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| Monarchs Abound |
It's a sunny, cool day in Birdland, and we have passed
the corner of the year bringing us to Autumn. My corner meadow is now dressed
in fall colors of Goldenrod and the dotted lace of White Heath Asters. The bees
like it. The small trees I intend to pollard are getting to be pruning size,
and indeed, last year I cut the top off of the largest sycamore, hoping to get
that nice rounded shape. Cottonwoods quake in the cool breeze. I'm not actually
sure will take to this kind of pruning, but I figured I'd give it a try since
they’ve come up so abundantly. Other trees I’m trying are mulberry (which take
well to pollarding) and redbud (another experiment). I came out to the porch to
feel the wind. I suppose it's time to turn off the air conditioner and open the
windows to the autumn coolness. Next to me the Elephant Ears are shaking their
heads slowly—back and forth, back and forth—enjoying the breeze too.
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| Sun Sets over the Corn |
The beans are beginning to yellow, now the same color
as the tassels on top of the cornfield to the east. The field to the west is a
little further towards dry, the leaves just beginning to brown. I'm on the
lookout for the Monarchs. They sometimes stop over here to rest in the
neighbors' mulberry trees on our lane. When I was walking in the cemetery up
the hill with my friend, Cate from Cincinnati, we caught sight of
first one monarch, then another, then a dozen. They were fluttering around the
trees on the edge of the old piney woods (which no longer holds many pineys,
having been planted as a Christmas tree plot and never harvested. They, all but
a few staunch holdouts, died one year after a bitter winter bracketed by a
couple of summers of drought. It might have been the weather stress, or maybe
they just lived out their natural life. The mass die-out of the pineys shows
another failing of monocultures. A thousand trees planted in rows one summer by
six enthusiastic kids may all die together seventy years later. A diversified
forest—or farm—is the way to go.) But back to the monarchs. They were
fluttering and lighting on the leaves, some of them folding their wings back to
rest, hiding the bright colors to look like autumn-yellowed leaves. I told Cate
about how they often stop here to rest up before their long migration. Or maybe
they stop here every year, but I am only occasionally aware enough to notice.
After visiting the family plots and meandering around the headstones, trying to
read the inscriptions blurred by acid rain, we set off down the hill. We found
another congregation of monarchs in the lane, but not as many as I have seen in
years past. Maybe it was just the welcoming committee. I'll keep an eye out.
But
back, again, to the Pineys. (And this letter meanders like the chicken I'm
watching in the yard, tail up, head down, walking and pecking after whatever
catches her attention.) Despite its unnatural form, the Piney woods seemed
magical to me: forty foot trees, green at the top, but brown underneath, soft
cushion of needles, regular, curving rows that followed the curve of the
terraces my great-granddad had put in on the sloping parts of the farm to
protect the land from erosion. (After his death, the terraces were destroyed on
the rest of the farm, but those in the piney woods were hidden, protected from
the careless plow.) As a child, I used to go alone to climb up the ladder of
branches in one of the pines on the edge of the plot, to sit high in the tree
and watch what the wind blew over the western horizon. Nobody knew I was there,
I guess, since I never got scolded for it. But if anyone bothered to look east
from the house, they would see me sitting high in the tree, or maybe just a
splotch of blue overalls, and, boy, would I have heard about it.
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| On first glance they look like yellowing leaves. Look closer. |
Later, when we moved out to the farm, we began to cut
our Christmas trees from the pineys. The kids would try to see from the ground,
which tree was most promising, and Michael would fell the tree with his
chainsaw. (Sometimes we would guess wrong and wind up with a lopsided tree, but
we decorated it anyway.) The pines were so close together that often out tree
would only fall partway before being caught in the arms of another. My husband
would cut the angled trunk again, and sometimes again, before if would fall all
the way to the ground. Then we would top the tree and drag it home.
Fly
in Beauty; Congregate in Peace; Blessed Be
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