I am a Tree Hugger

Oak Tree

On the first day of spring 2011, I transplanted three trees from my brother Jim’s yard. Eight months later and in the heart of fall, the trees are thriving and I believe he is smiling down on them.

(Look here at pictures of the trees when I planted them in March:http://annie-allthingsimportant.blogspot.com/2011/04/trees-and-prayers-for-life.html )

Yesterday I built a mulch bed around each tree to blanket them for the extra cold winter predicted for this year. I started to weep. It’s impossible to convey all the emotion tossing in my skull but it can be summed up in a simple way: I miss him.

Still crying and on impulse rather than thought, I hugged the little tree. I then climbed to the top of the yard and gave Jim’s oak tree and crabapple tree a hug also. Sitting in the bright, blinding sunshine under the little oak tree my weeps turned to sobs, dampening the ground with my tears.

Before going inside, I gave each tree another hug and in process created an alternate yet more literal definition of the term “tree hugger.”

Crabapple Tree (left) and Magnolia Tree (right)

Trick or Treat in 1975

Each year on Halloween my Dad took his kids out to select friends and relatives prior to us terrorizing the neighborhood and hitting up any house with the porch light still burning. When back home, we set up a trading post in the family room. The four of us (Jim would not be born for another year) piled up all our candy, divided it in categories (think gum, chocolate, sweet tarts, suckers, and on), and exchanged our haul in a “what will you give me for this” manner. Everyone knew how I loved bubble gum. I lost a lot of chocolate for that indulgence. We did this every year--a tradition we built for ourselves.

Halloween evening 1975. We started at about 5:30, skipping dinner out of excitement and anticipation of our annual sugar overdose. Dad began the rounds, stopping at the five or six obligatory homes. The last one, due to proximity from my grandmother’s house, was Miss Julie’s. Her old mansion set back far, far from the road with steep steps and a spectacular leaded glass front door didn’t feel haunted but it always felt erie on a dark Halloween evening.

Miss Julie opened the door and as usual invited us in to pick up treat bags on the parlor table. There they sat: four fish bowls with little guppies swimming in circles. Wow, I thought: much better than the expected carmel apples! And shrewd she was--each bowl had three guppies to increase the likelihood that there would be a male and a female in each fish bowl.

The night’s trick or treating that followed lacked the usual allure this year even though it was a Friday night. The guppies had captivated our imaginations and the candy was, well, just candy this year. By the time we arrived back home, Hartley already had baby guppies. The next morning, we all had babies and by school on Monday, we had more than we could count. Show-and-Tell hour could not start soon enough--no one I knew ever received guppies for Halloween.

Unfortunately our excitement dimmed by the day and a sad couple of weeks ensued. Our twenty-pound alley cat Tiger had no use for the new pets. Over a period of a week or two, the fat cat knocked the guppy bowl off of each perch, leaving a soaked carpet and dead guppies. Even Tiger had no desire to eat them. I suppose this was his version of catch and release fishing. My parents appeased the trauma of the murdered guppies by adopting  a single goldfish He swam in an oversized brandy sniffer set on the fireplace mantel, one of the only places Tiger could not roam.

Trick or Treat? I think Miss Julie had Treat or Trick on her mind in 1975, with the later being her prerogative.

Baby Guppies

Tales From A Missouri Chestnut Grove

Twenty years ago a crooked, dying tree caught my mother’s attention. The shape intrigued her as did the unfamiliar green pods with fine sharp needles. Her curiosity drove her to the Missouri Conservation Department where a tree specialist determined that it was an American Chestnut tree--and a rare survivor in the state due to the great Chestnut tree plague that killed over 3 billion trees in the first half of the twentieth century. My parents worked with the department to use the tree’s nut for a grafting project. Their dedication and tedious labor resulted in about 35 nutgrafts; 29 survived. These nutgrafts grew a couple of feet the first year and required some staking to force upright growth but now form a Chestnut grove of trees that are prolific bearers of nuts enjoyed by both humans and wildlife. 

A good Chestnut harvest requires daily wrestles with the squirrel population for just-fallen pods. During the month I wandered through the grove, my eyes peeling the pasture’s floor for the green or velvet tan spiny burrs. Chestnut burrs should be picked up with thick work gloves as the needles will stick in the skin making it almost impossible to gather the burrs barehanded. Ideally the pods brown on the branch and fall to the ground and are gathered before getting squirreled away. If the burr is on the ground, I roll it with my foot to see if i beat the critters. If intact, the pod goes in a bucket, sometimes coming home full, other times just a few burrs. 

Each burr contains three plump Chestnuts, making each one an important find. Toward the end of the harvest, I climbed the trees and shook the upper limbs, catapulting the remaining pods to the ground. The final climb is my favorite part of the harvest season. It releases my inner monkey child and allows my body to succumb to muscle memory from my youth.

Last year we were spoiled by a bumper crop that did not repeat itself this fall (cicadas and the drought paid their toll on many trees and gardens). Even though we can’t sell the surplus to the farmer’s market or give bags to friends this year, my Chestnuts will still be roasting over an open fire this winter. If you see some Chestnuts at the market or successfully talk me out of some of mine, give this a try. The aroma alone will draw your friends and neighbors from blocks away.

