Reflections - Tree of Peace

White Pine on Deck

 

 

Buckled into a narrow seat September 8, I put my hand on Spence’s knee. The airplane bumped through air pockets during our flight east to his college friend’s memorial. “We could plant a white pine in Jeff’s memory, a Tree of Peace like Chief Jake Swamp planted in Cook Forest.” Jeff had worked for world peace and loved nature, especially birds.

Spence covered my hand with his. “Good idea.”

“The pine could be our Christmas tree.” I’d lobbied for white pines before. They have softer needles than spruces and firs. And the piney fragrance beats the sweet spicy scent of the others.

“No. Pines don’t have a Christmas tree shape. We’ll plant it this fall.”

“Okay.” A fir or spruce would prick me again this holiday season.

We needed to find a white pine. Drive to a nursery, inspect the pines, and buy the prettiest. Simple. Making sure the nursery had white pines first made even more sense. I spent a day around the fall equinox on the phone. “Do you have any three-foot white pine trees with root balls?” I figured Spence could manage that size using his tractor and a dolly.

A dozen monotonous negatives came through the receiver: “No,” “no white pines,” or “just six footers.” Two nurseries offered hope.

A kind representative at Johnston Evergreen Nursery & Garden Center south of Erie said, “We usually have four-to-five-foot trees. Give me your phone number. I’ll look around and call you back.”

He didn’t call.

The nurseryman at Gales Garden Center in Willoughby Hills said in a hurried voice, as if rushing off to lunch, “We get small trees in for the holiday season. Check back then.”

Holiday season? The white pine might be our Christmas tree before we plant it.

Early October, I cornered Spence in the great room. “I don’t want Jeff’s tree planted in a bunch. I want it to stand alone.”

“A feature tree.” Spence folded his arms across his chest.

“I also want to be able to see it when I wash dishes.” Walking to the kitchen, I glanced out the window. “Where the wood pile is perfect, but . . .”

“I'm planning to move the wood.” He flashed me his “no worries” look. “I’m waiting for cold weather. I want the snakes to go underground first.”

Cold weather? The white pine would be our Christmas tree—if we found one.

Spence joined the search. Since he’d purchased last year’s Christmas tree at Gales on October 20, he checked there at the end of October this year. “No trees yet,” he told me that night. “The young woman in overalls said they’d get their trees in November. They would have three-foot white pines.”

“Great!” He had better luck than I did.

November came. Spence’s trips to Cleveland got hectic. He didn’t have time to stop at Gales. So I called. The female voice who answered said, “White pine? Is that a tree?”

Figuring the person must be a new seasonal employee, I patiently said “yes” and waited to be transferred to the garden center.

A man cleared his throat. “There’s a fifty-fifty chance we’ll have white pines. They’ll come in around Thanksgiving.”

Yikes! I’d wanted the tree decorated on Thanksgiving for Ellen and her husband Chris’s visit.

 

Johnston Garden Center

At the breakfast table November 7, I phoned Johnston Evergreen Nursery & Garden Center again. “Do you have three-foot white pines?”

The man, who introduced himself as Richard, said, “We only have four-to-five-foot white pines.”

“Thanks. Four-foot trees are too big. My husband and I are in our seventies. We’ll try for a three-foot tree in Cleveland.” I disconnected.

Spence, resting his feet in a chair, glanced up from his laptop. “Call him back. I could manage a four footer. I just need help loading it.”

I pressed redial.

“I’ll put in a dig order for a three-or-four-foot tree.” Richard paused, perhaps scribbling the order. “You can pick it up next week.”

Finally, we had a tree.

I asked Spence, “What day next week can you drive to Erie?”

“Why?”

“To get the white pine.”

“I’m getting the tree at Gales.”

Biting the inside of my mouth, I stopped myself from yelling, You told me to call Johnston’s! I took a deep yoga breath. “We don’t know if Gales will have a tree. Johnston’s has one.”

He growled. “Call first.”

Monday, November 13, I forced a confident voice and told the Johnston’s representative who answered the phone, “My name is Janet Wells. I have a dig order for a three-to-four-foot white pine. Is the tree ready?”

“Hold on one minute.” The young male voice returned sooner than a minute. “We don’t have any three-to-four-foot trees. We only have four-to-five-foot trees, but they have the same size root ball as the three-to-four-foot trees would have. There are fifteen to choose from.”

Would we ever find a three-foot white pine? “We’ll be there tomorrow unless I call you back.” I hung up and dialed Gales.

Their phone rang and rang and rang. The gruff voice answering in the nursery had wretched news. “All our trees are in. We didn’t get any white pines.”

No choice. We buy the white pine at Johnston’s or nowhere. Could Spence really manage the four-foot tree?

