A Tribute to our Son's Birthday

Our son, HLW, was born about 7:30 on the morning of December 22, 1964.

Above is a collage made today of boy-hood photos.

The prize buck.

Howard with Minnie.

Howard in a rare moment of relaxing.

Howard with Joe.

HLW-- a testy, funny, intense, articulate man: clever mechanic, perfectionist carpenter.

Like his parents, he is a push-over for animals.

Happy 46th Birthday!

Christmas with Grampa Mac

Grampa Mac watering the "young cattle"

circa 1957

Young Road after snow.

The short walk to Grampa Mac's farm.

Photo by Larry [my father] 1999

My grandfather's farm house

mid-1950's

My Grampa Mac's holiday observances were homespun, simple.

Perhaps they were echos of rituals from happier years before my grandmother's too-early death

or invented simply to please me and my younger sisters.

Schools of the 1950's let out for Christmas vacation a good week or more before Christmas Eve, a sensible practice in a time when mothers stayed home and "kept house."

In winter there was a precious hour or two between noon dinner and the beginning of afternoon "chores, " time enough for Grampa, with me at his heels, to make a slow and deliberate way across the road, through the wooden gate and down the hill past the ice-clad pond. 

Beyond the plank bridge which crossed the  frozen brook we traversed an expanse of rough pasture.  It was low ground, bordered to the north with a bit of marsh and trodden into permanent hummocks by the feet of cattle.  The hummocks bristled with remnants of browned grass, crackled ice lay in the shallow depressions.

Grampa picked up the small wooden sled I had been towing and carried it dangling from a mittened paw until we reached the rounded hill below the "woods" of beech and maple.

Halfway up the hill path we stopped to take note of the spring in its fenced enclosure and to look back at the house and barns crouched quietly in the snowy landscape.

Our destination was the edge of the woods where ground pine trailed, shallow rooted, and easily harvested, coming free with shreds of darkly frozen maple leaves caught in its green whorls.

We needed enough greenery to create two wreaths, one for the white storm door on Grampa's front porch and one for my parents' small new house just along the road.

Grampa lifted lengths of the pine, cutting some of the stems to make sure that no patch was picked bare.  I handed him the shorter vines which I could pull  from the cold-stiffened earth.

We stumped along unhurried, noting the tracks of rabbit or fox, the little sled jouncing behind. 

The lengths of pine wound around Grampa's arm grew to a tidy bundle .

Our woods had none of the hemlock which grew thickly a few miles away, and there were only two pine trees.  Scattered here and there along the hillside and in the pasture were small irregular red cedar trees, prickly and aromatic.  Grampa cut two of these, one destined to be set up in the parlour and the second designated as "the cat's tree."

The small trees were lashed to the sled with lengths of baling twine and we began a slow descent around the face of the hill, following the "cowpath" down to the brook that narrowed as it reached the hollow below the sugar house.   My feet in their clumsy overshoes felt heavy and cold and I floundered in the deep snow that had drifted over the rutted track.

Grampa stopped, untied the cedar trees and motioned me to sit on the sled. When I had settled myself, legs stretched stiffly forward, he bundled the trees into my arms--fragrant, scratchy against my cold cheeks.

By the time he had hauled me as far as the stand of shagbark hickories I was restored and ready to tramp  at his side, through the thickets of prickly ash, along the rail fence, across the bend of the brook and up the hill where the farmhouse waited with its promise of warmth.

The dooryard and the barns were already swathed in blue shadows.  The shape of the round hill was blurring in the dusk as the sun slid behind the dark trees of the woods

photo from a web search for "trailing ground pine"

A day or two might pass before Grampa Mac announced that we would set up the trees and make the wreaths after evening chores.

On his way in from the barn he gathered up the lengths of trailing pine which had been heaped on the front porch and dumped them down on the livingroom floor near the wood burning stove.

Through out our leisurely supper the vines warmed and thawed, letting loose of the debris of frozen twigs and leaves, melted ice forming small puddles on the floor.

