Late June Normal

The lindens are blooming. Have been for a while.

It's a heavenly scent, less well-recognized, perhaps, than the lilacs of late May. And also less reliable, which makes the bloom that much more interesting. Some years a given tree doesn't flower, though I haven't figured out why. On the basis of this year's production, I think we can rule out "dryness" as an inhibiting factor.

I have noticed in conversation that many people don't know what a linden smells like. Often, when the scent arrives, I have to look around for a minute to locate where it's coming from. I was introduced to the scent from a bar of linden soap that our friend Mary McDill brought back from Bordeaux many years ago. We happened to have a linden in our front yard, and started to pay more attention.

Incidentally, the linden tree is also referred to as a basswood. I suspect most of the trees planted in suburban neighborhoods are lindens (tilia cordata). The native basswood, (tilia americana) has larger leaves, but looks basically the same.

Meanwhile, we lost the top half of one of our maples the other day. It had been dead for years, and more than once we'd considered having the entire tree removed. We were afraid a big branch might fall on someone; on the other hand, the woodpeckers liked it. And from here at my computer I often look up to see what's passing up and down the trunk and lower branches. Once or twice a year we get a brown creeper, and on one occasion recently I spotted two flickers and two pileated woodpeckers at the same time, enjoying the bugs that have made their homes in the rotten wood.

Last year a red-bellied woodpecker nested in the dead part of the trunk. This spring he moved down the street—wise decision—and we hear his pleasant shriek more faintly, and less often.

Lucky for everyone concerned, our neighbor was vacationing in Ocean City, New Jersey, when the upper trunk crashed across her driveway. Hilary and I dragged the pieces back into our yard, then over to our driveway, where I spent a few days sawing up the narrower branches with a hand saw. A pleasant task, like going on a little camping trip in the cool of the morning, in the shade of the linden tree, with neighbors passing by on the street from time to time and occasionally stopping to chat.

I'm not sure what we're going to do with the two largest chunks. They're beginning to look like handsome pieces of sculpture to me, sitting on the concrete next to the recycling bin. This, of course, is just laziness settling in. But they are sort of handsome. Maybe Hilary's brother, Paul, can make a coffee-table out of them.

One of our neighbors volunteered to come over with his chain saw and chop the logs up into manageable chunks, and perhaps we'll take him up on the offer. But just the other day he helped me wire a new light onto the side of the house next to the front door, and I don't want to lean on him too much.  

The arborist who arrived a few days later assured us that the remaining branches of the now truncated tree were structurally sound, but suggested we might want to remove the other maple standing nearby, which was, he said, root-bound. The estimate he finally presented to us didn't mention either of the maples, but listed three or four other jobs that seemed largely cosmetic to us.

(The tree company has probably put a note in my file: "Likes to talk about trees; never wants to cut them down.")

It's always fun talking trees with an arborist, but Sam was stumped by one of our specimens: a mulberry tree that has never produced berries. I looked it up just now and found that there is a fruitless variety (morus alba chaparral). I can't imagine how it arrived in our back yard, but there it is at the fence-line, thirty feet tall.

Meanwhile, post-Covid entertainment has included a daring foray with friends to the Ice House to hear a local country band called The Sapsuckers. Not bad. 

Meanwhile, the remote entertainment continues. The other day we tuned in on a Rain Taxi-sponsored interview with the poet Arthur Sze. I'm glad we did. Checked a few of his books out of the library. I'm might even buy one.