November 29, 2010

The dark tonight outside my windows is different from the dark all nights since I moved here. The two rows of ragged hemlocks, one on the north side of the property and one on the south, are gone. They were the property’s most evident feature. The absence will take some getting used to. Even today, which was cloudy and blustery, the a flood of unwonted light was obvious. The arborists’ boss, Evan, had to leave to go to the funeral of a childhood friend. We talked about that for a minute. Evan said nobody he knew had died before; he had not only lost a friend, but faced death for the first time. Kelly and Zach are not sure they like it, though I did ask before I cut. It certainly allows us to mind each other’s business more than before. Caroline loves it. She said she was always afraid someone was hiding in the brushy tangle near her parking space, an issue which never crossed my mind. The openness reveals more fully the ugliness of my little house (which, like a father with the plainness of his offspring, I overlook). Also, it makes evident that the house is set at an angle on the property, or the property is itself a trapezoid. A bushy holly was cut free from its strangling companions and faces new life in the open. I have square yards of new planting space, and new light, and a few feet are already filled by the yellow rhododendron I got into the ground just before the rains. The intention to render this place as a cabin in the woods, completely successful when I moved here, is now undone. I almost cancelled the action because Evan said he had to cut phone cables in order to work. That sort of thing always feels disastrous to me, but I took a breath and work went ahead. Turns out that the cables were dead and brought power to nothing in anybody’s house. One of the tree men said, “They probably never bothered to fish them out of all that mess.” The ferns are flattened from having limbs dragged across them, and a downspout is down for the same reason, but all in all, I am glad it was done, even if all that was achieved was change.