Grampa pushed aside the vines and did a cursory mop-up, reached down the Prince Albert tobacco canister which held lengths of saved string, neatly wound on cardboard tags.  Two coat hangers were bent to almost perfect circles and we began the slow process of winding and tieing the greenery. We had no styrofoam or straw wreath "forms", no glue gun. We had little in the way of skills suited to the task, but at the end of an hour we had two rounds of greenery, each topped with a lop-sided red plastic bow.

The two prickly cedars came in from the snowbank by the shed, each nailed to a wooden  stand.

My uncle Bill had produced the box of Christmas decorations which lived for most of the year in the spare room closet, contained in a large black box held together with twine.

The label on the box pictured a violently orange sun setting behind a field of snow and the firm black lettering proclaimed that it had once held "union suits" worthy to be worn in the frozen reaches of the far north.

The ornaments were old.  The strings of tinsel were fragile lengths of soft downy white, there were "icicles" fashioned of the same plush material.

There was a string of lights for the parlour tree and baubles whose bright colors were chipped.

The cat's tree, set up in front of the Larkin desk in the living room, was draped with paper chains and some small plastic bells.  The idea was that the cats who came and went should confine their curiosity to their own tree.

The Christmases of my childhood have melded into a  collage of school programs, of cookie baking, choir practice.

My grandfather's Christmas preparations took him no farther than a brief shopping trip to the local department store where he bought warm socks and gloves for everyone on his list.

My Christmas grew and expanded as the years added more activities and responsibilities, music to be learned and performed, gifts to make, meals to plan and prepare.

No memory is more cherished than those December afternoons when I trudged behind Grampa Mac to bring home a sled full of greenery for our home made Christmas.

Wreath

Sinews of green in the stark December landscape,

Tangled threads unraveled from a dropped skein;

Tendrils which have wreathed the rough hillside

Beneath July sun, weathered autumn rains,

Now crisped with sugar-sparkle of snow.

Plucked up, wound like hanks of rope over my

grandfather's blue barn-frocked arm,

Piled in springy coils on a wooden sled.

Sinews of green twined about a bent coat hanger,

Red plastic bow perched like a captive cardinal.

sdw

Daily Trivia

The weather has not been pretty.

We have scurried out to feed Pebbles, barn kittens in attendance.

We bring in wood for the fireplace and furnace.

Yesterday morning there were errands in town.

While I tended to banking J. had the welcome idea of going into the adjacent cafe and ordering hot drinks--coffee with an exotic name for him and a green tea with honey for me.

I cradled the carry-out container in my hands--too hot to drink except for a cautious sip until we got home.

On Tuesday afternoon I [finally] painted the hallway in the pale cream-yellow that I chose for the adjacent kitchen and dining area.

J. fetched a step ladder for me and I clambered up and down in the narrow space, taping off four doorways, carefully cutting in paint along the ceiling.

From the basement came the sound of the air compressor and the power saw as J. continued work on the "family room" putting the last touches on a huge closet, doing the fiddly work of boxing in the exposed heating ducts.

 My satisfaction at the improvements didn't stave off yesterday's over-whelming sense of aches and chills [stamina has become an issue] and upon returning from town I felt justified in retreating for a while to the big chair by the fireplace, losing myself in a mystery.

This morning grey light crept through the bedroom shutters.

Icey rain pelted down and a dirty fog swirled up from the creek beyond the road.

All day the drizzle has continued with the light of noon scarcely different than that at breakfast time.

I put on my boots and squelched about, taking out vegetable peelings, visiting Pebbles.

I came in, aired out, to make a hearty beef-vegetable soup to serve with  a crisp coleslaw from one of the last of our garden-grown cabbages.

By 4 o'clock the wet grey dusk had settled like a damp blanket.

Sleet clings to the nandina.

The barn kittens are undaunted by the weather.  They trundle between the barn and the carport.

Willis, who knows how to charm.

Pawing through a dresser drawer on a quest for my winter hats I found the folk-art ornaments which were a gift from our daughter and her family many Christmases ago.

Along with a fat lemon-scented candle, a blooming ceramic feline and one carved in wood, they now decorate this shelf in the newly painted bathroom.

[But I haven't located my hats!]

Innocent felines.

