Reflections - Ghosts, Cornucopias, and a Spruce

Halloween Tree

The clump clump, of rubber wheels rattling up the wooden ramp outside, broke the monotony of folding yet another dish towel inside. I added it to the pile on the kitchen table and glanced through the sliding glass door on the sunny afternoon of October 21.

Spence tugged a piece of clothes line connected to a flat dolly. On the dolly, a three-foot spruce wobbled in an old wash tub. 

Walking in, Spence toed off his boots, plopped onto the sofa, and picked up his computer as if nothing unusual had happened.

“You bought a Christmas tree when you were in Cleveland yesterday?” My surprise made the statement come out like a question.

“I went to Gale’s for grass seed.”

I let my eyebrows communicate that his purchase didn’t resemble grass seed.

“Their truck hauling live trees rolled in. I had the best selection of the season.” He gestured toward the spruce. “It’s deer resistant.”

Going out together, we inspected the baby tree. The plastic tag read Black Hills Spruce. 

“It’s tilting a bit.” I leaned too. “Maybe you shove a shim under the root ball. You’ve done that for other Christmas trees.”

Spence rested a hand over his long-standing hernia. “I could have before.” He was scheduled for  hernia repair surgery in six days. “I can’t lift it now.” He swiveled the tub. “Is that better?” 

The tree appeared virtually straight. “It’s perfect.” I hustled inside and gazed through the sliding glass door at the diminutive spruce—adorable yet looking a bit forlorn with its bare branches.

Decorate it.

Ten days before Halloween? Too early for Christmas decorations.

Create a Halloween tree.

That’s crazy!

Crazy never stopped you yet.

I raced up the spiral stairs.

“Slow down,” Spence shouted from his sofa office.

Kneeling, I dug through a storage box of neglected holiday decorations. I unearthed a thirteen-foot string of candy corn light bulbs, the perfect size. Descending the stairs at an old lady pace earned me a, “That’s better,” from Spence.

“Do we have an outdoor extension cord?” I asked.

Groaning, he slid his computer onto the coffee table, tramped  outside, connected an extension cord, and looped it through the sliding glass door handle. Hands on his hips he asked, “Do you need anything else?”

“Nope.” I plugged in the lights. They glowed orange at the tip and yellow on the bottom. “I’m set. Thanks.” 

He disappeared.

Winding the lights around the spruce branches, I pried the double strands open with my fingers and slipped the cords over the flexible needles. The spruce released a spicy fragrance. Ande, monitoring from the other side of the glass door, put his paw up as if to touch the lights. I joined him inside to appraise my work. Still too bare.

My children had made simple ghosts in elementary school. Grabbing the tissue box and white thread, I set to work at the kitchen table. I puffed the center of each tissue into a head and tied a string around the neck.

Gilbert put his paws on my leg.

“Not a cuddling time, Gil.”

He jumped onto the table and whipped his tail, sending three of my creations to the floor.

“You’re a little thunderstorm.” I lifted him off the table and retrieved the ghosts. Their flimsy texture squished in my fingers. Gilbert had triggered a duh moment. Caught in rain, the tissue ornaments would melt into yuck. I tossed them.

Fetching pinking shears and white fabric from my scrap box, I settled at the kitchen table again. 

Gilbert leapt into the clutter and kneaded the fabric.

The pinking shears crunched.

Gilbert’s tail fluffed and vibrated.

Hacking tissue-size squares with the crunching shears launched Gilbert. He leapt from the table, landed mid way across the great room, and scampered behind the dusty wood stove—still useful to hiding cats in our geothermal furnace days.

Later, I juggled double handfuls of cloth ghosts out to the deck. Wide cat eyes peeked around the stove and through the sliding screen door. The bright second summer sun warmed the spruce, me, and too many ladybugs. As I eased the strings over spruce needles, the polka-dotted bugs crawled across my fingers. Gritting my teeth, I resisted the urge to squish the uninvited-ticklers because they do belong outside. They also release a vengeful stench if bothered.

