Princess Sack of Potatoes is on Spring Vacation from Kindergarten so she is visiting. And so, she and Camera Girl went to the local lakeside park to play on the jungle gym and swings with the other paroled inmates of the local centers of lower education.
They’ve left me on my own recognizance and I am reveling in the freedom and using it to inspect my domain in the cloudless sunshine of the day star (Sol, G-type main-sequence star, G2V; approximately 4.6 billion years old). And right away my leisure is disturbed by the state road crew and their private contractors come to remove the dying ash trees that threaten the power and communication lines during wind and snow events. Unfortunately, one of the largest trees along the road is an enormous ash that adjoins the west field. And his last day is now at hand. The crew has a machine of incredible strength and capability. It’s a gigantic arm that grips the tree near the top of the trunk with hydraulic fingers and then brings into play an enormous saw that cuts off the tree below the grasping hand.
Then the arm, defying gravity and inertia rotates at the shoulder and deposits the top of the tree on the side of the road. Then it takes a purchase farther down on the trunk and repeats this operation a few times and voila, no more ash tree. Just a pile of logs. The crew then takes a conventional but enormous chain saw to the stump and bring it down to the ground in a few minutes and then off down the road to the next victim. Ah well. These ash trees have been dying off for decades. My area is relatively off the beaten path so I guess it’s finally caught up to us. American Chestnut, Elm, Ash. Good heavens, what will be left in another few generations, you have to ask. But I guess there is some hope. The project to restore the American Chestnut either by selective breeding of the survivors or by genetic engineering of a hardy strain is slowly (but hopefully surely) reaching the end point where the trees will be released in to the world for regeneration of that majestic species in Eastern North America.
The thornless red raspberries that I planted a couple of years ago are back in leaf again and spreading nicely in the bed where I planted them. They have been a rare case where the product lived up to the advertising. They produce abundant, large, delicious fruit and they seem to thrive enthusiastically in the very boggy spring soil of that part of the property. And since both Camera Girl and Princess Sack of Potatoes are big fans of this fruit, I have gained great praise for my project in introducing them to the yard. This summer I hope for a bumper crop of many quarts of the fruit. The only real hazard is the local black bear population. With both blue berries and raspberries on site an ursine prowler is something to consider. Well, I’ve got my bear spray. Yogi beware.
Well, the girls are back so I must adjourn. We must be at play in the fields of the Lord.
“…either by selective breeding of the survivors or by genetic engineering of a hardy strain is slowly (but hopefully surely) reaching the end point where the trees will be released in to the world…”
Keep a close watch on them. Remember, Superior ability breeds Superior Ambition.
Under the spreading uber-chestnut tree the village smithy stands
the smith an übermensch is he with large and sinewy hands.
I have bear spray, too. It’s called .454 Casull.
That spray sounds a little more definitive.