J. has torn up the horrible carpet on the basement stairs today and replaced it with sleek pre-finished hardwood which matches that in the hallway.

The cats have viewed this process with various degrees of misgiving.

After J. put his tools down for the night we stood at the top of the staircase admiring the improvement and laughing at the cats who were wary of the new footing.

Teasel eventually led out, stepping gingerly on the very edge of each stair.

The Lights of Christmas Past

web photo

I was perhaps only three years old on that December evening when my father brought home the bubble lights.

[My parents, younger sister and I lived in several rooms at the north side of my grandfather's farm house until the little house was built just along the road in 1949.]

My father entered, stamping snow from his feet, lunchbox in one hand, a flat paper-wrapped parcel clutched under his arm. Fending off my mother's anxious questions as to his lateness for supper, he dispensed with the lunch box and opened his package with a flourish.

We stood there in my grandfather's kitchen watching as the lid of the shallow box was flipped back like the cover of a book, disclosing a dozen fragile candle-shaped objects, each nestled in a cardboard pocket.

Daddy blew on his chilled fingers, then uncoiled the electrical cord tucked into the back of the box.

"Bubble lights," he explained, "For the Christmas tree.  They're something new."

He poked the plug into the nearest socket, tweaked the box so that it sat up straighter against the front of the Hoosier cabinet.

As we waited, unbelieving, the tiny candles began to glow and then, one at a time, there was a liquid bubbling movement in the delicate glass cylinders.

My father, smelling still of cold and snow, lifted me high so that I could see and marvel.

My father enjoyed the ritual of bringing home and decorating a Christmas tree. It was he who selected the inexpensive ornaments, coming home each season with a string of new lights, a different sparkly length of tinsel.  He grew testy over the arrangement of these baubles, standing back to scowl at the tree and declare that it didn't "look right."

My mother usually managed to find some pressing task in the kitchen while we three girls hovered with Daddy around the tree. 

"Look," he'd fuss, "There's a green light there--and another one right there--that's too close; we need to move a different color bulb into that spot."

The fact of the matter was that my father was partially color-blind [a trait he managed to hand along to two of his grandsons.]

Mother attempted to explain this handicap to us at some point with the strict injunction that we weren't to comment when our father couldn't see the difference, say, between a blue Christmas light and a green one.

"If the bulb doesn't look "blue" to Daddy, what color does he see", we asked, naughtily.

There was, of course no reliable answer.

The bubble lights were in use for nearly a decade, problematic treasures though they proved to be.  Each miniature candle needed to be clipped to its branch so that it stood straight as a soldier. Allowed to droop one way or the other the "bubbling" ceased.

They were replaced eventually with more conventional tree lights--the kind where if one bulb "blew" the rest kept bravely glowing.

Over the years as he drove to and from work or on errands Daddy noted when the Christmas decorations were put up in the nearby town of Brandon and in the city of Rutland.

It became a ritual to set aside an evening during those weeks before Christmas to ride slowly past the showy displays in the town centers and then to drive through the residential streets, admiring [or criticizing] the ingenuity which juxtaposed a reverent manger scene bathed in blue and white lights with a gaudy Santa's sleigh outlined in glaring red and green bulbs.

My father bought strings of lights meant for outdoor use to bedeck the front doorway.  He fretted over what time to turn the lights on, and whether to turn them off at bedtime.  As the days counted down toward Christmas Eve the lights shone out through the long nights.

There was the memorable Christmas when, with the tree already trimmed to [near] satisfaction, Daddy appeared at lunch time with two cans of areosal "snow."

"Smith's Store have their windows sprayed with it," he announced.

He gave the first can a tentative shake, stood back and aimed it at the center of the tree.  There was a wet dribble of something which didn't resemble snow.

Swearing, Daddy gave the can a violent shaking, stepped closer and blasted the top of the tree, "snowing" on the gilded  angel and covering a patch of the ceiling with a sticky goo which immediately and permanently dried to a cement-like crust.

My sisters and I looked on in fascination. Mother, lured from the kitchen by the sounds of crisis, "humphed" in tardy disapproval of the experiment.

