A Cleansing of Heavenly Trees

Sometime before 8 am a few mornings ago, a large truck arrived in front of our house, a group of strange men piled out with chainsaws in tow, and began chopping down a sizeable portion of trees on the side of our house and yard. Who commissioned these men? Certainly not the owner of our rental house - he was too cheap to even agree to put window coverings in this place. We concluded that it must be the neighbors, and that these trees which seem in "our" yard must actually be part of theirs. We still are puzzling over why, if someone were to go to such trouble, they would only remove some of them, and not all, why they'd merely cut a five-foot swath between the tallest trees and the fenceline. At the end of the day, the landscape was significantly changed.

Usually I would be sad at such a violating gesture, but not this time. The removed trees are all "tree of Heaven," ailanthus altissima, a highly-invasive species native to China and Taiwan. They are the foundation of what is literally a non-native ecosystem in our yard. I once spent two days in Schenley Park in Pittsburgh with no other goal than to remove ailanthus seedlings, fought with them in my own yard there, and I know firsthand what a pervasive, stubborn, impossible species it is. I know too that because those men left behind remnants - the stumps - by the end of the summer, it's likely that much of that work will have been pointless. It can, and will, come back with a vengeance. That's what it does. Always.

Just more evidence that things out of place are usually out of place for good reason.

Hope Is the Thing with Feathers

I've talked here about my "bird issues," how despite my being an animal person wholeheartedly, I've never really liked birds, except for the big, impressive birds of prey ('charismatic megafauna' anyone?). There's just something twitchy, unpredictable, and more than a bit creepy about them to me. All of them - in a sweeping generalization kind of way. And really, since I've mostly lived in fairly urban areas, I've been too busy paying attention to other animals where I can find them to notice something that's always seemed insignificant to me as birds have. And then I came here to Appalachia, where birds are the most abundant wildlife that I encounter regularly. They are everywhere, always. And it turns out that the three-year old really digs birds.

So, last fall, we went and bought a bird feeder for the front yard - which has now multiplied into three in the front yard and two in the backyard. And I dusted off that Audubon Guide to North American Birds - Eastern Region that's been sitting largely unused on my nature writing bookshelf for years, sat down at the front window, and I have forced myself to start paying attention. And this act has surprised me, in ways I couldn't have imagined. Such a diversity of birds. Such an unexpected thrill when I see a new one and *need* to figure out what it is ("I saw an eastern bluebird in the park today!"). Such fun to pore through the book with that three-year old, identifying what we look at together. Such sadness for four long days after a Terrible Squirrel Incident when the front feeders had been emptied and few birds came to visit.

I will likely never be a bird person, not even when The Toddler tells me she would like a *pet* bird. But I am learning to appreciate them, for the first time. And I guess it isn't only the big ones that can mean something to me.

Apologia

It seems I have terrifically underestimated the time - and energy - demands of full-time parenting & part-time teaching. I've spent almost the last two months compiling the beginnings of nature blog entries & sticking them into a Word file, which is now many, many pages long. Will those fragments ever become manifest? I certainly hope so. I keep up with the reading, but not the words, not the thoughtful part of things. I have a tiny moment to breathe, and I hope to catch up with responding to all those Words Not My Own this week. But as for the currency of this blog, I can safely say that I definitely do not get a *passing* grade for my own assignment!