Tree lines

Bare winter branches and armored araucaria

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Guardian

An iconic Portland fire hydrant stands guard over detritus from January’s ice storm. Most of the downed trees and damaged vegetation have been cleared.

Photo © Fran Gardner

Winter light

Meanwhile, late afternoon sunlight creates a fantasy image at a bus stop.

Photo © Fran Gardner

Three words

These just came to me. No reason. Tied together by b’s and i’s.

• Bridle

• Bindi

• Brindle

Bridle

A bridle is a thing that binds. It keeps a horse in check. It keeps a metaphor from getting too flowery.

We all want to be free. But sometimes the discipline of a bridle is welcome.

• A bridle on our emotions, to keep us from road rage.

• A bridle on our sense of wealth, keeping us from overcharging that hot new credit card.

• A bridle on our ambition, a pulling back, a realization that some things matter more than power and pelf. (“Pelf” is an archaic word meaning money come by in a shady way. The phrase “power and pelf” is from the poem “Breathes There a Man With Soul So Dead,” by Sir Walter Scott. It’s about a man without a country.

The truth is, I resent bridles. I just want to be free.

Unbridled.

Bindi

A bindi is not a bridle. Rather, it is a symbol of opening. It’s a red dot applied to the center of the brow, the traditional site of the sixth chakra, or “third eye.”

Bindis are commonly worn by women, and sometimes men, throughout South Asia, by Hindus, Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists, among others. They serve as reminders to access the inner realm, the vision of the world that lies beneath reality.

The smudge of ash placed by a priest on Ash Wednesday is in the same spot, above and between the eyes. But it has an outward meaning: the acknowledgement of sin, of humanity, of humility. A reminder of who we are, on one plane.

But the totality of our being, that is behind the bindi.

Brindle

This word is good for comic relief. It basically means two-tone and describes animals with reddish or brown hair with splotches or streaks of white. You’ll find brindle coloration in cows, cats, dogs and guinea pigs. And guinea pigs are just generically funny.

Think of a brindle cow, white with splotches of brown. The border collie with its brindle coat keeps the cow in line.

Presidential memories

Monday is Presidents’ Day (February 19).

I remember the time when February brought two days off: Abraham Lincoln’s birthday on February 12 and George Washington’s on February 22.

Now the two birthdays are squashed together as Presidents’ Day. So quintessentially American, caving to efficiency. Two holidays in one short month were just too many.

Although, I think we used to trade off in my elementary school days. No school on one birthday one year and on the other the next. Anybody remember that?

By the way, two other presidents have February birthdays. They are William Henry Harrison, February 9, and Ronald Reagan, February 6.

Mondays off

There being more weekdays than weekend days, the presidential birthdays fell on  weekdays most years.

I was thinking all federal holidays except the Fourth of July and Thanksgiving fall on Mondays, but when I checked I was wrong. Juneteenth is June 19, Veterans’ Day is November 11, Christmas is always December 25, and New Year’s is on January 1 wherever it falls in the week (and happy birthday to me!).*

*There are five Monday holidays: Martin Luther King’s Birthday, Presidents’ Day, Memorial Day, Labor Day and Columbus/Indigenous Peoples’ Day.

Do Monday holidays even make sense, now that fewer of us have weekend days off? Monday off, a three-day weekend, is a convenience for the elite, those with office jobs. Forget everyone else, retail workers, restaurant staff, supermarket checkers, lifeguards. Businesses, stores and recreation sites are open all day, every day. Somebody has to staff them.

When I was a kid

I lived in Bloomington, Minn., in the early 60s, at a time the town still had blue laws, although I didn’t know the term then. Businesses could not be open on Sunday.

Sunday was for church. And everyone, in those days, went to church.

I remember my sixth-grade teacher asking us to describe what religion we were. I don’t think she had an ulterior motive; she was just interested in who was what.

There were no Jews. I didn’t know this at the time, either, but many of the Jews in the Minneapolis area lived in a suburb called St. Louis Park.

Most everybody in the class was Lutheran. This was Minnesota, after all. As always, I was the lone Episcopalian, and the other kids had trouble with the long, funny-sounding name. Add in a smattering of Baptists and Jehovah’s Witness. The Roman Catholic kids went to Catholic school. Nobody didn’t have a religion.

All of us were white, middle class. We were the bologna sandwich of suburban life. Actually, most suburbia in those days was bologna sandwich. On white. Mayo, no mustard.

Presidential synonym

When I’m writing for myself, I often abbreviate “president” as “prexy.” I love that sorta snobby Ivy Leagueish term for a university president. It reminds me of leather arm patches, smoking pipes, and beanies with propellers on top.