The second can of snow [perhaps because it had now come to room temperature] behaved better and Daddy achieved a nice woodland effect of snow-tipped branches, although some of the snow landed on the tips of the colored bulbs.

The Christmases of childhood blur together when reviewed in later decades. My two younger sisters may read this and wonder if I have imagined these events.

As Dylan Thomas so aptly put it,

"I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six."

There were many holidays white with the weight of drifted snow, picure-perfect; there was the Christmas when I was given a new sled and the early December accumulation of snow had been rained upon and stood in dirty runnels edging frost-browned grass and rigid expanses of mud.

There were generous Christmases and the leaner ones when we were too young to know at what sacrifice the gifts still appeared beneath the tree.

There was the joy as we grew older of giving gifts, rather than merely waiting to receive.

There was music--always music: from the Silvertone radio; from the phonograph; carols played on the piano.

There was tension, ritual, sweets, anticipation.

Sometimes there were those still  snatched moments when the joy of the season crept close enough to embrace--late night moments to sit beside my father's decorated Christmas tree, dreaming in the soft shine of lights-- red, blue, green and star-white.

A Mouse in the Mincemeat

The smell struck Mac as soon as he stepped into the woodshed.  Pushing the outside door shut, he stood in the dark space sniffing.  Wood, of course, chunks of maple, beech, oak, curing in neat ranks along the  walls.  Drifts of the familiar farm smells: the horse barn, the tang of wood smoke, cold winter air and, very faintly, the suggestion of the privy attached to the far end of the shed.

He clumped up the shallow steps to the kitchen door and stood inhaling the scent of something cooking--he recognized apples, spices, something heavy and sweet and rich.

Mac lifted the latch and stepped inside.  The lamps had not been lit and he could see the glow of flames dancing beneath the lids of the black cookstove. The last light of a short winter afternoon pooled on the scrubbed pine table, melted away into shadows at the edges of the room.

"For pity sakes, Mac, close the door!  You're letting heat out into the shed!"

Mother turned from the stove, a large wooden spoon poised above a heavy cast-iron kettle.

Mac hastily latched the door and moved to his Mother's side.

"What are you making?" he asked.

Mother, carefully maneuvering the black kettle to the end of the stove-top, gave a small sigh of accomplishment before she replied, "Mincemeat. For Christmas pies. Andrew, light the lamp and Julia, fetch a sauce dish and three spoons."

While the younger children hopped to do their mother's bidding, Mac eased off his heavy overshoes and mittens, spread his chilled hands above the warmth of the stove.

He watched while Mother spooned a generous dollop of the mincemeat into the dish that Julia held.

"Let it cool a minute or you'll burn your tongues," she warned. "Then you each have a taste."

The children blew on their laden spoons, savoured the unfamiliar melding of flavors: the richness of beef roasted and ground fine; the tartness of apples; the deep sweetness of brown sugar, plump raisins, and the subtle mysteries of cinnamon and allspice.

"When will you make the pies?" inquired Mac.

"A day or two before Christmas," replied Mother. "When the mincemeat cools I'll pack it in covered pans and you can put it on the high shelf in the shed where it will stay cold til then."

Later that evening the mincemeat was spooned into two large enameled baking pans, pressed down and smoothed with the wooden spoon.  Mother wrapped the pans in several layers of cheesecloth and stood gazing with satisfaction at the result of her hours of chopping, stirring and tasting.

Andrew held the lamp while Mac carefully lifted the pans to the clean wooden shelf just beyond the kitchen door in the cold shed.

Waking in the grey-white gloom of a snowy December morning, Mac thought he could still decipher the scent of cinnamon, as though the essence of meat and fruit and spices had trailed up the stairwell and now hung in the unheated bedroom he shared with Andrew.

Rubbing sleep from his eyes he calculated that there were about 10 days before Mother would be making the Christmas pies.

Mac's chores before and after school took him through the woodshed, in and out the kitchen door many times a day.  Sometimes he glanced up at the shelf where reposed the pans of mincemeat and remembered how good it tasted. He fancied that even in the frigid air of the shed he could smell its rich aroma overlaying the pervasive aura of snow, woodsmoke and faint farmyard odors.

