Vine insurgents

Voracious nature is always eating away at manmade structures, like roads and bridges, but it is concurrently eating itself, too.  In my neighborhood, vines are literally sucking the life out of shade trees. Today, Roy stood up to the destructive process. He rescued one of our trees from a sap-sucking vine that had embedded its tentacle roots into the bark. It was not easy.

Digging out roots by the handful.

By the time I saw what was going on, the refuse pile of stems and roots was already big and growing. I wish I'd started taking pictures before he began, so you could have sized up the foe for yourself.  Foe? It's not that we hate vines, in fact we have a new appreciation for their strength and tenacity. But our magnificent tree seemed a defenseless giant.

The shiny, deep green leaves of the vine are deceptively lovely as they envelop the trunk.

The vine's roots were not only embedded in the bark all over this huge tree, but they made a thick network in the earth all around the tree, too. 

What's a sturdy Honda Civic for, but to do its master's bidding?

Roy attached a rope to the car and the vine,
and let his muscle car do the heavy hauling.

This was no Red Green contraption, though. The strength of the roots' underground attachments demanded strong mechanical help in ripping them out.

The crotch of the tree had been stuffed with roots, too, collecting water which over time would weaken the joint. A crowbar helped clear those away.

And finally . . .

. . . the victory smile.

We are not fooled. We know there surely is some small fragment of vine root left in the earth or in the bark, and that tonight as I write, the vine has already begun to regrow its attachment to the tree. It will be up to the next property owners to recognize the contest and decide which is more important to them:  The shade tree, with the watchfulness needed to keep it free? Or just let be what otherwise will be?

Underclass revolt?

I'm supposed to be sorting out my old life and packing up my house, but here I am, compelled to blog. For four days I have been separate from radio, TV, and (until now) Internet. It has been a blissful separation, allowing me to connect fully with other aspects of life. But my dear husband has emailed me something that demands my return to this blog -- dedicated to creating better thought-worlds -- and to the outer world.

[Here is my footnote, where you can see the Boston.com piece that set Roy and me off: http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2011/08/16/povertys_boiling_point/ ]


It's tempting to republish Simon Waxman's whole article, but then where would I put my own thoughts? Here's a squib, combining two definitions -- short but explosive:

   The root of this uprising [in England] is in economic structures that maintain the distinctions between tony Kensington and burning Tottenham.

   The bottom isn’t in flames because it lacks morals. It is crying out because of persistent poverty. The explicit effects of economic inequality have struck again. Faced with a debt crisis born of the boom-bust cycle inherent in capitalism, the British government has a choice about how to distribute the pain. Should it tax the rich and restrain the greedy, the very people who produced the financial crisis whose fallout has withered government coffers? Or should it threaten and impose austerity measures that primarily affect the poor?

     It should come as no surprise that the British government has opted to distribute the pain downward, much as the US federal and state governments now are. The rich have influence, and the poor do not. That is why economic inequality, not moral failing, is the illness in need of remedy.

Can't seem to help returning to Waxman who
says this so well:  

[T]he ethos of capitalism enforces the notion that we deserve what we have, and what we give to others reflects private virtue. The rabble, in other words, should feel thankful for what they get.

     But they are not always thankful, especially when the equilibrium is disturbed, and their meager slice of the pie is threatened. Without influence in government and media, the only voice left to the poor is either large-scale violent or nonviolent protest, but the latter is much harder to organize and demands committed leadership that does not just emerge overnight. One hopes that aggression gives way to a more Gandhian approach, but, as the more straightforward of two alternatives, violence was foreseeable.

     As predictable as the violence is the response. When the poor lash out, the comfortable condemn their moral decay and decry their criminality.

Charles Dickens would recognize to his horror the current state of affairs. We heeded his 19th C. cry for decency and dignity for awhile, made some heroic or back-to-the-wall changes, but then slipped back into the rich/poor near-paralysis.

I'm staying for a few days in Waldoboro, Maine, and am suddenly struck with the memory of participating in the town food pantry, held in the basement of the Methodist church. What strikes me now, is the good humor and generosity of spirit with which that charity is run. One cannot with assurance tell who are the poor and who are the providers, as they first eat a simple meal together, then all pitch in to be sure the groceries are well shared. It can be done, and surely is being done in other places, with other participants. May this generosity of spirit spread.

Walden: "Drink at my well"

Today we explored a natural world created by thought. Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts, was the home of Henry David Thoreau for only a brief blip in history. But his discoveries of and about the natural world, and especially his meditations thereon, have rippled down the years to this very day. And, judging by the scenes we saw today, his thought-world will ripple on indefinitely.
For instance:

Some people go to Walden Pond to fish.

