A Christmas Story

Because it is Christmas Eve and I do not believe in frightening people unnecessarily, I will tell the end of this harrowing story first, then go back to the beginning.  And so, here goes:  I am happy to report that I am alive to write this, and my oldest friend, Hank Rawlings, is not going to get a set of bongo drums for Christmas.

Now, to the beginning of the story. 

Hank and me, circa 2007

This has been a rotten week, weather-wise, in eastern Massachusetts. It has been cold and rainy. The sun comes up after seven in the morning and sets a few minutes after four, peaking at just 24 degrees above the horizon.  On Friday, partly for the exercise and partly to enjoy the Yuletide spirit, Betty and I had planned to visit a small town along the coastline south of Boston where all the shops in the quaint village are beautifully decorated for the holidays.  The visit was enthusiastically recommended to her by members of a garden club in that town.  But there was a driving rain and cutting wind all afternoon.  And so we stayed home in Medfield.

A spindly oak, probably this one,
leaned precariously into our garden.
That's Danielson Pond at the property edge.

Yesterday morning, Betty suggested a better form of exercise: cutting down a tree.  (No, not a Christmas tree; a nine-plus-foot Frasier fir has graced our Great Room for the past ten days and is magnificent.)  The tree she had in mind is a tall, spindly oak that, since a snow storm last winter, has leaned precariously into our gardens even as it grew to a height of more than forty feet.  Last summer, the tree provided unwanted shade to several rock garden beds and Betty’s well-founded fear was that a winter storm could topple the tree once and for all.

To be completely honest, Betty has had the tree removal on my ‘to-do’ list ever since we had to shake a coating of snow and ice off of it to get it off our deck last January, but I have successfully put off the task by various subterfuges, the most persuasive was that the oak could not just be cut down with a chain saw.  It is less than thirty feet from the back of our house and, based on the direction it was leaning, it would take out our back deck and a portion of our Great Room, a Cornus mas (Cornelian cherry), and a very rare Chamaecyparis pisifera ‘Snow’ – not necessarily in that order of importance to Betty.

The tree, I argued, needed to be cut half-way up so that its top half fell harmlessly into some minor shrubs and pathways.  To get twenty feet up the trunk of the tree required a suitable, sturdy ladder and the tall wooden one we possessed was more than half a century old and was – literally and figuratively – falling apart. 

The 22-foot Little Giant

Ten days ago, that excuse became moot when Betty spotted on sale and purchased a 22-foot Little Giant, 350-pound-rated aluminum ladder.  She ordered the ladder on line (who knew?) and my hope was that its delivery would be delayed until after the snow started falling, making the tree-removal task impossible for yet another season.  Instead, the ladder arrived in three days. 

And so, yesterday morning, with all excuses gone, I unfolded the ladder to its maximum height and set out to finally perform the feat that I had promised to do all year.  I secured a rope around the tree above the cut line and Betty positioned herself off to one side, ready to guide the falling tree into one of minimal landscape damage.

I made a practice cut, taking off a largish side branch roughly fifteen feet off the ground.  When the limb fell, the tree bucked and I had to hold on for dear life.  If that was the effect a smaller branch had, it was likely that the Main Event would slingshot me and the ladder into, at minimum, the adjoining trees, and possibly all the way to Danielson Pond.

Betty suggested tying the ladder to the tree.  I thought this was a good idea.  She also suggested lashing myself to the tree.  I did not like this idea one bit.  I imagined the top of the tree snapping over, the base of the tree bucking violently, the ladder flying free, and me hanging from the trunk of the tree in a vignette out of the song, ‘Tom Dooley’.

Hank and me in the 6th grade. Educators will note
with horror there is one teacher and 31 kids.

My own plan was to cut (with a hand saw) at the 25-foot level and, as soon I even thought I heard the tree start to give, climb as far down the ladder as fast as I could.  I thought I heard the trunk begin to crack about the one-third way point.  I scurried down the ladder, expecting the tree to go over.  It didn’t.  Betty and I tugged on the rope for several minutes trying to hasten it along..  The tree did not budge.

I went back up, and gave the trunk a few more cuts, all the time listening for that tell-tale cracking sound.  And, I readily confess, I began to worry for my safety.  Here I was, at the top of a very tall ladder, sawing above my head, with sawdust falling into my face.

I began to think about… Christmas presents.

I am told that I am very hard to buy presents for.  That is quite true for the simple reason that I have long had all of the ‘things’ I ever wanted.  When Betty asked what I wanted this year, all I could come up with was the very practical suggestion that my bedroom slippers are worn out.  I was subsequently given a number of ultimatums to come up with better ideas.

