I am not one to get all mushy over a dying tree. Troubled, irritated, inconvenienced? Yes. Overwrought and saccharine? Nope.
For three years after we took guardianship of this land called Windcliff in 2000, we spent our weekends descrying the play of light and patterns of wind on this property. Over time, we agreed upon the orientation of the expanded house as well as the invitation into the house- the front door- the one decision that never seems to receive sufficient contemplation in our culture.
In an attempt to keep intact the pneuma of its original gardeners, Peg West and Mary Stech, we knew we would keep signatures from the original landscape to embrace our new home. Due to the logistics of construction, exactly which ones would or could remain was undetermined.
During late October of 2001, upon my arrival home from an extended stay in Asia, we packed our dogs and assorted foodstuffs for another weekend respite to our once and future home. During that weekend, we witnessed an entire family of pileated woodpeckers ravishing the succulent red fruit of a multi-stemmed specimen of the Pacific Dogwood, Cornus nuttallii, rising to nearly 45′, slightly west of the existing home. The entire framework of this tree was lavished by lime-green lichen while its lingering foliage still held tints of orange/red. It was, however, its height, balance and foist upon the land that dictated a consideration of this tree as a point of convergence into our yet undesigned home. If not the decision itself, at least the seeds of one were harvested that weekend.
Soon enough realizing its significance as ‘point of departure’, I moved the memorial stone of our still-mourned canine companion, Emerson, to the shade of its branches. Using the tree as signal and sentinel, we signed off on the exact placement of the front door of our new home. The dogwood would assuredly welcome our guests for as long as we would live here. [Read more…]
In September of 1996, I visited the Yulong Shan in NE Yunnan Province in China. It was my debut in botanizing within that remarkable country, accompanied by a talented contingent of like-minded plantspeople, and there is hardly a better place to sample its fantastic flora than in the dramatic mountains northwest of Lichiang. It was there that I collected the seed of Picea likiangensis var purpurea, the Lichiang Spruce, after having previously read titillating tributes to its ornamental appeal.
Today, as I was carting loads of firewood from the woodshed to the house through the yellow-stained gum of half-melted snow, I was reminded how good and profoundly circular life can be.
Yeh, ok, I realize that. I said ok, ok? I know I do not write often enough and I know that when I do write, I write too much. There are always other more important things to do than to sit to write; put suet out for the birds, the birds that somehow disjointedly figure into what I was going to write about, weed the part of the garden that has the plant that I was going to write about, take a picture of the plant I was going to write about, collect its seed, remove a dead branch, clean the refrigerator because it had absolutely nothing to do with the subject I was about to write about. You know the drill. And then, when the dogs are walked and asleep on the banquette and the most up-to-date election polls are examined, I begin to write about what I was meant to write about, at last confronting that bridge to nowhere while attempting to create a reality that someone will be sufficiently naïve to believe. And then I write too much because there generally is too much too say, especially so when I am saying it, and you end up on a long bridge that leads to nowhere. And sadder still, I know precisely what all of you must be shrieking when you attempt to decipher my infinite, yet I must say ever so thoughtful and witty musings; thanks but no thanks. 