Passing the witch hazel trees on our health walk that afternoon, I asked. “Do you think you can roll a four-foot white pine up the ramp to the deck?”

“Why? We’re getting another tree for Christmas.” He stepped off the road and fingered the empty nut shells.

“Buying two trees doesn’t make sense. They’re expensive.”

“But we agreed.”

“Yes, if we got the pine in September or October. It’s a week before Thanksgiving.”

He grumbled. “If you want.”

The next morning, both of us wore sunglasses for the hour drive in the Maverick. Spence turned off the interstate onto gently rolling hills. We passed fields of evergreens in all sizes then fields of huge hoop houses. Johnston’s tan Evergreen Nursery building appeared first. The Garden Center was a quarter mile further down the road. No plants, fertilizers, or garden gadgets were on display. Two young men looked up from paperwork behind a counter when we entered.

“We’re the Welles.” I used a soft, firm teacher voice. “We have a dig order for a white pine.”

The first young man rolled his chair to the computer. “Let me check the location of the pines.” His fingers tapped keys. “Okay, we’ll check on them and come back.”

“Can’t we go too?” After the fifty-mile trip from Wells Wood, I didn’t want to stay in the office.

“Sure. Follow us,” the second worker said. “I think we’ll be in a red truck.”

They grabbed jackets and keys. Outside, the second young man shouted, “Actually it’s the green truck.”

We followed them to a hoop house beside the tan nursery building we passed driving in.

 

Evergreen Hoop House

In the hoop house, evergreens, bunched by variety, stood on their canvas covered rootballs along the sides.

I wished I’d worn boots like the fellas. My good shoes squished in the muddy gravel halfway down the hoop house to the white pines.

The first young man pointed to a tree with a tag and plastic streamers. “Richard marked this one for you, but you can pick any tree you want.”

Richard chose a full, shapely pine. It was also the shortest and prettiest. Spence and I agreed. “We’ll take the one Richard marked.”

The young men waved gloved hands at each other. The first one said, “I’ll get the forklift.”

“Do you have a dolly?” I interrupted the fellas. “I want to be sure Spence can move the tree.”

Either the fellas were terrific salesmen or they had crazy grandmothers who they humored. The second one fetched the dolly and showed me how to tilt the tree so Spence could slide the dolly under it. Humoring me too, Spence moved the tree over the muddy gravel.

“Wait! How will he get the tree out of the truck?”

“Easy.” The second young man maneuvered the tree to the center of the hoop house and signaled the forklift. “He can slide it out and let it drop to the ground.”

I gasped.

“It won’t hurt the tree. It will be fine.”

The forklift rolled in, grabbed the rootball, and whisked the pine to the Maverick with its tailgate down. Spence wrapped Great Grandma Michael’s nine patch quilt around the rootball and trunk. The fellas used bungee cords to secure the tree.

“That’s good enough for now.” The first young man handed Spence the bed extender (a gate to hold cargo in when the tailgate is down). “We’ll put burlap around the branches at the garden center.”

At the garden center, the men wrapped the tree. I went inside to pay. 

Richard, a bald, middle aged man, waited for me. “I lifted four trees with their ropes to be sure your husband could manage with a dolly. I chose the lightest tree. It happened to be the prettiest.”

“Thank you. You did a great job.” I handed him my credit card. “The tree is beautiful.”

Back at Wells Wood, Spence parked in front of the log house and removed the bed extender. With an oomph, he shoved the tree a couple of inches. I couldn’t imagine how he’d manage sliding it across the whole bed and tailgate. He wrapped bungee cords around the ball, put on garden gloves, and tugged. The cords expanded like elastic. I figured he’d need to get rope. He didn’t get a rope. He tugged some more. The cords stopped expanding, and the tree slid to the end of the tail gate.

Spence nudged the tree. Thud. It landed, wobbled, and, as the young man promised, survived unharmed.

I tilted the tree. Spence pushed the dolly under the rootball and rolled the pine—two feet. The tree slipped off the dolly. We put the tree back on the dolly, and he rolled a bit more. The pine slid off the dolly much easier than it slid across the truck bed. Repeatedly remounting the pine, Spence rolled it into place by the sliding glass deck doors.

Unlike other Christmas trees Spence had rolled onto the deck, the white pine tree didn’t look forlorn without ornaments. Its lush green needles and bushy shape gave it a healthy glow.

Inside, I heated a bowl of homemade chicken barley soup, gazed at the tree through the glass door, and ate. Maybe I could wait to decorate.

An extension cord popped through the outside deck door handle. Spence stepped inside. “Your electric cord is ready. You can decorate after lunch.” He walked to the sofa and settled down for a nap.

He’d helped so much and he didn’t even want the white pine to be our Christmas tree. I dumped the soup bowl in the sink and fetched the decorations.

