Our neighbor is pushing his sputtering choking lawnmower up and down the lawn. He's racing a pressing rain squall, the trees are bending under the wind and dark clouds pinch out the sun. The horse at the end of the garden responds to it with his own vocal raucous.
I can't believe it myself, but I sanctioned and oversaw the cutting down of a large old cherry tree in our yard last night. It was majestic, gray-barked and lichened, but it leaned in a intimate way toward our house, right over the kitchen, and pushed out the growth of the aspens beside it. And cherry trees make such a mess. Molting in the spring, dropping dark, purple-exploding cherries in the summer, and leaves in the fall. The tree is tall, so old and big, that we can't even harvest it's fruit before it splatters on our deck or heads or wherever. So, the cherry tree had to die. Isn't this the power of our lordship over nature? We can grow and kill it as we please. And so the cherry tree is now cherry wood, and after been sawn and chopped and split and dried, will heat our house one winter.
And we harvested the last of the cherries, so ripe and soft that they turned the eaters mouth purple-black, staining teeth, tongue, and lips. Martin was so happy to have the tree cut down and eat the cherries, his mouth an up-turned, purple-lipped grin, he looked the Joker, gloating over some mayhem and mischief.
Martin disagrees: he did not look like the Joker.
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