It is raining on this warm spring morning, and although it may sound a bit strange to you, I am comforted by the sound of the water running free in my gutters toward their downspouts. It was just a week or so ago that I cleaned the last of the maple seedlings out of them.
It is among one of my personality’s strange quirks, I suppose, but I can’t stand the sight of gutters filled to their brims with leaves and twigs and maple “helicopters.” I have driven past homes in which the gutters have bowed under the weight of it all; some have even been growing miniature groves of silver maples in the 4-inch-wide compost piles that trail along the edge of their roof’s eaves, and I wonder if the owners are simply waiting for pulp woodcutters to make them an offer.
I have vowed to myself that as long as I can muster the wherewithal to tie my boots, to climb a ladder, and to manage the breath and strength to pull a leaf blower’s starter cord, I’ll keep my gutters clean.
I know it is inexcusably stupid of me, but I have often been spotted on my roof as the first drops of rain from an oncoming storm are spattering around me, as I try to clean my gutters before the deluge sweeps them full.
Maple seedlings are a testament to the inescapable persistence of nature.
We had what seemed to be a near-record crop of the things around our place this spring, and despite the charm of seeing the “whirligigs” fluttering to the ground on breezy May days, their near-hypnotic soothing is soon replaced by the irritation and work they cause.
We sweep them off our deck, off our porches, off the sidewalks; we wonder how they can work their way under our car’s windshield wipers, how one spring we even had them drop down a 11/2-inch pipe to clog our bathroom vent line as if they were equipped with Norden bombsights. I have raked them up by the bushels, have been disgusted by their septic odor while scooping their wet carcasses from around my foundation, and now, we have already begun the summerlong process of pulling their sprouts from our flower pots and garden — anywhere, in fact, that there’s a bit of bare ground, even where there is not.
The whirligig — the paper-thin wing that is attached to the maple seed — is actually called a samara; it is referred to as a fruit because it is the end result of the trees’ fertilization. Samaras are perfectly engineered little pieces of work because the timing of their fall to the earth comes perfectly matched with spring’s windiest weeks. Not only are our yards and roofs and walks covered with the things, but if we look close enough, we’ll also see that they are carried into creeks and rivers, and they often remain airborne much longer than we can believe, all to help transplant even more maples to destinations unknown. In other words, these whirling little lopsided kites, often called “maple keys,” that we can find at our feet by the bushels are, in fact, pretty efficient travelers, dumbly preserving their own species in the most innocent ways.
I never cease to be amazed by what I see in my own little patch of the planet. There is a subtle insistence to the natural world that is and always has been a step ahead of me. Within a few days of mowing the lawn, I see the whitecaps of clover reappear; I always have flowers to water, weeds to pull, trees to trim. Rainwater moves the rock near my mailbox down to a spot a hundred yards away to pile it up in my yard, and every so many weeks I’ll shovel a few wheelbarrow loads of it and trudge it back up to a place where I want it.
The irises I love will eventually push my brownstone borders aside until I come along with a shovel and chop and thin their ranks and re-pile the rock in puzzle-pieced columns again. Just the other day, I stood in my mini-barn and was amazed to see that the deep green ivy I have let creep up one outside wall, has stealthily pushed its way into a tiny crack in the eave and is now sending a pale tendril into the darkness of the inside. Yesterday, I pulled a walnut seedling from a mulched flower bed near my deck, the half-shelled nut apparently dropped there by a squirrel or chipmunk.
I don’t use much pesticide and herbicide around our place because I know that in going after my pesky weeds, I may be poisoning a tree, that nailing a few ants might be taking out our struggling honey bees, too. Mostly, I pull the weeds and swat the bugs, but I won’t lie and say that I have never had a spray can of toxins in my hand; in some cases, a hoe or shovel or bare hands can’t compete with nature.
