New trees where the old trees were May 18, 2024
Woke up yesterday to the shaking of our 1888 house.
This was not an earthquake, but a backhoe in the street in
front digging up the two tree pits on out sidewalk.
We had asked the city two years ago to remove the existing
trees because contractors from PSE&G had so completely butchered them that
they threatened to fall into our house.
Uncle Brian – what we call the mayor – sent crews on the
coldest day of that year to cut them down.
Since then, the pits had remained empty, until yesterday.
The other properties up and down our quiet street had been
planted prior to the removal of our trees. So, we discussed our options –
whether to ask the city to replant or to simply concrete over the pits.
Uncle Brian in the meantime must have come down the street
and noticed, sending his crews yesterday to give us new trees to replace the
old ones, a pleasant surprise, although waking to the rumbling made us wonder
if the sky was falling.
This is cleanup week for the city, as one of Uncle Brian’s
many flyers told us. As a result, we dragged out everything from our side and
back yards, which we were reluctant to put out in the past – including the
leftover pieces of new wood flooring we had installed in one of the rooms. This
last had the trash crews grumbling since the wood was heavy, even though I divided
it up in several containers. We also put out cut up limbs from one of the mulberry
trees that had grown too close to the house – reminiscent of the 2011 Halloween
disaster in which a fluke snow storm brought down tree limbs into our yard and onto
our old house.
That disaster came just prior to my going for eye surgery
and so the limbs remained in the yard for months until I could safety remove
the patch from my eye and once again use the saw – something I wrote several
poems about later.
We have a battery-operated saw these days, only I forgot to
charge it, and so wound up sawing wood the old fashioned way.
There is something Zen in all this, a kind of internal peace
that comes from the kind of labor my ancestors would have engaged in, although
we might have found more satisfaction had we a fire pit or fire place in which
to burn the timber.
Due to the slew of fires in our town, Uncle Brian has banned
fire pits, and, of course, having a fire place these days is a mortal sin in
the new fake climate change religion.
So, our trash guys get the brunt of our labors.
The whole thing prompted us to finally clean up the patio
out back, where we intend to install a canopy. We already have lounge chairs
and an outdoor table.
I’m thinking about possibly holding our wedding reunion at
our house, inviting some of those who were at our original ceremony back in the
day, although a number of the original participants are no longer alive –
including my best friend Paulie, whose band played our wedding for free.
I’m pretty sure I can get Garrick to perform with me at the reunion,
although it won’t quite be the same.
I just recently learned of the death of the mayor who married
us. He apparently had moved south over the intervening years, getting himself
elected to yet another town. It would have been a hoot if he could have
performed the ceremony again.
As with my first marriage back in the 1970s, this ceremony was
very much a hippie thing, and the party that took place as close to the old
band performances as anyone might imagine
-- not the last performance of the band, but a memorable.
Anyway, it’ll all we wait and see as I put out feelers with
those who might want to come in October.
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