Another page from the blue notebook, this one fresher in These titles mean nothing.
- May 26, 2020, 4:29 a.m.
- |
- Public
5 am on the deck, not quite light enough to see my writing or the pale blue lines. I write by feel.
Sky lightening behind the barn and the walnuts. Bands of pale color and cloud above the eastern horizon.
Cows.
Gracie licking.
Birds announcing Tuesday, claiming their place in the world.
Little later, little more light.
Damp deck planks.
Thinking coffee and milk in a pint glass.
Mother and daughter walnuts.
EHK - my father’s aunt.
EKH - y father’s cousin.
Symmetry just noticed.
I like being here with the Esthers.
Neither EHK or EKH are good logging trees. Mother EHK vases out 20 feet up into three stalks, the central one into two more. It has vague symmetry like the initials but its far from perfect. Daughter EKH may have a taller trunk, but it splits and branches randomly, no plan or logic.
There is a third walnut directly south, younger of course, perhaps KH_. I don’t remember her last name. She wen to school with Tony. Joana would remember her too. I’ll ask. She lives in California. She visited a number of times. Her husband played the piano and wanted the gun. I want to say Huntington Beach but that sounds too rich for anyone related to me or to the farm. Though perhaps his family did something for or about yachts - so maybe KH_ did find gold in California.
EHK is geriatric. EKH i s in her prime. KH_ is young.
Walnuts are tall trees, demanding trees, messy and poisonous to those who do not love them. Luckily, I love them.
NorthernSeeker ⋅ May 26, 2020 (edited May 26, 2020)
Edited
I like the idea of thinking coffee. That is its purpose for me first thing in the morning. I think it is a good idea to name trees...they have personality and lives. I love that I can see so many trees from our apartment and where there are trees there are lots of birds.
woman in the moon NorthernSeeker ⋅ May 26, 2020
I love trees. Especially big old ones with history. Treestory.
Coffee/caffeine is like every other drug. It works best at first and then tapers off. It's a ritual too. A way to attach to others.
Just Annie ⋅ May 26, 2020
There are times I miss those big walnut trees at our old house. They were majestic. And ornery, dropping their walnuts on our heads. We don't have many trees here. Yet. There are some apple and pear trees by the back corner of the lot. Some ornamental ones along the drive. When we get the dirt moved in and the yard graded, I'll be talking trees with the homeowners. And lilac bushes.
Neogy Titwhistle ⋅ May 26, 2020
We have a palm tree. It is at the end of the new porch/deck between it and the street. twenty years ago it was no taller than the bottom of the living room window. Now it is nearly as tall as the roof peak. Palm trees shouldn't be here. It is an immigrant. I wish I could be up at 5am.
woman in the moon ⋅ May 26, 2020
Black walnuts are New World walnuts - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juglans_nigra
and what we call English walnuts are Old World - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juglans_regia.
They are both wonders of nature but they are quite different. My walnuts, the black ones, are delicious but boy are they a lot of work to pick, hull, dry, crack, and extract from the shell. Their lumber can be worth money if the trees are straight - mine aren't - but we have sold some in the past, you might remember - that were worth money.
I don't think English walnuts live in our climate - I'm sure they don't come up wild in people's woods or lawns - the way the black walnuts do.
Still we need to appreciate and be grateful (are appreciation and gratitude the same thing?) both kinds of walnuts.
Serin ⋅ May 27, 2020
The birds are chatty in the morning and wake me through the window. But my favourite though I hate to be up for it, is before dawn, when the birds are all chatty in the dark
noko ⋅ May 30, 2020
We had a house in Huntington Beach when I was growing up. It started out and still is in a number of respects a funky beach town. Beautiful beach, but really all classes and types of folks live there. Beach bungalows, trailers, suburban sprawl. I am still learning to identify black walnuts on sight.
woman in the moon noko ⋅ May 30, 2020 (edited May 30, 2020)
Edited
They are beautiful trees. Graceful and slender and they keep going up and up. They are latest to leaf out and earliest to lose their leaves. They have flowers like geisha hair decorations, and their nuts are monumental green baseballs in hull and black wrinkled monkey brains unhulled. They are very hard to crack and hard to get out of the cracked nuts, but they are rich tasting and tangy and you can feel squirrel nutrition when you eat them... they make English walnuts taste bland. Squirrels plant the nuts and trees sprout in flower beds or along fences or walls of buildings. They are these magnificent weeds that grow fast and make a shade tree quickly. Their wood of course is hard and dark and fine grained. I always imagine the logs we sold in the mid aughts went to China and paneled high rises. I tell the same stories but when we moved here 70 hrs ago when I was four years old, the older of the two great yard walnuts - Esther H. K. - was already tall though more slender than she is now. She had a branch extending maybe 16 feet from the ground and my dad hung a swing from it - making it into the swing tree.
I just came in from the deck and the swing tree seems to be leafing out even later than usual - it can't be dead - but it won't live forever. It has dead branches that the wind brings down sometimes.
So when you see your next walnut, greet it for me. I will tell the Esthers about you. They will like to think of you on the west edge of the continent.
noko woman in the moon ⋅ May 30, 2020
I will look for a walnut tomorrow when we hike. I know two very old ones in different parts of town. My list says we have 2,351 of them as street trees here. I should be able to find one.🙂
woman in the moon noko ⋅ May 31, 2020
I love the idea of a census of street trees.
Jinn ⋅ June 27, 2020
I have planted quite a few trees here and I hope to plant a few more before I am done with this place :-) Some had to be cut down and that is always sad . I have two volunteer peach trees that came up this spring . I am letting them grow :-)