While I reached up to affix a peace dove to the long leader, sunshine rather than blowing snow hit my head. Soft pine needles caressed my fingers. I slipped on cardinals, a turkey, and an ornate bejeweled bird that would have made our friend Jeff smile. After hanging bird ornaments for bird loving Jeff, I completed decorating with our traditional sand dollars, gold garlands, and white lights. The tree gave me occasional whiffs of its piney fragrance.

Because the day revolved around the white pine, we didn’t take our health walk until dusk. A lone crow cawed. Other birds had settled for the night. Rounding the bend, lights on the white pine tree sparkled in the gloaming. Jeff's memorial tree, his Tree of Peace, had become our Christmas tree. The long journey, begun as an idea on a plane ride September 8, had ended. The spirit of peace and Christmas welcomed us home.

 

Ornamental Red Bird

 

 Reflections - Pumpkins, Bats, and Snakes, Oh My!

Rills and Bat Eye to Eye

On August 15, Halloween hadn’t occurred to me as the solution.

I got up early, at 5:20 a.m. to be exact, and waved to my son Charlie, who was writing at the desk in the guest room. Expecting to finish ablutions and my own morning writing before 8:00, first I strolled to the great room for cat cuddles. The cats lined up side by side by side in front of the wood stove’s glass door. The alert furry brothers glared at something inside.

“A bat.” Charlie walked into the room, rubbed my upper arm, and left for work at UPS.

The bat must have flown into the chimney during last night’s thunderstorm. The critter needed to fly out. Twilight lit the tiny opening at the top of the chimney. Hopefully, the bat would sense the opening and fly out tonight.

I fetched my phone and tapped the camera app.

Tails swished. Paws rapped the glass. Cats swarmed, changing positions.

The bat flew across the firebox, trudged through ashes, and crawled up fire bricks.

Gilbert moseyed to the water fountain. A few minutes later, Ande abandoned the bat to gobble cat crunchies. Rills hovered at the stove.

The winged critter crawled slower and slower.

My normal plan for freeing uninvited critters is to trap them in containers and let them loose outside.

“Be careful.” Spence interrupted his computer headline reading. “Bats have rabies.”

Open the firebox door and chance the bat escaping into the house? Nope. Not me.

Sunlight rose over the wooded hill and shone through the sliding glass deck door. The bat crawled behind the fire bricks to get out of the light. The cats collapsed for naps. I scooped them up, cuddled them, and started morning activities—way late.

At dark, the bat appeared in the firebox. Cats patted the glass and twitched their tails. I headed for bed and monitored activities by thumps and bumps. In the middle of the night I woke to Charlie chuckling—over cat antics no doubt.

The bat had two choices—fly up the chimney or die.

Several days later, the cats completely ignored the firebox. Fingers crossed that the bat had discovered the way out, I peered inside. Drat. “Spence, the bat died.”

“You can take it out.” He flipped a potato pancake in the skillet. “Or I’ll get to it.”

With our new geothermal heating system, I figured he would clear the ashes in time to light a yule log. Did I want to do the deed?

Behind the glass firebox door, the bat wings were spread on the ashes as if an exhibit at a natural history museum. People decorate for Halloween with bats. Nature provided this one in a Halloweeny thunderstorm. I didn’t remove the bat. It could be a Halloween decoration.

For a month and a half before others decorated, the bat reposed. Only I acknowledged its true purpose.

Early in October neighbors decorated—skeletons with sickles guarded tombstones, plastic bats dangled from fake cobwebs, dried corn stalks backed harvested pumpkins. Time arrived for me to hang more visible decorations.

Kneeling by a plastic storage tub in the loft, I dug past painted eggs and the red, white, and blue hats. At the bottom, under noise makers, lay three bundles of the ornamental corn Spence managed to grow despite deer raids years back. The dried husks rustled. Gilbert poked his nose into the storage box. I pushed him out. Hanging one cluster on the front door, I kept Gilbert inside with my foot. The other clusters adorned the wall by the kitchen clock. The rustling stopped and Gil wandered off.

 

Ornamental Corn

Ande investigated when I banged push pins into wood paneling at the end of the hall. He pawed my jeans to make me stop. I didn't so he retreated to the basement. Over the push pins, I hung the quilted attic window wall hanging of fall maples and oaks from Anne of Green Gables Lover’s Lane.

Last, I hung the quilted hanging with three pumpkins and a black cat in the great room. Rills circled my feet. So close to the food bowls, he possibly thought I might add to his dwindling supply. 

Rills raised his nose, sniffing the new addition.

I glanced at the bat in the wood stove. Encased in its exhibit cage, it didn’t emit the stench of rotting critters that occasionally affronts Spence and me on health walks.

