Losing Its Grip

In town there is only tiny bits of dirty snow, lots of gravel and sand in the gutters, dead grass and dormant trees and shrubs. In the country, where I live, there is still lots of snow and mud. I'm dreading the time when most of the snow is melted and the ground is still muddy. I can't get any work done, gravel pathways, backfilling and gravel laid down out to the dripline of the house, until the mud dries.

Yesterday we drove across town, in the pickup truck, to a house. The front lawn or what would be a lawn once it starts to grow back was littered with twigs and pinecones. An old lady, wearing a pink house coat and inhaling oxygen through a tube beneath her nose, answered the door. I told her we had come to get the wood. She pointed to a couple of pieces, set aside, by the steps. Don't take those, she said. I assured her we wouldn't touch them. She stood there by the door watching us load the wood into our pickup.

At this stage most of the beetle killed pine, still standing, is only good for firewood. It's a boon for people like us who heat mostly with wood. It's devastating for the logging industry. When you drive out of town along the highway, there is acre after acre of dead pine that will never be cut. It will probably burn in a forest fire.

The other thing about the old lady’s house was her tulips, growing in a tiny bed by the side of the house, they were a good eight inches tall.