Roasted Chestnuts

1. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.
2. Clean Chestnuts.
3. Use a sharp paring knife to cut an X into one side of each nut. This keeps the Chestnuts from exploding in the oven.
4. Arrange Chestnuts on a baking sheet or in a shallow pan, with the cut or pricked sides up.
5. Roast in oven for 15 to 25 minutes, or until nuts are tender and easy to peel.
6. Peel the nuts when they are cool enough to handle but still warm, and enjoy.

Removing Chestnuts from Burrs

A Day's Work Ready for the Open Fire

Wednesday Night Tennis People

~Wednesday Night Tennis People~

Heading to the Green Center

to play tennis with people

older than my parents.

What a thrill to see friends

playing and serving and aging

all in the name of the little yellow ball.

Familiar faces, hugs, and welcomes 

from the permanent court people. 

Tonight I am a substitute player paired 

twice with an opposite gender partner.

“I don’t like to lose,” he tells me,“so don’t mess up.” 

I hear this every time we play together. 

Across the net the composite age 

is about 160. We are only 105. 

I assure my white, wiry-haired partner we will win.

The pop of the sound of tennis balls fills

my head for the next hour and a half. Shouts hailing

my brilliance come as often as the words

“waaaaayyyyy out,” when the ball just misses the line.

Nothing is too serious until we are down in score.

Tense serves and tennis chatter between the partners 

brings the players in the present. We win, 

because we don’t lose.

Partners change when eight people play

on two courts. The winning teams pair up 

and exchange partners while the two losing teams 

do the same. There is no shame in position with

the Wednesday Night Tennis People. All win,

because they don’t lose.

Point, Game, Set, Match. Court time over.

Off to Murry’s, the restaurant where a table

is waiting for the Tennis People to imbibe.

There's No Place Like Home

Growing up, my Dad told of a town character who would dramatically exit her car after crossing the line from Callaway to Boone, kiss the ground and exclaim proudly "Boone County, Boone County!" I've often wondered if she said it the way Dad imitated it. Probably not, but in my 30 years on the road I still mimic her--or my Dad--after a long drive even if I do not leave the car. In the words of the great mystic Rumi: "there are hundreds of ways to kiss the ground."

"My people" have been here for five generations before me and I see more to come ahead of me. Boone County, Mo., gives me a solid place to stand in this world.

A Centenarian Named Annie

Nannie surrounded by some of her great-great nieces and nephews at her 100th birthday party on September 15, 1976. I am standing directly behind Nannie wearing a dress that she wore when she was a young girl. I found the ivory lace dress in a trunk in the attic shortly before the party.  

Annie Alice Britts

September 15, 1876-November 30, 1976 

My namesake lived to be 100 years old. Take a close look at the dates above. Nannie entered this world in the centennial year of our country and died toward the end of the bicentennial year celebration. This club is small: through hypothetical calculations, I have determined that only about 100 people in the United States could also claim an exact centennial birth/bicentennial death.

Nannie treasured having a baby named for her and doted on me my first ten years. Wonderful and imaginative childhood experiences came from time I spent visiting Nannie for the weekend at the old family home in Clinton. I reminisce: sitting in the parlor hearing family stories; sliding down the ultimate banister; walking down to the square to buy candy at Ben Franklin's; a winding back staircase to run up and down; the lure of the attic; simply an endless playground of discovery and history.

She also taught me an appreciation of the written letter and, being my first pen pal, we exchanged mail regularly. She addressed the letters to “My Dearest Namesake” and as a young girl in a big family the special attention felt really important. When Nannie died in 1976 it ended an era in her branch of the family and within two years the 1868 family home disappeared and a Phillips gas station supposedly arose in its place. I've never bothered to check it out. In my mind the Britts home still stands on Franklin Street in Clinton, Mo.

As a Young Woman

I can still hear the trains in the distance and smell the woody scent of the old house in Clinton. 

This was my favorite place to be when I was 7-10 years old.

To Be of Use by Marge Piercy

In a world that often defines people by what they do for a living being unemployed has been a humbling and eye-opening experience. After 25 years of growing a career that brought pride and challenge, the job layoff this summer felt like a heartless punch in the gut. 

Being a free agent can’t last forever but I choose to embrace it. My roles have never been so varied: babysitter, writer, book seller, editor, lawn mower, and more. Yet I’d trade nothing to have the time and ability to help my Mom when she broke her femur earlier in the summer. It takes a lot for my fiercely independent mother to need or ask for help. But the wicked surgery and the long and painful recovery process perhaps humbled her in a way similar to my layoff. We both have to count on others right now. The ability to give back to my Mom--the person who has devoted her every being to her family--has been one of the most precious experiences of my life. 

Today she faces a second surgery on her femur that will take her recovery process back to where she started. It’s serious stuff and all I can hope is that she realizes that she has a daughter that just needs to be of use. 

To Be of Use

by Marge Piercy

The people I love the best

jump into work head first

without dallying in the shallows

and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.

They seem to become natives of that element,

the black sleek heads of seals

bouncing like half-submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,

who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,

who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,

who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge

in the task, who go into the fields to harvest

and work in a row and pass the bags along,

who are not parlor generals and field deserters

but move in a common rhythm

when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.

Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.

But the thing worth doing well done

has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.

Greek amphoras for wine or oil, 

Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums

but you know they were made to be used. 

The pitcher cries for water to carry

and a person for work that is real.