Flicking my fingers to fling the latest arriving ladybug, I hung the fifteenth ornament and stepped back. The candy corn lights glowed. The ghosts shimmied in the breeze. And I felt pleased. Dark doubled my delight.

The lights turned into a sparkling orange spiral radiating into the dark. The gaggle of ghosts, swaying under the modest deck light meant to discourage visiting bears, shone dazzling white. Though no trick-or-treaters passed the magical spruce on Halloween night, two babies rolled close in their double seated stroller.

Determined to shed extra pounds gained baring her youngsters, Gretchen, the township secretary-treasurer, walked up and down West Creek Road with her two-and-a-half-year-old daughter and nine-month-old son on random afternoons. “That is so cute,” she later emailed about the ghost tree. “What fun there is in little things.”

 

Sewing a Cornucopia Ornament

A week after Halloween I rummaged through my sewing stash again—this time for the Thanksgiving fabric I’d bought at a quilt shop closing sale years back. Pairing opposite facing cornucopias with batting in between, I quilted the ornaments despite Gilbert’s tail whipping the black thread. He left when I trimmed the edges with the pinking shears—crunch, crunch—he dreads. That let me complete the other ornaments on my own.

Proud of the quilted cornucopias, I dangled one between Spence’s computer and his nose.

“Great.” He reached for the ornament and traced its edge with a finger. “Looks like a fish.”

A fish with pumpkins and sunflowers sticking out of a horn? He did have a point about the shape, though. I trudged outside. 

Easing off the ghosts, I slipped on the cornucopias. A breeze fluttered the quilted ornaments like a flock of flitting sparrows. I had a notion that something about the tree had changed. Maybe the crows, squawking in the woods, knew, but the change eluded me. It wasn’t needles that fell off the tips of the branches and onto piles of dry needles below. As if caressing a baby’s cheek, I stroked other needles—still soft and supple.

Jogging inside to fetch the turkey ornament for the top, I said to Spence. “The spruce is dry and losing needles at the end of branches.”

“Oh. I forgot to water it yesterday.” He put his hands on my shoulders. “I’ll water it today. No worries.”

After endangering my fingers by twisting poky wires to attach the eight-inch feathered turkey ornament to the top, I stepped back and looked through the cell phone camera’s viewfinder. The elusive difference came into focus. Gravity tilted the spruce further. With Spence and I both post surgery (mine the end of September and his the end of October), neither of us could correct it. Instead, I would rotate the photo on the computer to straighten the tree. 

Rotating the tree in the photo, however, tilted the deck railing at a reckless thirty-five degree angle, much worse than the deck had sunk before Sparky repaired it. I settled for cropping the photo to the top of the spruce. That enlarged the turkey—its soft brown tail feathers, bright red neck, and beady yellow eyes.

Dusk fell, the bear-deterrent light came on, and the new ornaments faded into the gray-green shadows of the branches. No dazzle. No magic. Only the spiral of orange lights sparkled.

I imagined our daughter Ellen, bubbling with stories, bouncing into the house ahead of her husband Chris and their corgi Lyra on Thanksgiving Eve at the end of their long drive from Indiana. Ellen would point at the spruce, bat her long eyelashes, and ask, “Why did you string orange lights on your Christmas tree?”

Comforted by this vision of her impending surprise and satisfied by my goal of transitioning the spruce from Halloween to Thanksgiving, I busied myself preparing for the Thanksgiving visitors—pureeing the pumpkins Spence bought along Route 322 and scrubbing the basement bathroom, which earned me a nickel size spider bite on my derriere.

Then the phone rang.

Tuesday morning before Thanksgiving the scraping of Spence stirring my oatmeal stopped. He answered. “Hello. Wells Wood.”

In the loft I stretched into downward facing dog pose and wondered if one of his co-volunteers had called to cancel a meeting during his Cleveland trip later that day.

A cheery, “Hi, Ellen,” floated up to the loft. Then Spence’s serious voice said, “She’s doing yoga.” Footsteps clanged up the metal stairs. 