On the second day, depositing an armful of split dry maple in the kitchen woodbox, he found himself surprisingly alone in the big warm room.

With no premeditation, he removed a teaspoon from the flared glass vase which sat in the middle of the table and slipped it into his pocket.

In the shed he reached down a pan of mincemeat, tweaked aside a corner of the cheesecloth wrapping and goudged out a spoonful of the spicey treat, tucked in the covering and replaced the pan on the wide wooden shelf.

Each day thereafter he permitted himself a spoonful from one pan or the other, never thinking beyond the enjoyment of this stolen tidbit.

There came the Saturday morning two days before Christmas when Mother rose from the breakfast table with rather more than her usual purposeful bustle.

Julia was sent to bring all the pie pans from the pantry cupboard. Andrew made sure the woodbox was filled to the brim and Mac was directed to fetch the pans of mincemeat from their chilly isolation in the shed.

When Mac re-entered the kitchen, the pans balanced one atop the other, Mother had assembled her pastry board, the rolling pin, the canister of flour.

With no particular misgivings Mac watched as she pulled aside the cheesecloth that swathed the pans.

There was silence, then Mother spoke with a gasp of astonishment.

"Mercy sakes!  Something has been into my mincemeat!"

Mac stood rooted to the floor.  He was near enough to the table to see, in broad daylight, exactly what Mother was viewing.  He was surprised to note that he must have eaten more of the mincemeat than he thought.  All along the sides of the pans were uneven nibbles where the mincemeat had been scooped away.

Mother snatched up one of the pans, carried it to the window and turned it this way and that, peering anxiously at the contents in the stronger light.

Returning to the table she smacked the pan down and stood glaring at it, her cheeks pink and her blue eyes sparking.

"I do belive there has been a mouse in the mincemeat!" She held up one of the lengths of cheesecloth, shook it suspiciously.  She picked up her wooden spoon and prodded cautiously along the edge of one pan.

"I don't see mouse droppings and the cheesecloth hasn't been nibbled, but what else could it be?"

She stood, lips in a firm line, thinking, then let her breath out in an irritated huff.

"What a waste," she fumed. " I'll have to scrape out the mincemeat along the edges of the pans and throw it out.  I can't risk mouse dirt in my pies!"

Glaring, she reached for the big spoon again, clattered about in the pans on the table.

Although he hadn't moved from his stance beside the table, Mac's mind had been racing. 

He recalled the day early in October when the pedlar had made his last round of the mountain hamlet before winter, rumbling into the yard with his horse drawn cart.  He saw again the care with which Mother had counted out silver and copper coins from the small blue crock that held her egg and butter money.

The pedlar had handed over the bright tins of spices which had been tucked away in the big cupboard--"for Christmas baking", Mother had said with satisfaction.

Mac remembered the more recent trip to the company store that served the workers at the graphite mine.  He had driven the team, hitched them and waited with Mother while flour and brown sugar and the precious and pricey raisins had been scooped into paper sacks and weighed.

The clerk had entered the amounts in his account book, to be deducted from the wages Father would be paid as one of the mine foreman.

Waste: of hard-earned money, of special ingredients, waste of the hours which had gone into chopping, stirring and tasting.

Mac found his voice at last and spoke with urgency.

"Ma!" He took a stride closer to the table. "Ma, don't throw out the mincemeat!

There haven't been any mice in it!"

Mother, standing with the big spoon ready to dip into the pan, suddenly fixed Mac with a speculative gaze.

"You sound very sure about the mice.  Just how do you know?"

"Because," said Mac in a rush, "It's me that's been eating the mincemeat.  A little bit every day."

He felt his ears going warm as Mother continued to focus her attention on him, but he didn't drop his eyes.

"I guess I didn't want to wait until Christmas to taste the mincemeat again."

"Well!" said Mother, and the word was a small explosion in the quiet kitchen.

Julia and Andrew stood behind her, watching this unforeseen drama unfold.

The kitchen was momentarily so still that the soft crackle of the fire in the wood range seemed loud.

Mother moved with sudden swiftness and the wooden spoon slapped across Mac's knuckles.

"Really, Mac," said Mother crossly, "What a greedy thing to do!"

