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ffloAnd so it goes.
There was an explosion in Kosovo a little bit ago. Seems like what I've been hearing on the BBC lately leans toward no independent state for the region being what more of the rest of Europe and/or the UN is leaning toward advocating. Cuz, like, Russia has naked pictures of 'em. Or something. Anyway, you have to wonder whether this blast is (one version of) the beginning of a breakaway. Or maybe a beginning of lots of violence, anyway.
The thing I want to get---I'm gonna tell you, even though now (with today's info) I may not get it 'til Spring: a birch tree. It was staring you in the face all along, wasn't it. ;) As I drove out to the nursery today, where I talked to this fella Mike about the trees & options, I had already acknowledged my bizarro fear, real psychological resistance stuff, at the prospect of actually going and doing it, acquiring and planting a tree. It's not ambivalence about whether that's the tree I want, and (my brief waffle notwithstanding) I'm pretty confident the spot I have in mind is just right. So, yeah, by the time I was driving today, I'd already had to admit to myself that I've been having some irrational mysterious foot dragging; I was trying to work on (a) forcing myself to go ahead to the dang nursery and (b) postulating what might be up with that there terror thing.
After the tornado hit when I was a kid, there was a tree out front of our house that had been split off from itself. The story is that everybody else was ready to give it up for dead, but my mother (gee, this is a little like the story of the time I stopped breathing) --- Mom spliced the tree together. Wrapped it up, bound the wound... what have you. And the tree survived, and it's still there. And MUCH bigger. When we still lived there you could see the healed-over place in the trunk showing the history of the near-fatal injury. You might still could.
There were some poplars along the back of that house that "we" planted, too. My folks together, I'm guessing. They got real tall too.
I like the idea of planting trees. I like trees. I love birch trees. We live far enough up here that a birch'll do okay. Bert and Jewelz seem to think it's a good idea. They were the 2nd and 3rd ones I told. I was restricting whom I told cuz I didn't want to not do it, which telling too many people seemed as if it might lead to. Somehow I knew superstition (in the form of self-defeating jinx prevention) was called for. Anthropologists on superstition, as I often recall (here's the short take): we're superstitious when (i) things seem out of our control and (ii) the stakes are high.
It isn't the money that was holding me back. I don't *think* it was a reluctance to hope. Planting a tree is something like having hope, in the face of death.
Okay I don't really have a working theory yet. Youse guys offer some conjecture?
There was an explosion in Kosovo a little bit ago. Seems like what I've been hearing on the BBC lately leans toward no independent state for the region being what more of the rest of Europe and/or the UN is leaning toward advocating. Cuz, like, Russia has naked pictures of 'em. Or something. Anyway, you have to wonder whether this blast is (one version of) the beginning of a breakaway. Or maybe a beginning of lots of violence, anyway.
The thing I want to get---I'm gonna tell you, even though now (with today's info) I may not get it 'til Spring: a birch tree. It was staring you in the face all along, wasn't it. ;) As I drove out to the nursery today, where I talked to this fella Mike about the trees & options, I had already acknowledged my bizarro fear, real psychological resistance stuff, at the prospect of actually going and doing it, acquiring and planting a tree. It's not ambivalence about whether that's the tree I want, and (my brief waffle notwithstanding) I'm pretty confident the spot I have in mind is just right. So, yeah, by the time I was driving today, I'd already had to admit to myself that I've been having some irrational mysterious foot dragging; I was trying to work on (a) forcing myself to go ahead to the dang nursery and (b) postulating what might be up with that there terror thing.
After the tornado hit when I was a kid, there was a tree out front of our house that had been split off from itself. The story is that everybody else was ready to give it up for dead, but my mother (gee, this is a little like the story of the time I stopped breathing) --- Mom spliced the tree together. Wrapped it up, bound the wound... what have you. And the tree survived, and it's still there. And MUCH bigger. When we still lived there you could see the healed-over place in the trunk showing the history of the near-fatal injury. You might still could.
There were some poplars along the back of that house that "we" planted, too. My folks together, I'm guessing. They got real tall too.
I like the idea of planting trees. I like trees. I love birch trees. We live far enough up here that a birch'll do okay. Bert and Jewelz seem to think it's a good idea. They were the 2nd and 3rd ones I told. I was restricting whom I told cuz I didn't want to not do it, which telling too many people seemed as if it might lead to. Somehow I knew superstition (in the form of self-defeating jinx prevention) was called for. Anthropologists on superstition, as I often recall (here's the short take): we're superstitious when (i) things seem out of our control and (ii) the stakes are high.
It isn't the money that was holding me back. I don't *think* it was a reluctance to hope. Planting a tree is something like having hope, in the face of death.
Okay I don't really have a working theory yet. Youse guys offer some conjecture?
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Date: Sep. 24th, 2007 05:26 am (UTC)We had a birch tree in our yard when I was a kid. Portage, Michigan, south of Kalamazoo--no farther north than here. It was a cool tree, thought peeling the papery bark was a big temptation for a little boy.
I'm not sure about soil--it was sandier in the western part of the state, and awfully clayey in these parts. Call the master gardener hotline for Washtenaw county and ask 'em.
Assuming there's not soily reason against it, by all means, plant it. Good for the soul, good for the city, good for the world, warm fuzzies all over.
Time's a-wastin'. I don't know what the right time of year is, but if it's now, it won't be in a few months.
no subject
Date: Sep. 25th, 2007 02:47 am (UTC)It also *is* a bit of a control thing -- you can take care of it as well as you can, but it still has to stand there, outside and exposed, mostly by itself. Trees are good at that, though. So I think you'll be OK.