The Death of a Dear Old Friend - Our Maple Tree

Schwartzie, our long hair gorgeous laid back black cat takes being top cat very seriously.  He will not eat supper until the other two cats are also present.  If Willow doesn’t come right away, he goes and finds her and herds her downstairs. He was upset when Woody took Shaman to the Vet for his annual checkup and vaccines on Wednesday.  When Woody brought  him back, he examined Shamana very carefully to make sure his “kitten” wasn’t injured.  Shaman is more active and far more rambunctious than the other two.  He is also much younger, four and a half years younger than Schwartzie, almost six years younger than Willow.  She enjoys when he cuddles with her and when they wash each other, but Shaman mounting her  and biting her neck, she puts up with mostly but sometimes she doesn’t want any part of being bitten. She’s bigger than he is, so his mounting is kind of a joke, but the biting isn’t.

Schwartzie is a serious cat. He worries.

We are going to have our huge sugar maple out front taken down.  I love that tree. I’ve written a poem about it, Saint Maple.  Its roots grew into our old septic tank near the house, so it had a continuous source of water. It fertilized itself and  grew huge.  It’s the biggest tree on our property, was even bigger than our large weeping beech.  It’s been slowly dying ever since we were forced by the State to put in a title Five septic system down by the road at the foot of the hill. Our gorgeous maple was slowly starved to death. There was no way we could give it all the water it needed for its immense size and heavy crown.  It was obviously dying back for the last ten years, and by now, is more than half dead.  Maples,  unlike oaks and beeches, are shallow rooted and lack a tap root.  Therefore since we are likely to be hit by a hurricane, as we have twice, we feared it would likely topple – onto the house if the wind blew it one way, our gorgeous weeping beehc if it fell another way and onto the house of summer people next door, a lawyer and his wife.  They’d sue the life our of us.

Woody was reluctant to do anything about it, so finally I called a tree service that has been active around our neighborhood. He came this Tuesday, gave us an estimate and we scheduled the sad take-down two weeks from today. I will miss it and so will the house.  It gave us shade for decades. It’s home to less birds than it used to house and the wild like a row of clocks.  Squirrels will miss it.  The house will be warmer in summer.  But its shade had been diminishing anyhow. 

Woody was stung by wasps while he was giving the rhododendrons organic fertilizer  He saw a paper nest the size of a large canteoupe.  I had a nest stuck to a window in my office. I simply didn’t open that window until  deserted it. But this nest could not remain where it was, right next to the oil tank and right across a path from our propane tank.  It had to go. We can’t do without propane or oil, mostly propane.  The men won’t fill either if the wasps attack or even if they just saw the nest. 
One delivery guy who wouldn’t fill the propane tank because a wren, a tiny but  fierce little creature defended her nest nearby.

I wrote two poems this week and started another that I haven’t finished yet.  I’ll work on it in a few days.  So far I’ve frozen 14 ½ lbs of beans.  More to come. The cherry tomatoes just started.  We are getting many pole beans, some frying peppers, many zucchini, a few pattypans, beets, a few oriental eggplants

and many smallish red cabbages. The cucumbers gave up the ghost this week, but I started three kinds that are in the bay window to get going. I always grow two burpless cucumbers and one burpless pickling cucumber, Corentine, not for processing but because I like the flavor and it’s productive.