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.

Requiem for a Willow

December 12, 2021--the next morning.

If there is an argument for starting and keeping with a blog, it’s the opportunity it gives you to go back in time, to read what you were thinking fifteen years ago. To pull up short with a start, realizing that you’re where you were wondering about ever being.

 And you can never imagine what will  happen to you, nor can you imagine how it will feel when it does. Here’s a historic post I want to hearken back to, because of what happened on December 11.

 

Written Aug. 21, 2006

 

Tree

It is foolish
to let a young redwood
grow next to a house.

Even in this
one lifetime,
you will have to choose.

That great calm being,
this clutter of soup pots and books—

Already the first branch-tips brush at the window.
Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.

Jane Hirshfield

We planted this willow tree when I was pregnant with Liam. It was about six feet tall, a slender whip, its small leaves backlit by the evening sun. We tried to plant it far enough away from the septic tank that it wouldn't dip in for a drink, far enough away from the deck so it wouldn't touch when it grew up.

We had no idea.

 

The willow is seven now, Liam is six. He is long and lanky. It is enormous. By next summer, we will be able to reach out from our deck and touch the willow's branches. I've no doubt it will be in the septic tank by then, too. It is full of birds and it buzzes with cicadas. It is a citadel of foliage, a city of birds and insects. It's a habitat on a trunk.

 

What a metaphor for starting a family, this willow tree. So much bigger, so much grander, so much more wonderful, so much scarier and all-consuming than you ever could have imagined. The willow overspreads half the back yard, at seven. What will it be at 25? Who will Liam, he of the wooden trains, be at 25?

                                                                           

    End of Post

 

 

So I asked, and how could I know then that this willow, then vibrant, healthy and seemingly intent on taking over the entire backyard, wouldn’t quite make it to 25? 

 

December 11, 2021. At 3 AM I was up, looking at a line of storms on the Weather Channel, stretching from Ontario to southmost Texas. I wondered what fresh hell was being unleashed in that swath. Seventy-six people would lose their lives in Kentucky, and three in Tennessee, from a monster tornado that barreled more than 200 miles in one horrific rampage.  I couldn't know that, but I knew this was a real stinker of a storm. It was lying like a nasty python, writhing a little, but not moving east much at all--just slithering away in place. 

I padded around the house, guided only by flashing lightning, in my age-old ritual of unplugging things. There’s lots less to unplug now that I don’t watch TV or have a landline or a fax or give a toss about my ancient stereo—let the lightning take it! I unplugged my laptop, looked for Curtis and couldn’t find him, which meant that he was probably in the basement clothes closet, like a smart dog. That was where I ought to be, I thought, but I dragged myself back to bed and fell asleep, to the distant rumble of thunder and the wind tearing at the useless, flapping weatherstrip in my bedroom windows. 

 

On this Saturday morning, I had planned to paint all day on a Christmas commission that’s been eating my time, but I couldn’t settle down. I was so nervous. The wind was wild, wild! and rain was going sideways.We'd been under barrage from the storm-snake since 3 AM, and it was nearly 12 hours later.  I put my car in the garage and did little things around the house. I looked at the radar again, to see this storm that wouldn’t leave us alone, and saw a perfectly straight line of orange, like a samurai sword, raking across the Midwest.

 And in the next heartbeat here it was, with a white-out of rain and the trees groaning and tossing. I ran from window to window checking on the greenhouse; I ran up to the tower, came back downstairs and it was there in the studio that I heard it. It was a soft fwumpp, not loud enough to jump up to investigate, but resonant, and I would glance out the south window, off the high deck, to see the sky, once blocked, suddenly opened out, and the great black trident trunk of the willow on its side, Just. Like. That. 

No fanfare, no crack, no crash, just a muffled sound like someone sliding a couch across carpet, and it was done.

 

I took a photo of it lying there against the sodden meadow and bruised sky and sent it to Liam and Phoebe and Shila and my three sisters. I had to share it with them first, the way one would share the death of a relative. I feel abashed even writing about it, knowing what happened in Tennessee, Kentucky, and four other states, but here it is, and I need to tell you about it.

 

The willow had cracked off at the base, but there was barely any root left. This was not a surprise. I knew it was dying, had known it for years. It had stopped growing. I used to have to trim it three times each summer so I could even mow under it without being strangled by its long whippy tentacles. I hadn’t had to trim those whips for the past four years. 

