By David Crow
Conversations
David Crow
We’ve had a genuine nasty New England winter this year. It’s been a bit since we had one, but between the snow, the ice, the temperature and the wind this winter has been a Yankee classic.
But take heart, fellow Connecticut Yankees; spring is coming. I know it doesn’t quite feel like it given the air temperature, but it’s coming. The sun is coming up earlier and sticking around longer and the snow isn’t quite as fiercely possessive of the lawn.
I don’t know about you, but spring around my house means yardwork. The few trees I have always shed a few branches during the winter and the sticks have to be picked up. The yard needs to be dethatched and there is fertilizer to spread around/ Winter always leaves a new bare spot in the yard that needs to be reseeded. Then there is the task that is the base of all that other stuff; the yard needs to be raked.
I am lucky in that I don’t have a lot of trees in my yard, so I don’t have a lot of leaves to rake up after the snow melts. However, I do have one tree that seems bound and determined to fill that void in my yardwork agenda: a gum tree in my front yard.
For those of you who are fortunate enough not to have a gum tree in your yard, let me just tell you that when it comes to attempting to reproduce themselves, gum trees are highly motivated. Beginning in the summer, gum trees grow hundreds of green seed pods that look like spike-covered golf balls. Starting in September, these turn brown and rain down from their branches by the bushel.
My gum tree and I have been dueling for several years now. I don’t have a green thumb by any means, but my efforts at growing grass have accidentally produced one of the healthiest, and therefore fruitful, gum trees in New England. My gum tree outdoes itself every year when it comes to seed pod production. It has become, as my grandma would say, a plague of Old Testament proportions.
Every spring the ground under my gum tree is literally carpeted with pointy brown seed pods. That in and of itself wouldn’t be so bad except that cleaning up the mighty pile of seed pods tends to be quiet a chore. When we run a yard rake over them they don’t rake up like dead grass. Instead as the rake passes over them, they tend to just pop straight up in the air and return to the place they landed when they fell out of the tree.
With enough elbow grease and time, we eventually get those seed pods raked into manageable piles. That’s when the real work begins. We have to rake them into buckets or trashcans to haul them away. While they don’t weigh too much, they don’t pack up in the containers nice and neat either. Those brown spikes hold them apart and leave a lot of air space in the containers. If you try and pack them down, they jump out of the buckets.
Last year we probably could have filled the bed of a pickup truck with them and still had a bushel left over. This year’s crop looks even more bountiful in an annoying kind of way.
Once I contemplated cutting the gum tree down to rid myself of this yearly irritant, but my sense of fairness got the better of me. My grandfather always used to remind me in his easy Ozark drawl that you can’t blame a dog for acting like a dog. Well, I suppose that logic applies in the present case as well. After all, the gum tree is just doing what gum trees are supposed to do: make piles and piles of little brown seed pods to try and make new gum trees.
I guess I’ll simply be a good Connecticut Yankee and continue to stoically endure along with all the other homeowners with gum trees in the yard.
But before you drive by my house and laugh at me as I grumble and contemplate breaking the rake over my knee in frustration, know this for sure. Some dark night you’ll hear something in your front yard. When you look out the window you’ll see me dump out a five-gallon bucket full of what look like little spiked golf balls on your front lawn. And then I’ll smirk and wave and leave you to whatever fate your new gum tree has in store for you.
Until next time, y’all come out!
David Crow lives in Orange with his wife and three children. He practices law and he asks everyone to call him “Dave.” Only his mother and his wife call him “David,” and only when they’re mad at him. You can contact Dave at Sit.a.Spell.and.Visit@gmail.com. He’ll always find a half hour for a good chat.