The hole

Somewhere in here is a metaphor that could be useful to me right now, if I could just figure it out. The felling of the linden oak has brought change to the front yard. Increased sunlight, a huge pile of stump shavings, the squashed Rose of Sharon, and several holes, the largest of them full of water.

Sage observations from my husband and a neighbor turned in the direction of, "It's been raining a lot lately." The holes are indentations made by the tree's points of impact as it took a controlled fall to the ground, guided by the arborist and his crew. At first I feared a water pipe had been damaged, but a helpful worker at the utilities department told me what to look for on the water meter. If the triangle is moving and no water is being drawn in the house, you have a leak. The triangle was not moving. Another possibility is that the septic tank drain field is wacky, which we suspected already.

This morning I drained the hole and filled it with sand. I will keep an eye on the hole, and I will be on the lookout for that metaphor.

The Rose of Sharon

Where the linden oak fell across the front yard lay the only part of the front flower bed that I had succeeded in keeping clear from vines. I cleared it during the first two weeks of summer last June, pulling grapevine, virginia creeper, and carolina jessamine. It was the part of the bed closest to the street. I liberated Rosie Meyer daylilies that I had planted and two bushes that were there when we moved in ten years ago--a yellow tropical whose name I can't remember at the moment, and a white Rose of Sharon hibiscus. 

My mother called them altheas and they were one of her favorite plants in the garden. They sprouted readily and were easy to transplant. She created a hedge from them on the east side of the house on Coventry Drive in Nashville. Hers were lavender with a magenta center.

My Rose of Sharon is pure white. After being freed from the vines and getting a good load of mulch last summer, it really took off. This summer it was full and tall and covered with blooms. Around its drip line, little althea seedlings had sprouted. I offered them to one of my colleagues who admired the bush, but before she gathered them the oak tree branch fell.

The topmost branches of the fallen part of the tree were on top of the althea and Rosie Meyers. On July 4, I was able to cut what was on top of the daylilies and put the brush out at the street for the yard waste collection the following Monday. The Rosie Meyers were less squashed than the hibiscus. It was completely mashed down. I had to wait for the arborist and his crew to uncover it while I was out of town. When I came back, I saw that they had to cut it all the way back to the ground. Only two small branches growing along the ground remained. Already it has put out new leaves, and the little seedlings are still intact. It will be years before it is seven feet tall again, but I am hopeful that it may recover.

The linden tree

For the first time since the linden tree was taken down, I mowed the grass. I reflected that when a big tree comes down, so much is lost--the shade from the tree canopy, the branches that held birds' nests, the leaves that fell in the spring, the companionship of the tree trunk as I worked in the garden, the money to pay the arborist and his crew, and the little sprout of native yaupon that is now buried under a pile of stump grindings. What is gained is sunlight and room to plant more trees. Now the fringe tree can grow upright instead of reaching out from under the shade of the linden oak.

The linden tree stood at the front of the yard. The first time we engaged our arborist, he surprised us by saying that the laurel cherry by the living room was fine. It was the sweet gum by the front door that needed to come down. It had a rotten fork, as sweet gums are prone to have. He gave the live oak by the driveway a clean bill of health, but the linden oak, he said, was at its prime. That was ten years ago. During those years, it dropped large branches three or four times, until all that was left two weeks ago was the main trunk and a large area of rot where the other branches had come off. We had concerns about safety.

There remain some clean up chores to do. The pile of stump grindings is composting now, and later I will rake it up and use it as mulch. Several holes in the grass show where pieces of the tree fell as they dismantled it. I'll fill them with sand from the endless supply that builds up in the culvert so the grass can grow back. And most importantly, I will study the new light patterns and think of what to plant in the new area that has been created, like a room added onto the house.

My brother's bird feeding station

A few months ago, my brother put up a bird feeding station in front of his house. He asked me for help identifying birds and sent pictures of woodpeckers. He really did quite well setting up his pole system and choosing which food to put out for the birds. I had a chance to see it for myself last week. As he's nine hours north of where I live, he has birds that I don't get even during the winter, like towhees. But it's not just his location. He has birds coming to his feeders that don't come to mine, even though I see them in the yard. Nuthatches come to his seed feeder and mockingbirds come to his suet. His special joy is the hairy woodpeckers and redbellied woodpeckers. From alert observation, he has become adept at telling apart the adults and fledgelings. He rests on the couch near the big picture window that looks out on the feeders, working away at a design for a new Dungeons and Dragons world and its inhabitants and conflicts, now and then looking up to grin when a hairy woodpecker juvenile comes for a bite of suet.

Sticks

When I left town a week ago, the flower beds were full of tropical milkweed. I didn't see any eggs or caterpillars. There must have been quite a hatching while I was gone because only sticks are left now. Yesterday I found one large monarch caterpillar on a tomato leaf and one small one on a milkweed stalk. I had an appointment and errands to run near the nursery, so I picked up four more milkweed plants.

I had already decided it was time to remove the tomatoes from the flower bed. They were splitting because of the abundant rain and it's the hot time of summer when they struggled anyway. This morning I found more caterpillars on the tomato plants. I moved five caterpillars onto the milkweed and they began snacking immediately. I wondered to discover that tomato was their choice of food in a pinch, because tomatoes are part of the nightshade family and milkweed is poisonous to animals also. Pretty smart caterpillars.

Now that the monarchs are coming back to my garden, I have been more aggressive with the swamp milkweed beetles. They moved in a few years ago when the monarch population dropped precipitously. I have seen only a couple at a time this year. The beetles were eating the leaves that I wanted to save for the monarchs.

At the same time, the fritillary and longwing zebras and munching away on the passionflower vines. I can see where the swallowtails have been on the parsley, and saw one on the fennel three weeks ago, and now it is getting to be the late summer when they will be more plentiful.

Ten years ago when I was recovering from surgery, the garden was like a perpetual motion machine of butterflies. I spent a lot of time looking out the window. It was better than a movie. Now, with hummingbirds also zipping around the justicias, shrimp plant, salvia, pentas, abelia, and cleome, the garden is busy again.