underneath_the_burning_bush
cr0wl one of my projects today under the robin's egg blue skies was to rescue a pair of ninety year-old alatus compactus (burning bush) trees that were severely damaged in the heavy snows. the 4 inch caliper trunks had split under the weight and suffered stress fractures which will require a miracle for them to heal. i bandaged them and cut away a lot of the bulk weight that was pulling on them. the owner seemed really sad, but hopeful and i told him that was a good spirit to have, especially since the injured tree was listening. he liked that and smiled. what do we know? maybe it's really important for trees to hear that people don't want them to die.

as i was working further, i watched various people walking up and down asbury st. some walked their dogs, others chatted on their phones. i saw a punk rock couple kiss on a porch. a father pulled his two boys in a wagon. a teenager stopped on his bike. i asked him he he lived at the house. he told me he was the dogwalker and moments later came out pulling on a frumpy old beagle that had been barking at me earlier like a reject from "lady and the tramp."

the older boy who had been in the wagon appeared since he turned out to be a neighbor, and watched me from a slight distance. i pulled my headphones off, silencing joseph arthur, and asked if he knew what happened to the trees. he stepped up closer in his knee high mucking boots and raising his eyebrows from under some sort of beret, asked with a bemused curiosity what had occurred.

i explained about the winter and how heavy the snow was and how it caused a lot of trouble for trees and shrubs and through a series of "actuallys" this precocious seven-year old went on to tell me how it did the same to his arborvitaes. i don't think i even knew what an arborvitae was until i was twenty. he also told me i had a nice chainsaw and that his dad had asked if he wanted to go skiing this past winter and that his brother was turning two in april. i told him to come up to the ski school where i work in the winter and then asked him where he went to school. "the environmental charter," he told me and he wants to be a scientist in the tropics when he grows up. "like jeff corwin," he told me, and continued to explain how he let a snake bite him and then had his blood tested for venom.

his dad came rolling up with his brother in the wagon and we talked a bit about skiing and then they left and as they rolled away on the debris i created i could hear the older son telling his dad something.

i would have given the cheese sandwich i hadn't eaten yet to know what he was saying.
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