trees & pumpkins

How is it I can be so busy, but if you ask what I've done, I haven't a ready answer? I feel like my time is broken up into bits & pieces & parts, always running around doing one thing or another... yet somehow, I haven't finished cutting back some ratty-looking perennials in the gardens, I haven't posted here in over a month (so much for that "at least once a month" plan), & I haven't even begun to think of holiday shopping. I've usually established a good start on that by now.

I know what I did yesterday, & I'm excited: I talked to a native plant landscape designer about trees, lots & lots of trees, & where to put them on our property. I now have little orange flags waving from wire stakes in a huge patch of our yard -- an area that was brush & has now been cleared bare (but for the weeds). But I hardly see the flags, because I can so easily see the trees. Sugar maples. Sweet birch. Black gum. Alive in the spring. Cool & shady in summer. Firey in fall. Tall & strong in winter. Of course when we get them planted, they will be small & scrawny & struggling to take hold. But still they will be trees.

Last week's excitement was, of course, of a different nature (pun intended):