the days and nights are perfect now. the mornings are chilly, but then the days warm up, and the nights are cool. i rush home from work every day to try to catch a hour or two of daylight to work on the house. slowly i nibble away at the chores i've neglected for years.
i spent a whole evening cutting up a limb that fell from a tree by the driveway. 'limb' is actually understating it. a major portion of a trunk broke away in heavy winds. after it fell i could see why -- carpenter ants had made hundreds of tunnels inside it. they got their chance i suppose after the great ice storm we had a few years ago. we had ice so heavy that the electricity was out to the whole town. we went outside in the dark and it was so eerie. there was a kind of twilight, and you could just make out the shapes of trees and houses. the trees had it tough. live twigs the thickness of spaghetti were encased in ice the diameter of a large carrot, and limbs that we could normally walk under were bent all the way to the ground. unlike freshly fallen snow which absorbs sound, the hard ice that covered everything simply reflected sounds. as we stood there in the frigid darkness, we could hear the cracking of tree limbs, some near, some blocks away, as the trees finally succumbed to the terrific weight. when it was all said and done, i guess every tree had some damage, where a healthy limb was splintered and broken away, leaving an opening for invasion by insects.
and so it is that in all our trees there are some large dead limbs. i should have gotten up in them and cut out the damaged parts, but i considered the benefit of perhaps being able to preserve those trees against the risk of falling out of said trees by trying to wield a chainsaw while straddling a shaky branch, and basically said "to hell with it."
it occasionally bothered me to look up and see the long jagged dead limb in the tree in the front yard. much higher than the house, it must be 35 feet up at least. i worry that some day it will fall. a large piece of it did recently, and i said a prayer of thanks that no one was under it when it came crashing down.
but now i'm glad for that dead limb. a hawk has been coming around, and he likes to perch up there. he gets a commanding view of our whole yard, and three or four yards nearby. i feared that he might find our cat tempting, but she seems to have avoided getting snatched, so i guess she will be okay. a few nights ago while i was working on the front of the house, i happened to catch sight of him soaring in and gracefully landing on the branch. he settled in and watched the ground. i realized that had i cut that limb away, i would have missed seeing him. so i was glad for my laziness.
maybe i admire him because he's such a loner, and it's okay that he is. i wish i could be alone, and be okay. he can soar, he can watch.
or maybe it's the thought that even a dead limb can bring something good, so there's hope for me too.
