The Day of the Trees

You know how you refer to unusual events as “the day Johnny broke his collarbone”, or “the day my car died on the interstate 15 miles from anywhere”? Well, Wednesday was that kind of day. I call it the day of the trees.

I had decided to update you with all our permaculture efforts and wanted to start with how our orchard was doing in front of the red, red barn. I got out my trusty camera and hoofed it down the road to take a picture of the peach tree we planted last year which is doing marvellously well this year. Good visual on the way we are trying to turn this farm into a haven for trees.

The gate into the orchard has always been difficult. Of all our wooden gates, this one is perhaps the worst. I can’t get it open without hauling it upward to slip the hook out of the socket. Since it is a very heavy wooden gate (made more so when it is wet, which is always), I use my foot as a lever. This, along with my shoulder action usually gets the gate up enough to slip off the hook. And it did so this time. Unfortunately, it also broke the gate which dropped, very heavily, down on my foot.

With the gate drooping disconsolately in the road, I decided to haul it back into position and pretend I was never there. Wood doesn’t take fingerprints very well, does it?

I had barely gotten the broken timbers in place when Dan came barrelling down the road in the quad (which, by the way, I have never yet been allowed to drive, but I’m not bitter!). Swinging himself off the quad, he matter-of-factly said, “So the old gate has finally had it, eh?”

Now you know why I never turned to a life of crime. I’m terrible at it. Here I thought I was hiding the results of my incompetence and Dan was watching the whole thing from the top of the hill.

Dan then informed me that it was time to move the steers from paddock #1 behind the red, red barn up to the paddock in front of the new barn. Great! I always love it when the stock are in that paddock, I can see them from my window and don’t have to get wet hiking a mile to check them.

So we open the gate – very gingerly but it holds together, sort of. And lead out the steers. These steers are more than ready and bolt eagerly for the new grass on the verge of the roadway. All except one; that one being #104. 104 has been cross-grained since we got him. If the herd goes north, he goes south. If I want him in the next paddock, he flicks his tail and refuses to move, no matter what.

So true to his nature, 104 heads straight for one of the newly planted eucalyptus trees and bites off its head. A screech of pure pain comes out of my son’s mouth and he heads up toward the mangled tree swearing oaths of vengeance on #104 and at the same time, vainly trying to save the mangled splinter that was so recently a tree.

The rest of the trip is spent in a sullen silence by 104 (ha, ha, you thought it’d be Dan, didn’t you). Dan is quite peeved but fairly accepting since it’s all part of being a farmer. As we hike up behind the cows, he tells me that he thinks he’s found the entrance route of the rats that converge in my ceiling every evening.

Now this is good news. I have mentioned before that it sounds like a rats’ convention at happy hour up there and I get a creeped-out feeling as I hear the scrabbling, clawing, and other weird noises as I’m tryng to sleep. I keep thinking that all that activity will eventually come through the ceiling and onto my bed – with me in it.

So I keep my enthusiasm level high as Dan informs me that he will need my help with the ropes. “What ropes?” I ask. The ropes that will pull the extremely large branch of the pine tree down off the roof. Pull off a tree branch, how hard can it be?

I am about to find out. It is late afternoon when Dan fires up the old chain saw and sets to work. I go off to do something. Just about anything else. I am nervous around chain saws and even more nervous when someone I love dearly is around them.

It is coming on to nightfall when I go out to see if Dan is finished. I want to remind him that 8:00 is past dinner time (once a mother, always a mother). The tree branch has been partially sawn through and is resting on the roof. Dan is up an extremely precarious ladder trying to hand saw off the minor branches. With keen insight, I immediately notice that the ladder’s feet are slipping on the wet,  pine needled soil, down into the water gulley that surrounds the garage. Now this gully is no slouch, it comes up to my knees and is treacherous.

I point this out. I won’t use the word ‘snarled’ but the response is less than cordial. I go back to the kitchen and eat my dinner. At about 8:30 I return and stand silently as Dan makes a number of fruitless attempts to better anchor the ladder. I say “at the risk of having my head bitten off, I want to point out that it is getting dark.” Dan responds with a gloomy “I know but I can’t leave the tree limb up there. It might slide down and knock off the water pipes leading to our water tanks.”

Yes, folks, this tree limb is jeopardizing the entire household water supply. And just when we have finally gotten rid of the poison that laid me low twice after we had the roof power washed. Now I’m as invested in this project as my son.

“What can I do?”

“Hold this rope while I try to saw off the rest of the limb. When it’s free, pull on your rope to keep the branch from sliding down this side.”

We tried. We really tried. But the limb gets caught up on a spike of its severed self and won’t budge. It is now really, really dark and we are working by light of my bathroom window which is covered with tree branch. Finally, at 10, I call game over and we decide to try again in the morning. This means early since Dan was supposed to go back to Auckland that night for an early business meeting.

At 6:30 the next morning I am ready. I am wearing my trusty parka. Lands End, I miss you terribly. What will I do when this parka finally goes to garment heaven? At least it’s daylight and we can see.

Dan is a very methodical person. Me, not so much. So I get edgy after Dan spends an hour (it seemed that way) trying to figure out the best way to get the limb off the roof, save the water system, not break my bathroom window and not get hurt in the process.

I mutter. He finally turns to me and asks, “what would you do, Mom?” And I tell him. I pull my ropes this way, and as the base of the tree limb is freed, he hauls on the other ropes the other way so that the top  swings away from the water pipes. But first, he needs to climb that shaky ladder yet again and chain saw off that spike holding the limb.

We follow the plan and so does the massive tree branch.Then we cut off the ancillary branches and haul the whole thing out of the gulley into which it had fallen.  It is 8:30 and Dan dashes for the shower and Auckland. I throw the severed branches over into the forest for permaculturing at a future time and follow him into the house. The day of the trees is over.