Health walks in October took us down our dirt road past the witch hazel trees with the exploding nuts or up the road to Flickengers’ horse pasture, 1851 farmhouse, and the neighborhood’s best fall decorations. The dirt road itself became a fall canvas.

The hickory trees produced a bountiful harvest this year. Squirrels and chipmunks left many nuts scattered across the road. Tires squashed the hulls creating fuzzy dark brown polka dots the diameter of tennis balls. Each passing pickup and trailer, like a steam roller, compacted the lumps into splotchy parts of the road surface.

Open topped Shearer’s dump trucks, that carried grains from silos to mills, sprinkled yellow corn kernels. The kernels only decorated the road a day or two. Squawking crows and blue jays swooped down to gobble the colorful treat.

On a dreary earlobe-chilling day, wind thrashed treetops. Leaves showered the road, smacked Spence in the face, and hit the side of my head. Crimson, amber and russet leaves skittered or glided across the hard packed dirt adding color. Over time they darkened. Like the hickory husks, tires flattened the tawny and brown leaves into the dirt making a smooth mosaic of brown on brown.

One day near the end of the month, Spence grabbed my arm and pulled. “Watch your step.”

Under my raised foot lay the silver belly of an unmoving snake in a squiggly shape. “Thanks.” I’d been checking the treetops. Half had bare branches. I focused on the road and pushed Spence away from the next snake, shaped like a treble clef. We continued, dodging the newest road decorations. Snakes had slithered in search of a hibernaculum for the cooling weather. About a dozen hadn’t reached their goal. Silver bellies, and one neon-orange, curled in twisted shapes.

By the time we reached Flickenger’s farm, dodging so many snakes—I prefer snakes one at a time—had boosted my courage. I dared more. “Spence, do you think Charlie or Deb would mind if I trespassed to get a picture of her decorations?” They’re friendly neighbors, but I hadn’t called ahead. I don’t venture onto others' property without asking permission.

Spence squinted. “His truck isn’t here. Maybe they’re not home.”

Not confident, but wanting a picture of the three pumpkins atop the bale of straw in front of the antique plow, I walked up the driveway.

No one came outside. I couldn’t ask.

I inched across the grass, whipped out my phone, and focused on the pumpkins.

 

Pumpkins at Flickengers' House

A car engine rumbled down the road. Tires ground on the driveway behind me.

“Busted,” Spence said.

Gulp. Was he joking? Wishing I’d waited for permission, I snapped three quick photos and stuffed the phone into a pocket. I would apologize for intruding.

Deb left her engine running and stepped out of the car.

Spence shouted, “You won the Janet prize for best decorations. She wanted to get a picture.”

Deb broke into a jack-o’-lantern size grin. “Pumpkins are so expensive. I found those in Amish country at a reasonable price.”

Duh! Of course she didn’t mind. I shared Deb’s smile and walked with Spence to join her in the driveway.

“We don’t get pumpkins until November first.” Spence folded his arms and spread his feet in a comfortable conversation pose. “The price goes down then.”

The conversation drifted from pumpkin soup, pumpkin rolls, bales of straw, and painting wood the shade of farmhouse bricks to Deb’s cats, the gray wolf, bears, foxes, coyotes, coywolves, and bobcats roaming the neighborhood. Deb’s car engine hummed. A pair of her tabby cats long-stepped past Spence and me to collect cuddles from Deb.

On Halloween Day we headed down the road to check the witch hazels. I stepped on a squashed silver squiggle. “No worries.” I said, mostly to reassure myself. “Tires ground the snake so far down it became part of the road.” A pair of red tail hawks, screeching and soaring under blue-gray clouds, distracted me until we reached the trees.

“They decorated themselves.” Spence pulled down a branch. “Get it? The flowers look like witch hair. Witch hazel.”

The stringy yellow flowers did resemble wee wigs and.with imagination, the empty nuts portrayed mini monster jaws. Like most deciduous trees by then, the witch hazels had bare branches. Along the berm, oaks and beeches still held rust, brown, and yellow-gold leaves.

We didn’t get any trick-or-treaters. We never do in rural Western Pennsylvania. Instead, after midnight, sleety snow fell. Three inches of frosty white covered Wells Wood, our decorated dirt road, and Deb’s pumpkins.

This week country folks will replace the skeletons and tombstones with plastic turkeys and pilgrims. Deb and I will leave our decorations up. Even the bat. Gray ashes dust its brown fur. The critter isn’t in anyone’s way, and the rabies danger has probably passed. Still, dead wild animals are never safe to touch. When Spence clears the firebox for the yule log, I’ll remind him, “Be careful. Bats have rabies.”

 

Snow on the Pawpaw Tree