The Brushpile That Wouldn't Leave

We planted it in September, 1999, just about this time of year, 26 years ago, when I was big with Liam in my belly--he would be born only two months later. A palm warbler landed in it just as Bill and I stepped back from laying a running hose at the base of its slender, whip-like trunk. It was a weeping willow.  The palm warbler's benediction seemed like the ultimate good omen. I remember the bird was backlit in the willow's small leaves, and wagging its tail, and Bill and I were agog. 

Six years later, here is Liam, growing tall, setting up a dangerous train trestle on the old deck railing. And there is the willow, trying to touch that railing. 

It grew so huge in such a short time, it covered the entire lower part of the yard. I'm pretty sure it was dipping into the septic tank by the time it was this big, too. I had fought Bill hard about planting a weeping willow, but he had sentimental memories of a willow from his childhood in Iowa, and could not be persuaded to plant a native tree like serviceberry, instead of Salix babylonica. Boy did I learn a lesson, but it was a lesson I kind of already knew. And by the time that tree crashed down, it was entirely my problem to deal with. 

When he said we also needed some mimosa trees, I DID put my foot down. Have always hated those things. We'd have a small forest of them here had I yielded to that one. Sorry, B. Most of your big ideas were pretty awesome, but some just didn't fly.

The huge willow had started to die by the time a derecho came through on December 11, 2021. I heard a resonant fwump! from the studio and there it lay, snapped off at its rotten base.

Would you think it would take me until late May 2025 to get rid of a dead willow tree? Well, it wasn't for lack of trying. 

I had my friend Mike Crum haul it out to the meadow that spring for burning. Or at least that was the plan. I've learned a lot about willow wood since then. Learned a lot about myself, as well.

Knowing that the brushpile was destined to burn, I added to it. It was a place I could take all the brush I cut, all the invasive multiflora rose, all the autumn olive, and might as well throw in a couple of 32 year old blue spruce trees that had died of spruce decline as well. Oh, and three decaying Russian prune trees from the driveway hedge. And, and, and, and...I was a damn BEAVER for three years. And by the time I realized I had to get RID of the brushpile, this thing had a footprint as big as my HOUSE. You think I'm kidding? Just yooge. This is a monument to my industry. And it very nearly stayed for eternity.

I hired  a crew to try to burn it in February 2024. Emphasis on "try." Look at the unmelted snow around the perimeter of the "burning" pile. That thing ain't goin' nowhere. All the kerosene in the world wouldn't light that pile. We made two all-day attempts, and we got maybe a quarter of it burned, but the flame always stopped dead at those wet old willow trunks. Plus, it was too spread out and long, and we had no way to pile it up higher so it could burn better.

I talked to a lot of people about it, and the thing that surfaced was that, in the center of the pile, the old willow trunks were still there, and they were still full of water, as willow wood is, and much of it was still ALIVE. As in growing, sending up shoots and leafy tops, and there's no way to burn a live tree from a cold start, especially if it's a willow. 

Feeling more and more foolish about how I'd piled mountains of brush on top of and all around those problematic willow trunks, I posted about it on Facebook. And somebody said, "Why don't you have somebody with a dump truck come haul it all away?

That made sense to me. And I hadn't thought of that alternative. It's odd what I don't think of.  But I didn't want to just move the problem elsewhere. So I thought, what if we just get those non-flammable trunks out of there, push them down the slope and pile them inside the woods on top of a mess of Japanese honeysuckle, and then pile the rest of it up real high, and try to burn it in place?

So I called Mike Crum, and asked him and his son Parker to get me out of the pickle I'd gotten into in early 2022 when he first hauled that willow out to the spot in the meadow. You may need to turn the sound down, I am chortling so loudly as I watch those damned wet trunks get lifted and transported out of the pile. That's the sound of hope. Hope that I will not have to look at that brushpile, sprouting with willow tops, multiflora rose, and blackberry, with 10' tulip trees coming up through it, when the wedding rolls around.

Get that thing out of there!

Once the wet trunks were removed, Mike and Parker came back in with a brand new attachment--a grabber! With it, Parker piled up the brush to make a pyre. I loved watching these men with their new toy! Now, and only now, could we burn it. 

Mike brought a leafblower to fan the flames. It still was no walk in the park to burn this pile; it was enormous. But at least it didn't have a pile of wet immovable trunks at the center. 

Brushpile burn, May 27, 2025

Finally they got it down to a manageable size, that still wouldn't burn completely, so they left the Bobcat there until the fire had time to go out and go cold. It was raining a lot then,  so it didn't take long. 

They hauled the remainder of the pile out of sight in the honeysuckle hole, and that was that. It could rot slowly and provide habitat in the woods. And now I had my big patch of bare soil. I had dreamt of that patch for four years. I had ordered a bunch of native prairie seed from Ohio Prairie Nursery (opnseed.com)

and when I got back from  my trip to Arizona (whew, there was a lot going on this spring), my dear friend Anne and I raked the soil with iron rakes to prepare it for the seed, and we sowed it.

This little gizmo has a hand crank and it throws seed in a wide circle around you as you walk slowly. I cut the seed with rice bran (ordered separately from opnseed.com) that's white and because it shows up on the dark soil, it tells me where I've been--very important!

Here's Anne sowing--we took turns.

Being methodical women, we took a string and a couple of sticks to show ourselves where we'd been as we spread the seed. 

A couple days later, I spread two bales of straw on the seed, hoping it wouldn't all get washed downhill in the next rain. By now it was June 14, and it had almost stopped raining for the summer. The straw helped hold in what moisture there was. 

I had zero expectation that the meadow would be in bloom by July 26. My only goal was that the gigantic brushpile be GONE, and after the burn, that it not be a big black scar on the land growing up to Japanese stiltgrass. 

I went out, after spending most of yesterday working on the blog, to take some shots of the  meadow as it looked on September 10, less than three months after planting it from seed. 

Thanks to all the soil disturbance, there's a lot of invasive Asian lespedeza in the upper part of the bed, but the lower part is thick with plains coreopsis and lance-leaved coreopsis, which will bloom next summer. There's red gaillardia sprinkled in, partridge pea...it's already quite pretty down there. 

It definitely beats an unburnable mess! THAT I will never do again.

Next: Rotty Deck Must Go.