Barbara K. Richardson
  • Books
  • Info
  • Blog

Beechnut Gum

11/26/2009

0 Comments

 
Picture
The walnut tree is a wow tree. Do not let your neighbors tell you to hate it. The three-story tree pays most of your electric bill in summer. It soothes your guests at outdoor parties. It turns your study into a tree house. The green shade induces sleep. In fall, the leaves hang on and on, a ‘60s lime yellow green, immense unpretty leaves, while the powdery black fruit husks kill your lawn, unrakable.  

What the neighbors do not know: fallen walnut leaves smell like Beechnut Gum. And that morning when you walk out and all the leaves are down—the yellow and aloft now down and brown—no one could deliver this kind of pleasure in a UPS truck.  

Rake until your heart says Uncle!

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    All Lit Up:
    love, mayhem, literature
    __________

    Categories

    All
    Environment
    Miscellany
    Reading
    Simple Living
    Spirit
    Trees
    Winter
    Writing


    Favorite quotes:

    "Let your fiction grow out of the land beneath your feet.” 
    —Willa Cather

    "Nothing is as powerful as beauty in a wicked world."
    ​—Amos Lee
    ​

    Favorite tree:

    Butterscotch-scented ponderosa pines in sunlight.
    ​

    Favorite place:

    The middle of nowhere.
    ​

    Currently reading:

    Hold Love Strong 

    Just finished reading:

    Finding Stillness in a Noisy World
    ​

    Favorite blog:

    One Woman's Meat: Notes from Escalante

    Picture