Ellen calling rather than texting and Spence interrupting my yoga rather than taking a message sent my heart plummeting to my knees. I paused the yoga video.

Spence reached the landing and gave me the phone. “Ellen has a nine o’clock meeting. Don’t talk long.” He patted my shoulder. “Your breakfast’s in the oven. I’m going.” And he left.

Holding the phone to my ear, I asked, “What’s up, honey?”

“Christopher’s got the flu. He’s in bed with a fever and chills.” She paused. “We would have to leave at this time tomorrow. We won’t be able to come.”

“So you’re canceling.” I slumped onto a chair.

“No. postponing.”

With wishes for Chris’s speedy recovery and her flu shot to protect her, I let her hustle off to her meeting. Perhaps they would see the spruce in its Christmas makeover.

In the meantime, our son Charlie, cradling and petting a Rills, stopped me in the great room with a question. “How are you going to decorate the tree for Martin Luther King Day?”

“I won’t. The tree needs to be planted as soon as possible after Christmas.” I gestured to the spruce on the other side of the sliding glass door. “It’s already dropping needles.”

Charlie shook his shaved head and set the cat down. “Not going to happen.” Grinning, his dimples deepened. “So, how are you going to decorate for Martin Luther King Day?”

 

Thanksgiving Tree

 Reflections - Leaf Man

Spence Raking Leaves on West Creek Road

We don’t agree. Spence views leaf composting as a recipe. To me it’s a nightmare.

I admit I didn’t hold this position until 1:30 p.m. on October 27 when I sat in a Grove City Hospital pre-op, post-op room—but I’m getting ahead of myself. 

The second week of October, Spence and I ambled along West Creek Road under an array of gold, rust, and crimson foliage. I inhaled the fragrance of decaying leaves. Spence scanned the berm and pointed at a leaf pile. “I’ll collect those for compost.”

“Nature will turn them into compost.”

“My recipe works faster.” 

“Recipe?” I stooped to pet a woolly caterpillar with a long orange middle. The unappreciative wriggler curled into a ball.                

“Carbon, nitrogen.” He extended a finger for each ingredient. “Air and a little water.”

“Leaves, your main ingredient, are carbon. What’s the nitrogen?”

“Tom and Kathy’s cow manure.” He glanced in the direction of their farm. “I layer six tractor buckets of leaves. Then spread one bucket of manure.” He swirled his hands over an imaginary plain. “It’s like mixing pizza dough. Only the compost shrinks, not rises. So I stir it up. I don’t punch it down.”

“May I photograph you gathering leaves?”

“Another time.” Still super-protective, because of my September 26 surgery, he guided me up the freshly stained ramp and through the front door. “You need to rest in princess mode.”

The rumble of Spence’s compact tractor outside several days later sent me scrambling for my cell phone—not as heavy as the camera. I hustled outside and followed the noise up West Creek Road.

Spence jumped off his cherry red Mahindra and pushed both hands down a couple of times. “Slow down.”

“I didn’t want to miss getting pictures.” Rounding the tractor, I focused the camera on Spence.

“You’re in plenty of time.” With the blessing of the township roadmaster, who curses leaves clogging the drainage ditches, Spence raked. With strokes as smooth as ballet dancer’s movements, his rake scraped along the berm, in and out of ditches. Spence formed a leaf mound, resembling a windrow, which ran along the edge of the dirt road. Mounting the tractor, he set the speed icon at turtle-low, crept along, and scooped leaves into the six-cubic-foot front bucket. He hopped down, raked more, and stuffed bunches into corners.

Laying the rake on top of the leaves, Spence put the tractor in gear and trundled down the road, around the garage, to the compost piles in the field below the north garden.

I ambled after.

To keep wind from liberating the leaves, Spence put three-foot chicken wire around the piles—a seven-foot diameter circle around one and a nine-by-seven foot oval around the other. His leaf haul whooshed out of the bucket. Spence raked the leaves to smooth the piles and prevent clumping. “I’m ready for more manure.”