When I first moved to our homestead — almost 28 years ago — the woods that bordered our yard had encroached to within a few feet of our back door. I was less than half the age I am now, so with little more than an axe and a push mower and stubborn energy, I cleared out a hillside that now flourishes with hostas and ivy, irises and pines. I hauled in a dozen old railroads ties to hold the ground in place and stacked bucket-sized stones into retaining walls, yet I still pull and hack and sweat over the descendants of the hill’s original tenants. The wild grapevines still encroach, the poison ivy still waits along the wood line to invade, and maple seedlings sprout and silently grow under leafier plants hoping I’ll miss them…
Near one of those old ties, a tulip poplar seedling sprouted a few years ago; it is nearly 6 feet tall now. I planted what must be its parent in my front yard, for I have no other yellow poplars nearby; it is perhaps 50 feet tall now and graces its place near our driveway with wonderful fall color.
I have every intention of leaving the off-spring poplar right where it is — no transplanting it despite its being just a bit too close to a white pine I purposely placed nearby a few seasons ago. Like so many of those maple sprouts, it has emerged where it wants to be, and in this case, I will just leave it alone.
As is most often true, nature wins again.
Mike Lunsford can be reached at hickory913@aol.com, or by writing c/o the Tribune-Star, P.O. Box 149, Terre Haute, IN 47808. Go to www.mikelunsford.com to learn more about his book, “The Off Season: The Newspaper Stories of Mike Lunsford.”
Mike Lunsford
The Off Season: Helicopters in the gutters, and other imponderables…
- Mike Lunsford
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Books open our eyes to that which we will never see
I got a letter last week from a friend, Sister Margaret Quinlan, who lives amidst the beauty of the St. Mary-of-the-Woods campus. Besides the email space and the time she invests in describing the flowers and trees and birds that she shares with her roomies out there, as well as her accounts of teaching and traveling, Margaret most often writes about books. She loves them, and she knows I do, too.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Hoping to master the art of taking a nap
I got away from work as early as I could one day last week. It was a cloudy day, filled with grayness and rain, and my head felt as if I had inhaled my pillow the night before. My throat suggested I’d swallowed a wood rasp, too, and my eyes felt as though I was looking through someone else’s glasses. Yet, I had work do, this column being on the list of chores.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Windy companion finally gives him the cold shoulder
The wind came to visit us this week. We live on the knob of a hill that overlooks a Raccoon Creek valley, and it is a breezy spot year-round, but this wind was the kind that ushers in a full-blown front from Canada, perhaps just to remind us that cold weather is going to be the boss around here for a while. No matter how surprising our mild winter has been so far, this kind of wind tells us not to expect many more warm days over the next few months.
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SIDELINES: Good for even a traditional Classic buff
Lights down, tree out, another year gone at the Classic.
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THE OFF SEASON: The more things change, the more they keep changing
I must have had at least a dozen people ask at my son’s wedding a few weeks ago whether I cried, or “how I was handling losing him.” I think they all knew just how tight I am with my two kids, and thought I must have come completely unglued when it finally hit me that he was on his own for good, that the rules had changed nearly as much in my life when he said ,“I do,” as they did for him.
