There’s something I need to get off my chest. A disclaimer, if you will. Many of you have questioned my claim that, at the core of each of these postings, there lies at least a kernel of truth. Many more of you have accused me of outright fabrication or – GASP! – even going so far as taking your personal life experiences and representing them as my own. The reasoning those of you have used to justify your assertions is always something along the lines of: “Come on. Nobody can have that many weird things happen to them in that short a period of time.” QED.

I beg to differ.

Not only is there a kernel of truth in each of these entries but more often there is a whole fifty-pound burlap bag full of kernels the problem with which is, that when watered and fed with the rich manure you read here, grow, thrive, and beget even more kernels. It seems to be some kind of positive feedback loop. The more I write about the odd/interesting things in my life, the more they happen. That’s just the way it works.

I merely wanted to reassert that yes, a lot of what you read here is what actually happened and any deviation from the truth is done strictly in the interest of believability. Enough about that.

So there’s this tree.

By way of introduction, it’s a Madrona, AKA the Refrigerator Tree, a deciduous evergreen, about which more anon, native to these parts. It got its nickname from the fact that it doesn’t have much bark as such but, instead, an active photosynthetic cambial layer which, because of transpiration, is cooled by the evaporation of water. This unprotected cambium is noticeably cool to the touch, hence Refrigerator Tree. I was unable to find mention in the literature as to what its nickname was prior to the invention of mechanical refrigeration. Sort of along the lines of freight trains and tornadoes.

The madrona has the interesting property of losing its leaves in the middle of the summer, which makes me wonder why its nickname is not the “Depression Tree”. Imagine the plight of the original Puget Sound settlers. After enduring nine straight months of overcast skies and endless drizzle (according to the legend) the sun burst into view with the promise of light and warmth. Immediately, the madrona signals the onset of fall and another winter by dropping its leaves. This reminder of the dark days to come would surely put me in a funk.

When it’s not losing its leaves the madrona is growing more cambium. Like most trees, madrona wood doesn’t stretch too easily so to get around this the tree sloughs off the old layer in vast paper-thin, brownish-orange sheets, revealing the fresh growth beneath. This it does in fall and winter.

The one-two punch of leaves in the summer, bark-ish in the winter makes the madrona the dirtiest tree you could possibly imagine. The gutters on the house at the micro-farm are constantly packed with a decaying, arboreal fudge that plays host to fungus and slime-coated insects. The unceasing flurry of leafy detritus buries seedlings and shrubs, blocks storm drains, and provides cover for the stealthy voles as they seek out nutritious tubers, safe from the circling harriers above. 24/7/365, there is something falling from these trees.

As you can see, there is no love lost between me and my madrona. Even tree-hugging has its limits.

Particularly when you can’t get your arms around the tree. It would be one thing if these unkempt evergreens were small. But they’re not. The madrona in question is about sixty feet tall with a trunk big enough to hide a Buick. Day and night, all year long, this huge madrona is shedding bushels of something. If it’s not, that means it’s dead.

A few months ago I was out in the south-forty (square yards) of the micro-farm surveying the possible location for a possible fence to keep the miniature livestock we might possibly get from hypothetically running amok and potentially damaging the neighbors garden. As I was trying to get myself unstuck from the middle of a blackberry bramble, I happened to glance up while trying to keep my eyes from getting poked by the thorns. Oh, I thought. That branch on the madrona tree is dead. Furthermore, the dead branch was precariously positioned precisely over the path of the putative palisade like Damocles’ sword. I could picture it snapping off in a winter storm and crushing the future fence allowing either the livestock out or the coyotes in. An unacceptable scenario in either event.

So I decided to take down the branch.

Easier said than done.

The tree was not mine to cut.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, the micro-farm is part of a collection of four properties that is about two Marxists short of a commune. This group of tiny farmsteads: one micro-farm, one vacant lot, one hand-crafted traditional farmhouse, and a house built of straw, is governed by a set of shared beliefs in the environmental sanctity of the land and a commitment to organic, sustainable and free-range all of which is set forth in a Founding Document packed with enough loopholes to allow the construction of an open-air, plutonium-fueled, fast-breeder reactor the cooling water overflow of which goes straight into the Slushy machine at the attached 7-Eleven, if only I could jump through all of them.

This I had no intention of doing but, because of the Document of Founding Principals, I still had to get the other owners’ go-aheads for the demise of the lethal limb. I sent out an email detailing my concerns vis-à-vis the tumbling branch crushing an unluckily positioned sheep-lette and my plan to cut it off before that could happen. Everybody else thought it was a good idea to save the sheep but one owner, whose property is on the other side of the tree, wanted to discuss it further.

So we met under the tree, dodging the falling leaves, as he pointed out that the tree had not just the one dead branch that I was concerned about but two other, larger, branches that were threatening to collapse on the very expensive deer fence guarding the adjacent blueberry farm the snapping of which would lead to untold damages and liability concerning same fence. Since it was a tree shared in common by all owners in the collective, he suggested that the governing body could pay somebody to remove all the branches. Then we could all get together and cut them up for firewood to be fairly shared among the owners. Like I said.

As soon I heard “somebody to remove them” my brain stopped processing because I immediately translated that as “less work”. Somewhere during my amnesia I accepted the responsibility of putting the project together and off we went. I contacted some friends for responsible arborists to do the job, made some phone calls, left some messages and then waited patiently for exactly nobody to call me back.

One day, as I was pulling out of the parking lot at the Ace Hardware, a truck with “Tree Service” stenciled on the front pulled in. I made a quick and thoroughly illegal U-turn and found the tree guy back in the plumbing section.

That should have been my first warning.

I accosted him and once he realized he wasn’t being mugged, he agreed to come over and take a look at the tree. He wandered around it for about fifteen minutes, wrote up a proposal, and left. His proposal was accepted by the owners and I called and informed him of the fact. Several weeks later he called back and said he could get to the job “next Thursday”. It is apparently still not next Thursday.

After more searching high and low I found somebody who actually wanted to work. They showed up with some alarmingly large chainsaws, a truck with a platform allowing them to work in the stratosphere, gasoline, and cigarettes. It seemed like certain death. But it was not their first day at the rodeo and in short order the branches were felled, the check collected and the truck gone leaving behind a pile of cut limbs the approximate dimensions of a three-bedroom split-level with attached garage.

Which is where the whole let’s-have-a-work-party-clean-up-effort concept smacked head-on into the wall of reality.

I’ve described the cut material as “branches”, the tree guys called them “stems”, but, in reality, they were big enough to be trees in their own right. At the base, the diameter of each was bigger than a garbage can. The larger chunks weighed as much as a small car. Fortunately, I was not alone and the neighbor from the other side of the tree and I made up the work “party”; a party that is, now over a month later, still going on. In that time we were able to bring the debris pile under some measure of control; the smaller bits stacked neatly in our respective woodpiles and ready to burn.

I feel like I’ve been beat with sticks. But now, when I look out on the meadow, there is nothing to be seen except some piles of sawdust in the area where once lay logs as big around as a tire. The remaining larger pieces are awaiting the arrival of somebody’s portable sawmill which is supposedly able to handle logs this size. We’re going to mill those pieces into boards and, assuming I don’t slice off my thumbs and lose the ability to grip a hammer, build something with them.

Now, I can check one more thing off the project list. The fence, if it ever happens, is safe from gravitationally induced catastrophe. The blueberry farmer is now unlikely to sue us because a falling branch allowed the deer to plunder the bushes. It’s time to move on to the next thing on the list.

The beehives arrive next week.