"Yes, " said Mac, and he rubbed his smarting hand against his jacket.  "Its awfully good mincemeat...and I ...err...I didn't think I'd gotten into it all that much."

Mother sniffed, rattled her pans, moved the pastry board into place.

"I'm glad you fessed up in the nick of time, " she conceded. "If something had to get into my mincemeat, I'd rather it was you than a mouse." 

The tension of the last few moments was over. The kitchen again was a warm and homely room.

Mother gave her apron strings a twitch and began scooping flour into the big green bowl.

"Put some wood in the stove, Mac. If we're going to have pies for Christmas, we'd better commence."

This is one of my Grampa Mac's stories of growing up in the little mining community of Graphite in up-state New York.

From all accounts my great-grandmother was not a lady to antagonize.

Our Time for Snow

Nearly balmy temperatures on Saturday morning gave way to clouds and wind by mid-afternoon; before dark the rain swirled in, pelting from a leaden sky which blurred into the grey murk of twilight .

We heard the rain faintly through the night, but woke to the silence and white light of falling snow.

The glossy leaves of the magnolia tree wore white edgings.

The red berries of the dogwood were dots of color in a grey-white landscape.

Willis greatly hampered my efforts to clump about in the snow and take photos, here inserting himself in the branches of the dogwood.

At the boundary of the woods the snow-fall added to a mysterious and gloomy setting fit for a winter's tale.

The one spot of color along the line of the boundary fence, a maple still clings to rusty leaves.

Sadie the barn kitten.

The three kittens have grown luxurious winter coats.

Sally in the barn ell where we have laid down old sleeping bags as cat beds.

Sometimes the kittens appear to prefer making their own beds in the hay.

Pebbles, hoping for a second breakfast.

Her hay is now served in the barn ell which is adjacent to her yard and shed.

Thyme, dark green and aromatic beneath a fluff of snow.

There were two dried blooms on this dark red achillia.

The ginger cat, here seen through the kitchen door is one of three known strays which we are, willy-nilly--feeding.  We have seen them at a distance in the yard or barn since we moved in last spring.

I don't begrudge them a morsel of kibble in this cold weather and I regularly put out warmed buttermilk or skimmed milk.

But....we don't have the means to spay/neuter yet more cats and I have a fear that at some point a feral female will deposit a litter in the barn.

J. arranged a covered carton against the warmth of the chimney which rises from the carport floor.

The girl kittens seem to prefer shelter in the barn, but Willis pops out of the cozy box whenever we open the kitchen door.

J. going out to get wood this evening informed me that one of the two ginger strays was in the box

with Willis.

[Sigh!]

I took this photo while trudging up from the mailbox about 11 a.m.

The mail was late and we have been told that this [to us] small amount of snow causes all sorts of delays and cancellations.

Granted, there was just enough snow and cold to make for some slushy spots on the road, but having lived for years in New England and then in Wyoming, the weather doesn't seem that daunting.

The little house looks snug and inviting on a cold day, with a stash of wood handy in the carport.

Snort'n Nort'n, the old Dodge, waiting for another day of wood hauling.

Juncos have been bouncing about the yard for about a month now.

Their heads are differently marked than the western juncos.

I spent about an hour, bundled head and foot, plodding about the yard, rummaging through some bins which J. moved to the barn, accompanied at every step by the kittens.

When I heard a harsh gabbling sound I looked at first toward the woods thinking that the wild turkeys might be feeding there.

The cronking voices ebbed and then strengthened, and I looked above to see two gatherings of sand hill cranes wheeling and swirling in the lowering sky.

The presence of sand hill cranes was familiar in Wyoming. Early last March as we drove between Wyoming and Kentucky we saw great flocks of the tall brown birds who were wintering, with Canadian geese all along the North Platte River in Nebraska.

I had not expected to see cranes here and I stood bemused, noting the stretched necks, the long bodies like attenuated strokes of black ink against a canvas of mottled grey.

I watched and listened until the two groups melded into a purposeful flock and headed southward, their

strident calls fading in the cold air.

