Posts Tagged ‘apple trees’

Best Laid Plans

Monday, August 20th, 2018

the far fields tw

The Far Fields painting by Nolan Winkler

To accomplish your task, you must have a clear intention of what you wish to accomplish. You’ve probably heard those words or a close variant multiple times in your life. I know I have. Seems obvious, and yet I wonder if we might also truthfully say: to accomplish your task, you need only go forth with the intention of doing something and the universe will provide you with myriad opportunities to accomplish all sorts of things, and by accomplish we mean have a neato experience that may result in a tangible something like an apple pie or a pile of money or a new car, or may not result in a physically tangible something but might provide you with a valuable insight or change of heart.

Going forth with a willingness to participate in the dance of life is the primary plot device of most Sufi tales, and the recurring message of those tales is that God, the universe, is waiting for us to take action so she can react to our actions in the manner of a brilliant improvisational dance partner. No wonder I love Sufi tales.

For instance, this morning after a long bout of rewriting the latest magnum opus, I had the very clear intention of going out to the orchard to cut down a huge shrub that overshadows two of my apple trees and is growing so fast that by next year the cutting down will be a Herculean task rather than a couple hours of hard work if I do the cutting down this year.

So I get my most excellent Japanese pole saw, my most excellent Japanese loppers, my razor-sharp Japanese hand clippers, and sally forth to the orchard to peruse the massive shrub and plan the excision. The day is sunny, our first such day in nearly a week, the coastal fog heavy of late, and I am feeling strong and ready, my tools sharp, my intention clear.

I approach the shrub and discover that the several three-inches-in-diameter trunks I wish to cut are on the outside of our deer fence adjacent to the nameless dirt and gravel lane that services three of our neighbor’s houses, none of those houses visible from our house.

So I exit the orchard through a gate in the deer fence and head down the nameless lane where in the distance I espy my neighbor Dave stretching a tape measure across the dirt and gravel track. I walk fifty feet beyond the shrub I intend to cut down, greet Dave, and learn he is building a fence along his property line and wants to make sure he is siting the fence far enough back from the lane.

We agree he’s doing a boffo job, his siting perfecto, and I look back the way I came and see a massive blob of redwood boughs sticking out from a gang of redwoods on our property, the blob hanging way too low over the lane, an obstacle to large delivery trucks, and I am reminded I’ve been intending to have this blob of boughs removed for several years now, but assumed I could not do the job myself because the boughs are attached to the trunks of the redwoods higher than I thought I and my hand tools could reach.

But today, for some reason, armed with my most excellent pole saw that can be extended to twenty-feet in length, and with Dave’s encouragement, I decide to attack the blob. A few cuts along, Dave departs for the golf course, and I realize I could use the help of my marvelous pole lopper, which I fetch. After an hour of sawing and lopping, I have excised the blob and created a great mass of fallen boughs now blocking the lane.

At which moment, unbidden, Marcia arrives and helps me haul the boughs to our driveway for dismemberment into kindling for our wood stove and green waste for the county compost pile. Whilst hauling the boughs, Marcia studies the lane and discerns three large manzanita branches emanating from our property and invading the air space quite low over the lane and threatening telephone wires. So I decapitate those branches and whilst decapitating them discover the Doug Fir I noted growing amidst the manzanita two years ago that was then a scrawny six-feet-tall and is now a robust eighteen-feet-tall and promising to be thirty-feet-tall next year. So I cut the fir down, too.

Following a water and snack break, I spend a couple hours converting the redwood boughs and fir tree into kindling and green waste, and as of this writing the troublesome shrub is still standing.

One Sufi-tale ending to this story might be that at dusk, in search of huckleberries, I return to the orchard and hear the most beautiful singing I have ever heard. I look around the orchard to discover the source of the song, and there in the shrub I intended to cut down is a large nest made of many small redwood boughs, and in the nest are three golden baby birds singing like angels, newly hatched golden baby angel birds who never would have hatched from their eggs had I carried out my intention to cut down the shrub.

As I listen to the angelic singing, I realize Dave was not really Dave, but a spirit being disguised as Dave sent to protect the eggs of the golden birds, and I also discover that when lopping the redwood boughs, I unknowingly lopped in half a terrible dark-skinned viper that might have one day killed me or Marcia or both of us, and surely would have eaten the eggs containing the golden birds. I eventually make a really cool belt out of the viper’s skin.

Another possible Sufi-tale ending might be that I return to the orchard the next day to cut down the troublesome shrub and find a powerful goddess disguised as an old woman sitting in the shade of the shrub. Grateful for the shade and plums and blackberries she’s helped herself to, she grants me three wishes. I choose wisely and my wishes set in motion a swift reversal of global warming and human over-population, while ushering in a renaissance in literature and cinema.

