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.

A Strong Wind's Gonna Blow

Egad. It's been awhile. Three weeks feels like an eternity in the Zickiverse of sharing. Sharing beauty and all the good stuff makes me happy. Conversely, when I don't have time to sit down and edit (or even upload) my photos; when I don't have time to think about what it all means, because it's going by too fast, I get kind of unhappy, restless, blocked. So. Here I am. Had a really hideous derecho (the second this week) hit yesterday afternoon and we'll be out of power for a long time. For those unfamiliar with the word, a derecho is a powerful, fast-moving storm front that moves like an express train for hundreds of miles. It's organized. It means business, and its business is destruction. The same storm, which apparently originated here in central Ohio, made it all the way to Connecticut and south through New Jersey, wreaking havoc all the way.  Generally with a storm like this I figure on 3-5 days of outage, but who knows. Maybe we'll get lucky this time. But I'm settled in for a long haul. The rain cooled things off, thank goodness, so I'm not missing the AC.

 

photo from Washington Electric Cooperative

Broken pole on the line feeding the Rinard Mills substation, which is ours. It's gonna be awhile. Snapped like a matchstick, it was. The winds were in excess of 60 mph and possibly as high as 80. They were straight-line, not tornadic, but there are trees down everywhere; there is a layer of shredded leaves on everything, plastered all over the north side of the house and carpeting the grass. The roads from town are covered with a sticky, twiggy salad of macerated leaves, punctuated by limbs and trunks of trees, now being removed by township trustees. My bonsais blew off their bench; some pots broke; my giant 7' geranium toppled and got the drastic pruning it had been needing. I'll spare youa photo; it's too sad to see the rubble of a magnificent plant. But it's strong; it'll be fine in no time.

My planties are bruised and tattered but they're OK and so am I. My friends the Warren boys lost a new shed they'd built. Not nice. Amazingly, Bill was at the house around dinnertime when it blew in, trying to fix my unfixably busted rider mower deck, and he was able to move a lot of plants under an awning so there wasn't much damage. Not only that, but by the time I got back from errands in town (where it sprinkled a little), he had chainsawed a large dead tree that came down across the driveway and already had the generator up and running and a spaghetti tangle of extension cords running to key appliances. I would have been totally screwed without him. I wouldn't have even been able to get up the driveway to unload the groceries, into the fridge that had no power. Trainwreck. I can do a lot of things, but chainsawing isn't one of them (yet), and my conversance with balky gasoline engines is low. Sorry DOD, I should be better at all this by now.

 I was so thankful for Bill, and the way he threw himself into solving the problems the storm wrought. After we'd done all the stuff that has to be done to get power to two houses, we all had a cookout at 10 pm, with Zicklettuce picked before it was pulverized. It was nice. But country life ain't for sissies. You have to be ready to take care of stuff, and to be without power for days on end. And you have to be cool about it. You can't feel sorry for yourself. All you can do is deal with it. I finally broke down and bought a generator after a nine-day summer outage when temperatures were in the 90's. I remember emptying all the coin jars around the house, scraping up the $650 to buy it, used. And I've never felt helpless and cheated during a power outage since. Here I am, typing away on a powered laptop, with Internet, and the fridge is humming away and my food isn't rotting and needing to be cooked NOW or thrown out. Ugggh summer outages!! Nor did my greenhouse blow away this time. It's held together with two-year-old rotten Gorilla Tape, and I didn't lose a single pane. Go figure. I'm a little rattled, but hugely grateful, for it was a derecho in 2012 that took my Garden Pod away.

There are so many miracles here. I was already feeling particularly grateful yesterday afternoon (May 15) before I headed for town, because I'd seen a little place where dirt had been kicked out of a rotty place on our old garage. I mused that an animal of some size and strength had done that, because it was gravel, and there was a lot of it, and gravel is heavy. So I'd been thinking about that, and keeping an eye on this spot. And lo and behold as I was headed to my car, I spied a long thin blackish tail disappearing into the crevice. It could only have been a lizard, because it headed up into the rotted wood! (Snakes head down).  Lizards are scarce as hen's teeth around here; I feel lucky if I see one a summer.

 

As it happened, I was planning to put the cargo carrier on the back of Liam's old Subaru so I could grab some straw bales on my trip into town. I went into that corner of the garage (the one that's rotting out) to get the cargo carrier and in the doorway of his most excellent rotty home, where he'd kicked out all the gravel, I spied this little gent looking back at me:

 Easily eight inches of magnificent (probably broad-headed) skink!! (Though I'm not ruling out a mature five-lined skink). Only the third skink sp. I've seen, and always in our garage! I had an adult female two summers ago, and before the kids were born I saw a huge mature male with a girth like a kielbasa, and a brilliant orange head, just inside the west door. Last summer I had a tame northern fence lizard taking water and mealworms out of tiny dishes in my garden supplies area. Swoon! It pays to have a rotten garage. Fabulous tenants like skinks, snakes, bats and Carolina wrens can make their way in and out with ease. You can't see it here, but his head and jaws were bright orange, and he had the brightest little eye, looking right into mine. How lucky can you get??

The other miracle that happened yesterday is that my dwarf pomegranate, which had been on a ceramic pedestal over a cement sidewalk outdoors, had finally achieved such an apex of magnificence that I decided I had to try to get some decent photos of it. It's a very difficult subject to shoot, because any background interferes with its tiny leaves and brilliant flowers. I have never found a good place to shoot it outside, and inside isn't much better. I see by the clock it's 4 pm...the derecho hit at 6:30.

So I took it off its pedestal and into my bedroom, and I finally found a background befitting its beauty.

 Its leathery waxy calyxes, with their ballerina tutus protruding, are such an impossibly bright dark neon orange as to be unbelievable.

 I got the shots I was after, and without much thought I decided to leave it there in the bedroom, so I could enjoy it for awhile before putting it back out on its pedestal on the sidewalk. I left for town, did all my errands, and came back to find that the derecho had hurled all my bonsais off their bench to the ground. Bill had picked them up and put them under an awning for protection. But this one and its bowl and the little mudmen would certainly have been shattered, falling from a high pedestal onto cement. I would have been so sad.

To me, this was a message, not to tot up your losses, but to be thankful for what you still have. I'm thankful to still have this precious little tree, blooming away, back outside now, but under my ever-watchful eye. You never know when a strong wind is going to blow it all down.