"Desk Set" - for the man who has everything... bongo drums

One of my favorite Christmas movies is ‘Desk Set’, the 1957 Katherine Hepburn – Spencer Tracy vehicle that features possibly the best office Christmas party scene ever.  After Gig Young has found Tracy wearing the monogrammed bathrobe Hepburn bought for Young (don’t ask, just rent the film), Hepburn buys Young a set of bongo drums because the sign in the store said they were ‘for the man who has everything’.

So the question was, if the next cut was the crucial one and I did not get out of the way of the tree quickly enough, and the tree bucked me and the ladder onto one of the many large, granite boulders that grace our woods, to whom could Betty give the bongo drums?  I decided my oldest friend, Hank Rawlings, was the right recipient.  My fear was that, with my dying breath, she might not understand this part of my last will and testament.

Maybe I was thinking too hard about bongo drums.  I gave the tree an insignificant but crucial cut and heard just a single warning ‘snap’.  The top twenty-three feet of the tree fell over.  Later, Betty would say she heard ‘snap-snap-craaaaaack’ before it fell.

Chamaecyparis ‘Snow’ was
undamaged by felling the tree

Whichever is the case, I got down about four rungs when the trunk of the tree, now relieved of more than a ton of weight that had pulled it toward the earth, lost that burden and the trunk went ‘twang’ like an airline seat being returned to its upright and locked position before landing.

I hung onto the ladder with a grip I did not know I possessed and the tree’s kick was strong enough to slam the ladder into my thigh. 

But a second later, I was still on the ladder, fifteen feet above ground, shaken but very much alive.  The tree’s top was on the ground, having missed the house and deck by roughly five feet; completely missing the Cornus, and inflicting very minor damage on Chamaecyparis ‘Snow’.

Seeing that I was shaken, Betty asked if I was all right.  I responded that I was fine but that I hoped she had not bought me bongo drums for Christmas.  She looked at me quizzically, then smiled.

Adjø, Acer platanoides

A few decades ago, the back cover of publications such as ‘Parade’ were adorned with ads for ‘miracle trees’; things that would grow from a four-foot whip into a thirty-foot shade tree in five years. You could buy four of them for $19.95 or some such absurdly low figure.

I’d be willing to bet that some of those ‘miracle trees’ were Acer platanoides, better known as the Norway maple. Beloved by developers twenty years ago for their ‘instant neighborhood’ qualities, the tree is today considered an invasive species. It has a thick, shallow, fibrous root system that fairly well sucks out the moisture from everything around it. It is also a brittle tree, given to shedding branches at inopportune times. Further, it's a imposter: the tree is native to Turkey. 'Norway' just sounded more upscale. Finally, anyone who loves maple syrup and thinks tapping this branch of the family is in for a disappointment.

Mostly, though, it is a great brute of a shade tree. It gets very large and has a massive canopy that permits no light to get through it. Anything that is planted between it and the sun is doomed to live in eternal shadow. It’s lone saving grace is that it turns a brilliant yellow and gold in the fall.

The builder who put up the ten homes on my street did a fine job with the houses, but his skills ended at finish carpentry. He put a five-clump river birch in the front yard of the house we would buy… ten feet from the septic tank. He dotted the street with now-banned burning bush (Euonymus alatus). And, to shade the sidewalks, he planted a great many Norway maples. Our home was four years old when we moved in and the tree on our property was roughly fifteen feet in height and still reasonably shaped.

Ten years later, the shortcomings of Acer platanoides could no longer be ignored. We had consistently pruned the maple in front of our shrub bed so that it was, at worst, an annoyance. But a second Norway maple on a neighbor’s property - forty feet high and as wide across as its height - was shading our ‘butterfly bed’ out of existence while keeping the soil underneath it as dry as dust.

Last summer, that neighbor’s home sold and the new owners had the property re-surveyed. When they mulched their beds this spring, Betty noted that the line of bark mulch ended abruptly a foot from the Norway maple. She inquired and was told that the new survey showed that the tree was on our property. Seldom has such a proclamation been so joyously received.

Yesterday afternoon, Sasa, the tree man arrived with the biggest Bandit chipper I’ve ever seen. Adjø, Acer platanoides.  In half an hour he reduced both trees to mulch and a stack of firewood. He then, at our request, upended the cart on his dump truck and left us a neat pile of roughly nine cubic yards of well-shredded leaves and wood chips. Last evening, Betty and I began the task of spreading that mulch, three inches thick, onto walkways and open areas.


Over the course of the winter the leaves will decompose and put nitrogen back into the soil. The wood chips – which we know to be disease-free - will remain to keep down weeds and build up the soil. The shrub bed will be slightly enlarged to incorporate the stump of the one Norway maple, the Butterfly bed will likely be replanted in the spring to take advantage of the new, unaccustomed sunlight.