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Lunsford signing new book at Brazil Coffee Grounds
Parke County writer Mike Lunsford will be signing his latest book, “A Place Near Home” (Shade Tree Press; $15) from 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday at Coffee Grounds, Bakery and Coffee Shop in Brazil.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: In the neighborhood with the ‘fantastic’ Mr. Fox
As we drove home late one night last week, my wife and I, both a bit drowsy and anxious for a warm bed and a long nap, were surprised to see a red fox as it darted across the road. He made his appearance in a flash — just a bit of nose and fur and bushy tail — as he jumped out of a ditch in front of our car and was caught in the glare of our headlights on his way to the relative safety of an apple orchard.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: The lizard wore long johns, and other Halloween tales
We stocked our house with a supply of Halloween candy last week; Joanie and I stopped into the new dollar store in town and filled a grocery cart with Butterfingers and Baby Ruths and Three Musketeers bars. Every aromatic bit of it has been calling to me from the orange-and-black baskets we keep on a living room trunk ever since.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Here’s to the simple beauty of an untended garden…
I can hear a combine eating its way across a nearby cornfield as I write this on a Saturday evening. It is a sound that signals the end of one season and the beginning of anot
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The Off Season: Listening to Mozart is a ‘purr-fect’ way to relax
Regardless of what some people may believe, classical music fans are not snobs. They come from all walks of life, fall into all income brackets, and they’re not required to understand or analyze anything to which they’re listening; they just need to enjoy themselves.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Fall’s arrival heralded in ever-present fencerows
As much as I hate summer to leave us, I am happy that fall is just around the corner. It has been a bone-dry season, one in which I’ve watched my yard bake and crack like an old pie crust. My wife and I are still spending our evenings going about the business of watering flowers, standing with a dribbling hose in our hands, optimistically hoping that our drought will be broken because we’ve tempted the weather fates to do us one better and give us a good rain.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: The value of hard work goes well beyond a paycheck
Years ago, I used to drive into Rosedale to get my workday started with a big cup of black coffee. Every morning, Monday through Friday, until the town grocery store’s business dried up and blew away, you could have found me slipping through a back door — left unlocked for the early birds — of the old Red and White, 15 minutes before it opened for official business.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Life’s little conveniences actually can be quite annoying
I am aware that much of the language I use is outdated, stodgy, old-fashioned; I apologize.
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The Off Season: Another sad passing: One-time trendsetter can’t keep up
I wandered into the local mall bookstore the other day. My wife and I had come to town with a list of chores to do and things to buy, but whenever we venture anywhere near a place with book shelves and sales tables and racks of paperbacks, we’re attracted to the scent of ink and the sight of book covers like bees to clover .
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Overheated in Hobart and other vacation tales…
My family climbed into our van and headed to Michigan a few weeks ago, just as we do every other year or so, to stay on the great lake there, for we have come to love its cool breezes and blue water and lighthouses.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Silence is wonderful, as long as you don’t take it too far
I have visited this topic — how it is often only through inconvenience that we come to appreciate the comforts we have in life — before.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: His tolerance for insects ends with sawyer beetles
As I sloshed a can of water over a pot of red petunias a Sunday morning ago, I saw a pine sawyer beetle make its way slowly up the vinyl siding near my front door. I swatted it to the concrete, and smashed it with my shoe … with impunity, I might add.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Storm damage makes you appreciate home
My wife and I hadn’t been into town for a good while when we drove in from our place to visit her doctor and my favorite hardware store last week.
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Paying respect in more way than one way…
It has become a habit of mine on Mother’s Day to go to Rosedale Cemetery and lay a few irises on my mom’s grave.
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The Off Season: On the trail with Max the Mushroom Cat
The wet weather and a busy calendar have kept my wife and me from doing what we’ve really wanted to do for a while. Ever since the thermometer began to stay consistently above 40 and the grass started to green, we’ve wanted to get outside, get some sun on our arms, and get down to the wetlands to watch the geese make their landings with a flourish and a honk.
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THE OFF SEASON: So much to do; so little time…
My wife’s aunt, Martha Jean McCarthy, passed away earlier this month; she was 85 years old. Martha Jean was kind and generous and busy her entire life.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: A lesson plan for public schools
I am an advocate of public education; I pull no punches about that. I have taught in public schools for 32 years, and I think it is an inherently American institution.
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THE OFF SEASON: Craning to see elegance in flight
Just before midnight last night, spring officially slipped quietly into our back yards, but I doubt that any of us noticed it much this morning as we slurped our coffee or downed our eggs over this newspaper.