Even so, I still plan to cut the troublesome shrub down because I want my apple trees to thrive. But I’ll wait a few days to do the deed, which will give the baby golden angel birds time to fledge and fly away.

behold the blue, tw

Behold the Blue painting by Nolan Winkler

Ant Cows

Wednesday, May 6th, 2015

todd and pup

Todd and Pup photo by Marcia Sloane

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser May 2015)

“Ants are so much like human beings as to be an embarrassment. They farm fungi, raise aphids as livestock, launch armies into war, use chemical sprays to alarm and confuse enemies, capture slaves, engage in child labor, and exchange information ceaselessly. They do everything but watch television.” Lewis Thomas

You got that right, Lewis. This year, with five yearling apples trees and five apple trees we revived from near death when we bought this place three years ago, the biggest challenge to our trees is ants and the aphids those ants raise on the clover, so to speak, of the tender apple leaves just now emerging along with the onset of blossoms.

Large apple trees can tolerate mild infestations of aphids and the ants that milk them, but small trees, and especially babies with only a few limbs, can be killed by voracious aphid hordes. There are solutions, organic and non-organic, some less temporary than others, but ants are supremely creative about circumventing efforts to stop them from getting the aphid milk they so highly prize. Thus eternal vigilance is necessary in the fight against their insatiable addiction to sustenance.

Yes, I am anthropomorphizing ants, but that’s because I take their assault on my trees personally, which I should not, but I can’t help it.

“Ants have the most complicated social organization on earth next to humans.” E.O. Wilson

Our neighbors just had a baby, a human baby, and for the next several years they will have to guard their child a thousand times more vigilantly against the exigencies of life than I must guard our apple trees against ants and aphids. A few generations ago this young couple would have had a multi-generational network of family members and neighbors and friends to help them raise their child, what used to be known as human society, but today they will be largely on their own. I intend to make myself available for baby care duty, and I will be happily surprised if they take me up on my offer.

“Sacred cows make the tastiest hamburger.” Abbie Hoffman

Speaking of cows and aphids and ants and society, I want to be excited about Bernie Sanders running for President of the United States, but excitement eludes me. Would it make a difference if I thought Bernie had even the slightest chance of winning? Maybe. Or should it be exciting enough that he will possibly force the debate with Madame Hillary a few notches to the left of right of center? Not really. I’m too old. I’ve seen too many smart people expose the sordid underbelly of the ruling elite only to find that almost no one watching the contest knew they were looking at an underbelly and the thing was sordid.

Bernie Sanders calls himself a socialist. That’s kind of exciting, someone running for President of the United States and daring to use the word socialist as a self-descriptor in 2015. On the other hand, by declaring he is a socialist, and given the IQ and emotional development of the average American voter, Bernie might as well have said, “I am a communist and if elected President everyone will live in dire poverty.” Words are tricky, especially in a society of semi-literate people with severely impaired vocabularies.


Ants are socialists. Their incredible success as a species springs from their super socialism. I, too, ideologically speaking, am a socialist, but I am not running for office. However, I have some advice for anyone who is a socialist and thinking about running for elected office: use a different word. Use the word sharer. I am a sharer and believe that sharing our wealth, social responsibilities, and economic opportunities will always provide the most benefits for most of the people all of the time. Or something quotable and broadly unspecific like that.

I was thinking about why socialism, and for that matter sharing and equality, get such a bad rap in America? And while I was pondering this large issue, I read an article about Alexander Guerrero, a young man who defected from Cuba in 2013 and shortly thereafter signed a contract to play baseball for the Los Angeles Dodgers, the enemies of our San Francisco Giants.

The Dodgers signed Guerrero, who arrived from Cuba without a job, to a four-year contract worth twenty-eight million dollars, including a signing bonus of ten million dollars. He has never played Major League Baseball. He is apparently quite the hitter and has already hit two home runs against the Giants, but is seriously iffy in the outfield. And that is when I understood why socialism and sharing and equality get such bad raps in America.

Sharing and equality are not the American Way. All or Nothing is the American way. Rags to riches is the American way. Socialism is complicated and requires work and commitment and diligence and integrity and believing every person in our society is as worthy as anyone else, that we really are equal and should have equal opportunities and be treated equally under the laws of the land.

Most Americans, hearing of a penniless guy showing up from Cuba and being given ten million dollars, do not frown and say, “Wow, that seems crazy. Think how many people could be raised from poverty into a minimally decent life for twenty-eight million dollars.” Most Americans will say, “Damn, why not me?” or “Good for him!”

“One for all, and all for one!” Alexandre Dumas

Back here in the land of non-millionaires, the socialist ants are threatening my apple trees and I am trying not to take it personally. The ants are not doing this out of malice, but from a wise assessment of how to get the most out of a ready source of nourishment. And the better I understand them, the easier it will be to kill them.