees, gaining entry/through wounds caused by humans …How it causes rot, yet heals–/offering herbals to the world/recycling carbon/playing many parts in the forest/of entrances and exits.
As I’ve watched the fungi frill and expand across the stump I filled with Epsom salts, I’m amazed at how it simply overtakes the stump, breaks it down, changes its composition.
Kinda like love.
I learn a lot playing in the dirt and hanging out with nature. One important lesson I’m getting at the moment, is timing is everything.
May the week treat you well, maybe go out and play in the dirt. I’ll be back at my window on Monday. I hope you’ll join me!
A Writer's Window 