Spence Dumping Leaves onto Compost Pile

Though he’d already hauled manure this season, he called our friends again. “Hey, Tom and Kathy. This is Spence. I’ll be down for more manure. I hope it’s convenient for you.” He hung up and slipped into work boots.

“They already gave you permission. Why did you call again?”

“Because it’s polite. And they might shoot,” he bent to fasten the Velcro straps, “if they thought a stranger was robbing their manure pile.”

I didn’t ask the obvious, What thief would steal manure? Instead, I said, “They aren’t hunters. They won’t have guns.”

“They do have guns.” He stepped onto the porch. “To shoot predators stalking their animals.”

And I didn’t accompany him on the three-mile drive. With the Mahindra speed lever pushed to the top rabbit-icon, the trip’s still tedious. I pestered for details on his return.

The manure pile is eighteen feet high, shaped like a pyramid, and an eighth of a mile downhill from the barn. “It’s next to the upper cow pasture. Cows don’t pay any attention. The bull is curious. He comes to the fence and watches,” Spence said. Lowering the bucket to ground level, Spence drove into the freshest part of the pile, lifted the bucket, and backed up. He used the hay fork to rearrange the manure in the bucket so it wouldn't fall out. Then he evened out the load and cleaned any mess that fell on the ground. 

Hearing the tractor rumbling back, I grabbed my cell phone and headed to the compost piles. 

Spence forked the steaming manure onto the leaves. “Later I’ll add lime. It sweetens the mix for bacteria.” He raked the manure smooth. “I’ll add kitchen scraps too. That attracts—”

“Worms.” I knew from years of tending a worm factory to generate compost for my pansies and strawberries. “They eat the leaves and poop, soil enrichment.”

By October 25, Spence had collected thirty-four tractor buckets of leaves and six of manure, establishing the compost piles before his surgery to repair a long-standing hernia. 

 

Spence Forking Manure onto Compost Pile

That brings me to 1:30 p.m. at Grove City Hospital on Thursday, October 27 and my nightmare.

The hospital sent a text alerting me that Spence was in recovery. I envisioned him dozing to the melody of beeping monitors, but Spence said he’d been wide awake. The anesthesia made him chatty. Ignoring the nurses monitoring his vitals, Spence listened to their dog stories and contributed escapades of his impish buddy Rills. 

Alone in Spence’s pre-op, post-op room, I perched on a princess pillow and tweaked my deck blog. Dr. Sciullo paused at the doorway and, without a hello or everything’s going to be fine, blurted, “He had a decent sized hernia.” The doctor shook his head, seemingly impressed with the hernia’s magnitude. “You got to hold him back for a couple of weeks so he can heal. I know he likes to do all those outdoor things.” And, giving me no time to thank the doctor or ask a question, he hustled off. 

Hold Spence back from leaf collecting or “outdoor things” as Dr. Sciullo put it? My nightmare.

Waiting to be wheeled into the operating room, Spence had wiggled his toes in brown hospital socks. “Leaves are piled across from Rob’s. I’ll collect them Monday. Maybe Tuesday.”

Nature provided plenty of leaves. Cows kept the manure coming. Spence had acres of garden to spread the compost on. He wanted to make more. How could I stop him?

Easing around curves and slowing for our bumpy dirt road, I drove Spence home from the hospital. He immediately concocted a pizza on a pita bread for himself. At least he let me wash the dishes.

Over the weekend he cooked three meals a day, insisted on accompanying me for half hour health walks, and persisted in scooping cat litter boxes. I’d done the last task before my surgery and could have resumed it, but Spence insisted I rest after writing at my desk for an hour. He got on all fours so his incision would only ache, not sear through him like a hot fire poker.

Though Spence pampered me following my operation, he followed a different principle for himself. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

At least it rained Monday. Figuring he couldn’t collect leaves, I relaxed. I shouldn’t have. 

Instead of hopping onto his tractor, he hopped into his hot pepper red Maverick, drove to Meadville, and shopped—at Giant Eagle, Get Go, Home Depot, the Post Office, and Auto Zone. 

While he was gone, the phone rang. A chipper voice said, “I’m a nurse from AHN. May I speak with Spencer?”