 

 

My first reaction was gratitude that the giant tree had had the grace to fall sideways, and not crush the deck or the house. After the hollow gut punch, I feel strangely numb about losing this tree. Maybe because I’ve been on deathwatch for so long. But mostly, I think, because I will confess that as a native plant enthusiast, I had never really wanted a weeping willow in the first place. Bill insisted that we plant one for sentimental reasons, because he spent his early years with one at the "Rickety House" in Pella, Iowa, where he was born. I was pregnant with Liam, due to burst in a couple of months, and his insistence wore me down. We went and picked one out at Thomson’s Landscaping. It was a whip about 6’ tall, probably a couple of years old. It had been a terribly dry summer, and there had been periodical cicadas in plague proportions, too.  I knew I’d be the one hauling hose out to it, and I’d be the one who picked up countless dropped limbs and mowed under it, too. But we had no sooner finished arguing about what was too close to the septic tank (My position: Any place you could pick is too close to the septic tank to plant a willow)  and finally dug the hole and stuck the whip in it, and stepped back to survey our work, than a palm warbler landed in it, wagging its tail! That makes it September, 1999, because September’s when the palm warblers come here. I remember the sun coming through the willow's leaves, and the bird’s tail wagging, and Bill and I took it as a good sign, a very good sign.

 

Liam was born only a month and change later, on November 8, 1999, and of course we called it Liam’s willow, and I became fond of it in spite of my misgivings about its eventual size and thirstiness. As he grew, long and tall and beautiful, so did the tree. It was a vireo magnet, the warbling and Philadelphia and blue-headed vireos catching in its branches during migration. 

Blue-headed vireo, 25 Sept. 2020. Immaculate bird. And I note that even the branch it's on is cracked.

The cedar waxwings adored it, swinging merrily in its flexible top branches, when it had them. Everything wound up in that tree, including the flying squirrels who sailed from there to the deck railing to skitter around and filch sunflower hearts from a feeder we used to keep there. 

 

My boy grew up knowing he had a tree that was special to him, and that is something, and if I regret losing it, it’s because of Liam. “This makes me so sad,” he responded to the photo I sent the day it went down. Me too, son. End of an era. But don’t take it as a sign. Weeping willows grow far too fast, and die too young. It’s just the way they’re built. 

 

I miss the surreal touch the willow lent to the landscape, especially when the gardens were in full, fantasy-land bloom (here, on October 8, 2021). This is one of my last photos of the tree, and you can see the dead top that tells you it’s not going to be photogenic much longer. Even the color of the leaves tells you something you don't want to know.

October 8, 2021

 

December 11, 2021

Change of seasons, change of backdrop, pretty draconian. 

Still, I’ve checked a few times, and my sadness on losing this tree is not even a pinprick compared to how I felt about losing the centurion red oak that guarded our mailbox. She fell on March 26, 2011.  The post is here. http://juliezickefoose.blogspot.com/2011/05/leaning-tree.html

 

That tree’s death heralded the end of an era, too. I can’t even begin to tell you what all fell with that oak. We were coming back from a huge recording session for our first Rain Crows album, “Looks Like Rain,” when we saw it stretched across the road. But it wasn't just the tree...absolutely everything was changing right beneath our feet. That tree, I wept over for days. I couldn't bear to look at its mighty trunk down on the ground. Strong, tall, beautiful, useful, still willing, but doomed by heart rot. I still grieve her loss, still miss her. What an incredible presence she had, a destination unto herself.

Then...my favorite photo almost ever

Now-thankful to have Curtis and this still-spindly oak child. 

The oak that sprang from one of her acorns is growing fast near the very spot she once commanded, and it is a beautiful young tree. I had to cut its protective tomato cage off --I think it's too big to be under threat from the township mowing deck now. Still too small to cast shade, it is hurrying to fill her place in the world. 

 

What will I plant where the willow was? I will think about that. Something native. Something I have always wanted, though I don't yet know what that is. A little grove of serviceberry? More persimmons? Another clump of birches? Something more monumental? Not a redwood, that much poet Jane Hirshfield and I know. Suggestions from tree mavens are welcome. 

I've got someone coming to deal with its enormous carcass, and I've asked them to bring a bulldozer, too. It'll be a heck of a day. I have visions of myself trotting in front of the Bobcat, pointing at things that need to be cleared out. There is so very much to do, and a dozer can do in seconds what would take me weeks to clear. I'm looking forward to that. But oh, Liam. I waited for you to get home. I needed another picture. 

Then...August 2006 

                        

and now (December 20, 2021). 

How he has grown, shooting past the railing he once stretched to reach. What he has faced in his short life. And what a beautiful soul he has in that strong lanky frame. Trees come and go. People do, too. He learned that far too young. 

I will plant something wonderful in that hole. It's a way to move on.