Blooming Up High

It's been hot, hotter, hotter'n Hades here lately. Not much rain either. It's been a little disheartening to look at the fields and see the light brown, dormant grasses, but more wrenching that that, are the trees you see that were damaged in Ike....but had survived, only to succumb now to heat and drought.

There are a lot of the younger trees that had been planted the Spring before, and blown almost out of the ground by Ike. People were able to reset the younger trees and they seemed to have survived and were doing well, until recently. Now, many of them are just standing. Brown monuments to the harshness of the last 12 months.

No one plants a tree, even those who are paid to plant them, without thinking about what will be growing there in the future. Sr. Medina, who used to be the main help in my garden, was one of those men, and he would point with pride towards the exact trees that he'd placed in the ground. I've been watching those trees, and have seen that most of them have made it, so far.

Still, life surprises you. I was going through a hamburger chain's drive-thru (Whataburger for those who know the chain), getting some tea. I'm choosy about where I'll buy my tea these days, as too often the owners have put in the (shudder) reconstituted tea from the soda fountain. Y'all...that stuff is horrible. Whataburger brews their tea and brews often. Ahhh, iced tea...the nectar of summer days.

After I'd placed my order, I glanced to my right and followed with the rest of my head. As I smiled in delight, my eyes were treated to this sight:


The palms were blooming, great, extravagant sprays of flowers held out to the passing winds.


As I looked closer, it occurred to me that the palm flowers reminded me of anemones, combing the ocean currents for food, these flowers were sifting through the air, for just the right pollen.

I'm not sure what kinds of palm these are, but I was glad to see them, blooming.

The Afters

I have "Before" pictures here and there in the blog, where I have pictures of the (formerly) shady side yard on the East side of the house.

I say "before" because now, there's an "After".

The younger Ash coming down. Right on the neighbor who had be complaining that it was shedding too many leaves in her rain gutters. This is the tree that was butchered so bad by a man who claimed to be an expert tree trimmer, last fall. The neighbor wanted more branches trimmed and as they were, the tree just looked so pitiful... I cried and told them to cut it all the way down.

Y'all, really. I cried. Poor tree.

Right to the right of the green ladder, there HAD been an old Ash tree. It had several dead branches, and every season the number of dead BIG branches had increased. It was time. It had been the only tree I was afraid of during hurricane IKE.

Another look at the take down.

Things are being cleaned up, slowly, as I seem to have a hard time even looking into the side yard where the young Ash used to be.

I keep telling myself that there are upsides to a suddenly sunnier side yard. I can grow more vegetables. I can grow some fruit trees. The Confederate Jasmine (see the above picture) will be happier and bloom more and earlier.

It's going to take me a while to process the change. Sigh. Anyone know where I can get a couple of Paw paw trees?

My Tree Perch

I'm not sure, but I think I have blogged about this tree before. I suppose I could go search it out, but I think....

This tree grows in a park that is near the house we lived in from the time I was about 5 until we moved, when I was 17. My dad did all the finish work in that house, buying it unfinished and working nights and weekends to finish it off was the only way he and my mom could afford a good house in a good neighborhood. It was a good place to grow up.

I went to the elementary school nearest my house. I still rode the bus, as my parents paid the "bus fee" so that we wouldn't have to walk in the rain. The school was in walking distance, just barely, but they didn't want us to HAVE to walk. My parents grew up poor. They had to walk. They wanted more options for us.

Nowadays, I suspect parents do not let their kids walk to school or home from school on that street. It is still a good neighborhood (Oh, I was so glad to see that the house I lived in is owned by people who care for it), and it would be a shadier walk than we had, as the trees have grown up along the route.

The park was along the route from Home to School. I didn't often walk home, but if I did, I usually took a very long time to get home. See, there were just a whole lot of things that were Very Interesting, and needed closer looks. And, I was a day dreamer. I had a rich fantasy life (still do), I talked to myself all the time and dreamed about "what ifs".

That daydreaming got me into trouble, often, as I tended to walk slower and sometimes just stop completely as I was dreaming.

My favorite "stopping place" was the park. Not to just play in, though, if some playmates were there, I would stop to play.

The real draw was the tree.

See, it was (and looks to still be) an easy tree to climb. Better yet, it had places to perch while daydreaming. It was shady, cool and you felt as if you were in a secret place once you got into and up the tree.

One day, my daydreaming must have taken a little longer than I had thought.

There I was, happily perched, swinging my feet and, most likely, dreaming about living in a tree. I liked being hidden while watching every thing going on past me, them never knowing I was there.

That last part...them not knowing I was there...was the problem. See, my mom and dad and brothers and sisters had all gotten home. And I wasn't there. They started to get a little alarmed, and started to look for me.

They called all the neighbors. No one had seen me.

They asked the neighborhood kids. No one had seen me.

They asked my brothers and sisters. None of them had seen me.

People, when I hide, I do it well. Even when I'm not actually TRYING to hide from everyone. Well, at least I wasn't trying to hide for that long. I think it must have been a particularly good daydream.

So, there I was, when this...noise...interrupted my daydream.

It sounded a lot like my mom and dad calling my name. Loudly. Over and over, with my siblings joining in on the chorus.

Oops.

After the car with my yelling family passed, I quickly got down the tree and scurried home.

I was there, ostentatiously reading a book, when they got back. I put on my most innocent of faces...which is/was pretty innocent looking by the way, but one of the neighbors must'a squealed on me.

I was never allowed to walk home again.

Sigh, I still miss being able to climb that tree and spy on the world.

Trees---With Character

I went to see my mom on Mother's Day, and after lunch we went out to the cemetery to see my dad's grave site. Mom said that she'd been called and told that a lot of the flowers had blown around in the high winds they'd had, and she wanted to make sure things were tended to...



My dad chose this cemetery. After he'd attended a funeral there, and found out that some of his friends, notably the guys he played golf with, would be buried there, he decided that would be a place he'd like to be.


It is a beautiful place, and historic. The Hawley Cemetery has been around since the mid 1850's.

To be honest, I can think of worse places to spend time at...

I think he liked the place because of the trees.

He liked trees.

And so do I.