Gulp. I’d flunked my hold-him-back directive. “He’s not here right now. May I take a message?”

“Maybe you can answer my questions. I’m calling to follow up on how he’s doing after his surgery.”

Admit failure? No, I lied. “He missed driving his new hybrid truck so much, he took it out for a ride.”

Peals of laughter came through the line. “That’s good.” Without saying goodbye, she hung up.

Pale-faced and foot-dragging on his return, Spence laughed at the missing-his-truck story too. He set a couple of small grocery bags on the kitchen table, reached for extra strength Tylenol, and collapsed onto the sofa for a long nap.

Our son Charlie brought in the rest of Spence’s purchases.

I did a rain dance. It worked for a few days.

Spence busied himself polishing an analysis of the two approaches to lead poisoning—poisoned babies and poisoned houses—for an opinion piece in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. He attended ZOOM meetings and called folks about lead issues. He even let me drive him to his diabetes eye exam. We made it through one week without any leaf man tractor driving.

The beginning of the second week, Spence nudged Rills off his lap, pulled the sweats he wears for pajamas down, and traced a finger around his glued incision. “I’ll rake when the swelling’s down.”

Alarmed, I cut Gilbert’s morning cuddle short and dropped the tabby into a chair. “Maybe it would be better to wait until after you see Dr. Sciullo on the fifteenth.”

“No. Raking builds muscles.” He walked to the dresser for his clothes. “Don’t worry.”

As if! Dr Sciullo hadn’t charged Spence with the impossible directive. 

The next several mornings I abandoned my usual, How did you sleep, greeting and asked Spence, “Is your swelling down?”

He grumbled sad negatives until he said, “No. It’s up.”

“Up?”

He held his hand where his left legs met his torso. “It was swollen below the incision.” He moved his hand to mid abdomen level. “It’s swollen above now. Progress.”

Wherever the swellings, they kept him off the tractor. They didn’t prevent him risking all day outings to Cleveland in his new hybrid Maverick averaging over fifty miles a gallon—twice. 

The first trip fell on a Friday, eight days after his surgery and a fifth of the time past mine. He left Wells Wood at 9:00 a.m. calling over his shoulder, “Charlie can do laundry. Let him help you.”

Waving, I didn’t argue. Our son wouldn’t return from work until early afternoon. Dr. Ackenbom had given permission for me to lift twenty pounds. Feeling strong and invincible, I belted out Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman” and sorted dirty laundry.

However, Spence’s day-long trip—driving to Cleveland, racing from meeting to meeting, and shopping at several stores without the possibility of taking a nap—ignited the worry monster in my stomach. 

The phone rang three times before noon.

The first time I dried my soapy hands and picked up the receiver to hear Spence's concerned voice ask, “How are you?’

“Fine. Just washing the breakfast dishes.”

“Okay, take it easy today.”

On the second call he asked, “Are you resting?”

Luckily, I’d finished clearing the kitchen clutter, feeding the worms, scooping the litter boxes, and pushing the setting buttons for the first load of laundry. “Yep. I’m in princess mode on the bed working on the next blog.”

A sigh came through the line so loud that it woke Ande, who’d been snoozing beside me, and set his pointy cat ears twitching.

Spence didn’t ask about my health on the third call. He said, “I bought you five pie pumpkins. They cost a dollar each.” We chatted about freezing pumpkin puree before he casually slipped in his main question. “So, what are you doing?”

During his second trip to Cleveland, he only sent texts reminding me to rest. 

My nightmare ends in two days. I hope. I’d planned to drive Spence to his post-op appointment like he drives me to mine.

He vetoed that. “I can drive myself. You’re welcome to ride along.”

I’ll go, of course—dreading Dr. Sciullo’s ire because I didn’t hold Spence back enough. Realistically, only anesthesia could have done that. Spence scribbles to do lists and forges ahead. I’m betting he’s smart enough to run his body within its limit rather than risk being barred from future leaf man activities.

 

Spence Mixing Manure with Leaves