We bought two bird feeders today and two sacks of  feed, one bulging with grey striped sunflower seed and the other a mixture of seeds which should appeal to many of our dooryard visitors.

J. suspended the feeder from a pole screwed to the trunk of the maple which is directly in line with the kitchen window.

We hope that the combination of birds and outdoor cats won't result in too many casualties amongst the bird-kind.

A Giant Toppled

Red Elm being converted to fire wood.

Several months ago we headed the back way to Campbellsville and saw our friend J.M.'s truck at his secondary farm. He keeps part of his Black Angus herd there and knowing he'd been treating a cow with an injured foot, J. decided to stop and ask if the cow was improving.

The men stood talking--cattle, machinery, haying, gardens.

J.M. waved a hand in the direction of the side-hill pasture and said,

"There's that dead elm that needs to come down.  Would you want to cut it and haul it away for firewood?"

Felling the tree and "working up" the wood has been on J.'s to do list since that time, but other jobs have been more urgent.

Yesterday, a day of cold and sunshine, he suddenly announced his intention to take down the elm.

I scrambled into extra layers of clothes, abandoned a search for my winter boots and hats, which hadn't surfaced since our move.

I picked up a book.

[Never go on a journey with a man without a book to read while you wait for him!]

A few miles down the winding back road I realized I hadn't brought the camera.

J. logged during the years that we owned the Vermont farm.

He is no stranger to the tools and tricks involved in bringing a large tree down safely.

[No stranger either to the grim reality that a tree can become an instant killer if something goes awry in the felling process.]

He expected that approximately half an hours' work would see the tree on the ground.

Viewed close up he realized the girth of the tree was greater than it appeared from down near the barn where we stood on that summer morning when this project was first considered.

Here you can see the chainsaw with its 18" blade compared to the flaring stump of the elm.

J. judged where he intended the tree to fall and began the process of notching and slicing.

The snarl of the saw rang across the pasture and several Black Angus wandered past to investigate, then plodded on to a safer spot.

There was nothing I could do to help at this point, so I sat in the truck with my book, keeping a watchful eye on the undertaking.

J. stopped several times to sharpen the saw, adjust the chain.

He stuck his head in the truck and commented that he had met up with only one other tree that had been as difficult to bring down--a grand old maple.

He brought out a wedge and a splitting hammer.

The rythmic blows rippled through the cold bright afternoon air, but there was no visible quivering in the branches of the tree.

By now grimly determined not to be thwarted, J. produced a 20 ton hydraulic jack, enlarged a notch on the back of the tree trunk to accomodate inserting the jack, and began applying pressure.

He estimated that a 6 inch square of heart wood at the core of the tree was all that was holding it upright.

Nearly three hours after he launched his attack on the old giant, there was finally a telling crack, the tree shuddered and thundered to the earth in a splinter of small dry branches---landing exactly as planned.

The cows, who had retreated to the calm of the lower pasture, raised startled heads at the unfamiliar sound.

I put down my book; I had read 170 pages.

J. cut mostly "limb wood" in the daylight left to us yesterday.

I loaded it into the back of the truck.

The section of the tree which he sawed up today was of larger "chunks."

Some of them were bigger than I could fling into the truck, so I rolled those closer where he could load them.

Elm has a coarse, rough bark, with heavy vertical ridges.

The limbs of this venerable tree were covered in scaly grey lichen.

Here you can see the work of the saw, the wedges, and the space gouged out to place the jack.

The view toward the fence line.

The December sun stays low in the sky and the hedgerows have an amber glow.

Looking over a knoll of the pasture.

The trusty old Dodge, "Snort'n Nort'n", part of every work project for many years.

Elm trees were a familiar and much valued part of the American landscape, particularly in New England, prior to the epidemic of a killer fungus known as Dutch Elm Disease.

The Vermont farm purchased in 1913 by my great-grandparents in partnership with my newly wed grandparents, was known as Elm Row Farm.  I don't know if they gave that name to the farm or if it had been so called by previous owners.

If you would like to read the story about one of the country's last surviving elms, finally felled last winter, in Yarmouth, Maine,  here are two interesting links.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=9711219

http://www.dirtdoctor.com/organic/garden/view_question/id/3108/