Some people go to Walden Pond for its beach.

But the devotees set off along the path
that circles the pond . . .

Every few hundred feet there will be steps
or a path to the water.

And at the end of each path, someone
will be meditating this way . . .

Or this way . . .

Or this way . . . oops, where'd they go? This lone
bag probably belongs to one of the long-distance
swimmers, out there criss-crossing the pond.

We got there mid-morning on a Friday.  The early bird devotees were leaving, wrapped in white terry robes or bright shawls, having already made communion with the delightful, clear water and with the rising day. We swam off Red Cross Beach, a somewhat stony but deliciously unguarded beach slightly off the track. Then we set off to walk the circuit of the pond. Like this . . .

Yes, that's me. Wet and
feeling go-oo--oo--d.

And here's today's main photographer.
Our adventure in part marks the return
of Roy's Nikon from the repair shop.

We didn't take a picture of the people who come to Walden to read poetry to themselves or to each other -- it seemed just too much an intrusion -- nor did we get a clear photo of the more meditative swimmers, like the man drifting along, floating on his back and displaying a beatified face to the sun. His lips were moving silently, as if he was reciting poetry to the sky.

Roy found the following, which sums up my blog:

Boston's "Ice King", Frederic Tudor, harvested ice yearly on Walden Pond for export to the Caribbean, Europe, and India. In his journal, Thoreau philosophized upon the wintry sight of Tudor's ice harvesters: "The sweltering inhabitants of Charleston and New Orleans, of Madras and Bombay and Calcutta, drink at my well ... The pure Walden water is mingled with the sacred water of the Ganges."

Hang on, though, and I'll show you a few more finds.

Mounted police patrol the
commuter rail tracks, otherwise
too open to Walden Pond hikers.

This hip-booted fisherman
had one trout in his creel, but
was hoping for a second fish
"for my wife."

And, finally, this cairn near the edge of the water
reminded us of the thought-world of this site.

Such Refuge

Photo by Roy Barnacle

Today was another day of discovery for me.

Roy took me for an early morning hike along the walking trails on the former Hamlen Farms in Wayland. You may remember that this town is 40% in conservation lands of one type or another. This piece encompasses not only an ancient farm, whose stone walls still trace their way through the woods, but also Wayland's former reservoirs. Here are some scenes along the way:

Here's Roy, giving scale to the former
baby pines that grew up when Farmer
Hamlen ceased tilling his soil.

Roy took this one; I threw the stone.
We are standing on a sluice way between
two sections of the former reservoir.

I should have put an object in to give
scale to this beaver colony's abandoned
  project. The tree is BIG. There was plenty
of evidence that beaver were active when
the  water level was higher.

You'll just have to imagine how red this
cardinal flower really was.

It's hard to remember that there's trouble anywhere in the world,
as you walk along these trails.

Bushes crowd the path across a causeway. You may
not be able to see the LBB hopping along ahead of us.

 What's an LBB, you say? Ask my son-in-law, Rob.
(OK, it's a "little brown bird.")

Sara the Sophisticated
Cellphone Photographer.

And finally, near trail's end, is the philosopher's
bench. To Roy's left was a view of open water,
an acre of water lilies, and geese and ducks
feeding or napping in the morning sun.
Happy trails, indeed.

Maybe the Last Bouquet

The process of clearing out a house and barn in order to sell it is one of those projects that extends to fill all the time available. And that's good, if the clearing out entails sifting through a long, happy family life and culling out the very little you can take with you into a new life. Such is my love affair with 179 Friendship St., Waldoboro, Maine.

Last week, daughter Rachel, son-in-law Rob, and I spent the three hottest days of this summer working at the sorting and clearing. We also took time to play.

First order of the day: Rachel collects a full
gallon of raspberries from our neglected
bushes. She made a heavenly pie.
Note the gone-to-seed rhubarb!

Second order of the day: Bring the house
to life with flowers. This was Rob's job.
Is this my last bouquet here?

Weeding and bush-trimming filled several
trash cans, but Wow, did Tom's sculptured
landscaping look great again.

We moved "a ton of stuff" along via a "free" sign.
This man and his wife filled their car twice and
the Feeneys' truck once. Excellent riddance of
things I no longer need.

Weeding and mulching made the
barn garden presentable again.

And the play? Here are R & R at Owl's
Head Lighthouse, before we went to see
the final Harry Potter flick. We also swam
at idyllic Peter's Pond and had a beach
picnic with old friends Liza and Amelia.

My family is wonderful.