The Tail End of Winter

I am weary, I am weary.
Winter’s hold is choking me.
Endless vistas of bare branches.
No respite that I can see.

I welcome winter, every season,
But familiarity gets old.
I long for freshness, crave new vigor,
Not tired weather, sere and cold.

Wait, there’s a bud on a branch,
And tiny green shoots appear
Amid the dead leaves,
Each a soldierlike spear.

Thank you, Spirit, for winter
Let me not turn away
From the gifts of the season— 
Let them come out and play!

Winter tracery

One of the gifts of winter is the pattern of branches against the sky. This handsome ancient tree is an elm. It graces Southwest Boundary Street in Portland.

Photo © Fran Gardner

An oak tree that must be 80 feet high dominates a front yard on Southwest 65th Avenue. Its arms are uplifted in joy.

Photo © Fran Gardner

Monkey puzzle

Some folks I have asked about monkey puzzle trees say they are not familiar with them. This is odd, because there are a fair number of them in Portland. Once you’ve seen one, you’ll never forget it.

Monkey puzzle trees are conifers, but the scalelike coverings of the branches look like leaves. Photo by Annie Spratt, New Forest National Park, UK

The monkey puzzle tree (Araucaria araucana) comes encased in armor. Scalelike green “leaves” cover every surface of its branches.

If medieval Europe had monkey puzzle trees, it would have made fortification easy. Just plant a phalanx of monkey puzzle trees and nobody would be able to breach it.

A. araucana, however, is native to Chile and did not reach Europe until the mid-1840s, when a Scotsman who had been traveling in Chile sprouted a few nuts he had gathered.

Trees to Portland

Monkey puzzles came to Portland courtesy of the 1905 Lewis and Clark Exhibition, when seedlings were given away. That means that many of the trees in Portland are the same age and size. The city of Portland had some info about them, and Google has produced a map showing where many of those trees can be found.

Google’s map doesn’t include this juvenile tree that I discovered recently on the grounds of Mary Rieke Elementary School in Southwest Portland. Here’s hoping whoever planted that tree had an idea of its potential. The tree could live 1,000 years.

Photo © Fran Gardner

Tall and menacing

You can’t miss a monkey puzzle tree. Also known as Chilean pine, as it is native to Chile, it’s a big tree, growing 50 to 80 feet tall—100 feet in the wild. And there are those rigid, platelike leaves, which can live 15 years before shedding. They are hard and sharp.

The species, araucana, is named for the Arauco tribe of central Chile. A. araucana is Chile’s national tree.

Like catalpas and kiwis, monkey puzzles have male and female plants. Thing is, you can’t tell which is which until they produce cones at age 2 or 3.

The wood under that armor is hard, smooth and knot-free, so it’s eminently suited to  fine products like pianos, skis, oars and rulers. The ancient trees in South America have been harvested so heavily that they have been protected since 1976. They remain critically endangered.

Monkey cousin

A related species, Araucaria heterophylla, is known commonly as Norfolk Island pine. It’s a native of Australia, and luckily for the species, the wood is not very useful. It’s classified as vulnerable, but not endangered.

These slow-growing plants are popular as houseplants and are sometimes used as living Christmas trees.

Norfolk Island pine, I’m entranced by the fact that the plane of each set of branches is a perfect pentagon. Photo by Taylor Smith for Unsplash

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100 days

The 100 Day Project starts tomorrow, Sunday, February 18. I think I am going to create something every day, not necessarily in the same genre. Some days a photo, some days a poem. A quilt block. Something played on the violin. A set of three words.

I intend to celebrate each day with a little creation. Perhaps you will join me.

For you, for now

Keep taking it easy. What other way is there to be? Taking it hard?

For us, on the home front

Robert and I went through some tsuris this week, having to swallow that the updates to our house that will allow me to move back home will take longer and cost more than anticipated.

We are trying to keep good relations with the contractor and communicate openly, honestly and in a straightforward manner.

Robert points out that each set of clients brings a new personality and psychology to a project. A contractor committed to open communication, as ours is, must adjust to new needs with each project. This can’t be easy.

Nor is it easy for my husband and me to understand and accept the contractor’s needs and concerns. Our project is costing a lot of money. More than we had bargained for.

Someday, soon, this tsuris will be over. The new sunroom will accommodate my wheelchair. The new ramp will lead up to it. I’ll be able to walk into the shower that replaces the old bathtub, in a bathroom with modern lighting.

Home remodeling is always a headache. The kind of headache that aspirin won’t cure.

. . . Till next week.

—30—