Acair Fearann

a sign of a blogger who is too busy to blog…. they start writing about music they like.

Anyway, while I’d never share it with them, the Lord knows they wouldn’t appreciate it*: this is for some old-style union** guys I know.  Ralph, Frankie, Jimmie, Gus, and everyone else, may you find some diamonds.***

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZqhLmhxWlA&index=1&list=PLPoADF3p3RWuRGYfX2Ajps_hjlTwEcs1N

*both coming from someone in my position and ‘weak and defenseless’ they most assuredly are Not

** old-style union, we aren’t talking government union here; though possibly teamster. Slightly crazy, not going to work if you can’t give them a good reason why.  And the why better both be the actual reason and a suggested ability to, how shall we say, impel the action physically….  Though that being said, the first reason alone will work if your track record is good, the second alone won’t work; they aren’t stupid. They’re probably smarter than the management.

***

My diamonds today: the ice was a low, continuous snarl against an otherwise silent shore.

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Really, honest!

The giveaway? Corners, some stacked rocks, a center line of rocks (you can see them), overall dimensions (approx 24 x 24) and the flat land. Thank goodness the old farmers weren’t wannabe Frank Gehry’s!

The trees we have found also tend to colonize the outside of the foundation first.  You can see the birch and the maple have done exactly that (growing on the outside) here. Inside this one there is some striped maple, one of the early re-colonizers of the interior along with dogwoods, barberry, rose, ilex, and such. Ash, cherry, and birch are generally the first trees to start up inside the foundation, especially if it is wet, and usually seem to go for the chimney base. Following those, beech, hemlock, and maple will eventually start up in the inside, but are always younger than the ones that have started outside the wall.  Of over one hundred sites, we have found exactly one that was located in a laurel grove, despite the laurel often being nearby.

Pine will colonize on top of the foundation, but generally not in it.  Oak and hickory are always outside the wall and in the surrounding fill.  They are not in or on the foundation.

In general!

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I suppose winter had to show up at some point.  It is the wind more than the cold actually; it makes doing things outside a bit of a challenge what with random bits of tree branches coming down here and there.  Oddly enough, even Maine-bred loggers don’t like high wind.  Smart of them.

(Personal whine here) Still, I can’t say that I really care for this bit of winter. Or perhaps, more to the point, I don’t really care for trying to balance several schedules that can’t really slow down because it is winter.  The modern world of reports and budgets grinds on, as does the modern world of working shift schedules. Combining them and winter weather….well. *

But the world is turning, and as cold as it is, the sun is winning and the moon is riding high. There is today and God willing there is tomorrow.

*All made a bit grimmer by the news that a man I have come to know fairly well over the last two years, at least his temperament and his outlook on business, died last night.  All of us on the board in question knew it was coming, but still it jars.

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There is a dirt road that runs by our property, which being the only dirt road of any length in town has become something of a destination for those taking a walk.  It is also a commuter short cut.  The juxtaposition of those enjoying nature and those enjoying the lack of a posted speed limit is sometimes awkward.  It is made more awkward be those few other people, who are using the road as a road, but aren’t abusing it as a shortcut.

There are a lot of people on it.  Currently, it has a lovely tendency towards the art of balancing rocks.  You know, those sculptures created by taking one rock and balancing it on another and the next and the next.  I sort of hope the trend continues.  They are, I believe, at this point communal sculptures with people adding new ones or adding to existing ones.  To the best of my knowledge none have been deliberately knocked down either, which is something of a miracle it seems to me these days.  I don’t object to them, as long as they stay next to the road, though the majority are on our side of the road and therefore possibly on our land.

And we have the dog walkers (the corgi contingent in particular), the power walkers, the walkers who are out because the doctor said so, the people enjoying the walk, and so forth.  Only a rare horse these days.  The commuter traffic makes trying to ride a horse dangerous.  What is odd about that, of course, is that chances are the speeding commuters are also the walkers, and probably complain about the traffic.

There are also the people whom one simply knows; the cars one recognizes at a certain time each day.  I had a pleasant chat with one such today, he was delivering a load of firewood to a neighbor, I was contemplating the woods.  Nice guy, we agreed that the only reason to stay in Connecticut was because a) family b) we loved the land here.  He’d be in New Zealand otherwise, apparently.  Definite Swamp Yankee, and no insult in the term; I doubt he’d ever build a balanced stone sculpture, though he’d likely leave it alone on the strength of the ‘due unto others as….’. He didn’t care much for the traffic, but understood why people love the walk.

It is an odd community, not sure how much of the ‘middle’ is left these days though.

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with wood

Trees are, of themselves, a wondrous thing. For man to build a structure that is a hundred feet plus in height that will stand for centuries….the effort, dear heaven! (the paperwork!). For nature? This is, indeed, the natural course of things.

But consider wood.  We use it daily and daily it frustrates or fascinates us.  This house, we have calculated, changes its length by about 1 to 2 inches over the course of each year.  The plaster, which does not care for such gyrations, is annoyed.  The wooden frame does not care.  It will shrink and it will expand, year in and year out.Best not to fiddle with it.

I was reading with great interest an article discussing the compression rates of wood in ships. The article’s end paragraph suggested that if the boat was hauled out (and therefore dried out) each winter, the best thing to do each spring was to be patient.  Put it in the water, get the pumps running, and wait a few days…then put caulk in it if needed. The wood will swell of its own nature and return to its watertight state. Patience.

But we need consider not only the variable of wood, but of each species! Maple, pine, oak, locust, cedar, lignum vitae, mahogany, spruce, and on the list goes….  And then how it is treated or cut or cured….

Fuel, art, or shelter?  What other material does as well?

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We have a lot of big trees here….

But every once in awhile the trees that capture one’s attention change (this takes a decade or two). The current suddenly noticeable one, for me, is the second of the two spruces beyond Happy Thought.  I know, who actually remembers it is there, aside from the massive trunk?  One doesn’t notice it because one can’t actually, really see its top from the house lot.

But you certainly can now from the bottom of the meadow.  In early photographs it was very visible, since there were no trees to the west of it and it was planted early on.  But then the tennis court went to white pine in the 40’s and it vanished.  Well, it has re-emerged from behind them again. I wonder how big it will get?  The pines could out top it again of course, but their first sprint has slowed down to a steady marathon pace.

You can see it below on the left side, on far the right of the clump of pines. Behind the last pine there is the distinctive silhouette of a Norway spruce, spikier and darker green that the pine.  Compare it to the other spruce immediately to the right, which is a much more important tree when one is on the lawn; but is much smaller.  Obviously, it has been above the pines for a few years, but it really is only just getting to be noticeable.  It also may be approaching the prize as the tallest tree on the place.

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The major seed catalogs have all arrived….I am not sure I am quite ready for this.  Somehow, December’s warm weather has made me even more wary of winter.  It isn’t that I don’t want spring, it is that I am still waiting for the shoe to drop and winter to commence. Besides, I might still be able to sneak a leek or some parsley out of the garden from Last summer, which makes contemplating next summer peculiar. Strangely, pulling something from the freezer (or the multitude of squash downstairs) does not elicit the same feeling that last year’s garden is still active.

The mind is an odd and wonderful place!

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