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The office boy who became a poet
I made up my mind when I moved my home office out of the house last summer that I’d organize some of my books, that I’d categorize and catalogue them in a way that would help me find the one I wanted when I wanted it. I can’t say it worked out as well as I had hoped. Already, I have the overflow stacked on the floor and shoved into the spaces where previous tenants once lived. Gradually, expediency is replacing order, so fiction and non-fiction, biographies and novels, are scandalously co-mingling on my shelves.
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THE OFF SEASON: The office boy who became a poet
I made up my mind when I moved my home office out of the house last summer that I’d organize some of my books, that I’d categorize and catalogue them in a way that would help me find the one I wanted when I wanted it. I can’t say it worked out as well as I had hoped.
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THE OFF SEASON: It’s taken long time to say thanks…
It was with a cup of coffee and a newspaper in my hands a few Mondays ago that I discovered that Mr. Hapenny had died.
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THE OFF SEASON: Lessons learned from the night the ice fell
The picture window of my cabin is sealed in a perfect glaze of ice as I write this, last Thursday morning, and since it faces due north and sees little direct sunlight, I imagine I will be looking through this shower door glass of mine for a few more days. But since I sit and watch the woods much of the time, instead of writing, I suppose the ice is serving a rare good purpose in keeping me on task.
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The Off Season: Pass a ‘midnight dreary’ with The Big Read
It was a pretty poor excuse for an evening one night last week as I lay beside our glowing fireplace, a pillow propped behind my head. I was spending some time with my current read, enjoying each page in the semi-darkness, smug in the knowledge that I’d not be heading to my classroom the next day.
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The Off Season: ‘Too old and too lazy’ to deal with coyotes
Despite the cold and the ever-present winter breezes that blow across our hill these days, I often find myself, even in the blue evenings, standing on the walk near my cabin, looking at the stars or watching for the last red-tailed hawks of the day as they float by in the drafts.
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The Off Season: The passion of having a passion is a great thing
It just occurred to me that I am fortunate to have a passion — a drive to do something that takes me away from the clutches of my job, of home repairs, of the mundane and the ho-hum.
- More Mike Lunsford Headlines
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Books open our eyes to that which we will never see
Nordic Festival Puts North Korea in Spotlight
Greece Passes New Austerity Deal Amid Rioting
'Rumor Has It' Adele's Rolling in the Grammys
Coroner: Houston Autopsy Results Weeks Away
Raw Video: Whitney Houston's Last Performance
Grohl, Grammy Nominees Cut Up on the Red Carpet
Raw Video: Greek Rioting Ahead of Austerity Vote
Raw Video: Child Rescued After Kosovo Avalanche
Reaction to Houston's Death at Clive Davis Party
Pop Music Superstar Whitney Houston Dies at 48
Fuel Removal Under Way on Capsized Italian Ship
Severe Cold Wreaks Havoc in China
Whitney Houston's Church Mourns Her Passing
79 Turtles Seized at Shanghai Airport
Police: Houston Found Dead in Her Hotel Room
Fans 'Speechless' Over Houston's Death
Today in History for Tuesday, February 12th
And the Winner for Best Super Bowl Ad Is...
Stocks Fall Sharply As Greek Deal Is Held Up
Arab League Wants U.N. Help in Syria
Sandusky Can See Grandkids, Have Local Jury
'Bachelor' Free Falls into the Ocean
Apple of their eye at $500 a share
Adele's revealing "60 Minutes" interview
Rosenthal: A's sign Cespedes
Bobby Brown on Houston's Death
Turkey's first face transplant
Exclusive Video: Bobbi Kristina Leaving Hospital
Obama Unveils $3.8 Trillion Budget
Kelly Ripa's Fashion Faux Pas
Lusetich: AT&T Recap
Raw Video: Aurora Borealis As Seen From Space
Grammys 2012: Highlights
2.12: Pebble Beach Pro-Am -- Phil Mickelson
2012 Grammys: Rihanna
2012 Grammys: Taylor Swift
Exclusive Video - Whitney's Bodybag
FUEL TV: Punk Payback Gym tips
