~ a column about Jefferson by Colleen O’Brien
The sound of summer is lawn mowers. Except earlier this week, when it was chain saws.
The big blow of Sunday night, with varying reports of 50 to 80 mile per hour winds, quickly and messily took down complete halves of trees in my ‘hood, not to mention the big and little branches it unhinged, the flower pots it upended, the lawn chairs it tossed, and one of the garden gloves it took with it.
In the country it mowed down corn and dropped trees on a power line here and there – the chances of an Iowa summer without something crop threatening are slim.
In town, there were branches and neighbors all over the place. Nothing like a disaster, whether minor or major, to bring us out of our cocoon habits. There was quite a bit of mingling and exclaiming, helping one another assess the damage and plenty offerings of advice, rakes and pick-up trucks.
We’ve seen the help-your-neighbor phenomenon happen on TV countless times in the last few years, what with hurricanes Katrina and Sandy, Kansas tornadoes and California fires. Because we live so cozily inside what we consider our secure little homes, I don’t know if it’s more shocking to us than to previous generations, who at least sat on their front porches and knew what Mother Nature had to offer every day; but, really, it was nice to be out and about with neighbors of a pleasant, balmy, after-the-storm morning, even as we were playing pik-pik-pik-up-stix, raking, sawing, sweeping . . . and yakking.
My backyard, which is mostly prairie plants, looks like an egg beater went through it. But the prairie grasses and fleurs will pop back up; in fact the grasses are already waving outside my window and the cone flowers are bobbing in the breeze. I hear stereo chain saws echoing from neighbors’ damage to the east and the west of me, where big branches tore off big trees, half a tree crashed onto another tree, dead branches lie among the high branches, unreachable.
I fear a few of the neighboring trees will have to be cut down, for they are off kilter, leaning heavily toward houses and streets, a danger to all who pass below them or live beside them. This cutting down of old and venerable trees is a troubling prospect for tree lovers and neighborhoods. My friend Annie calls me a Druid, but I think I was not so much a tree worshiper in some past life but a squirrel; and what squirrel wants to see one of her jungle gyms go the way of firewood? And what neighborhood wants to see three of its majestics felled?
It is now early afternoon, and there’s barely a stray leaf left on a neighborhood parking. The city and the fire department and the utility company were Johnny-on-the-spot last night as the storm moved on. And the denizens of this area of town already have the whole ‘hood cleaned up. We are now back in our boxes doing whatever it is we do in here that so seldom involves our neighbors. “Hello.” “How are you?” “Nice day.” And on we go.
Not that I want disasters — big or small — to occur . . . but a small flummox of weather does make for both an exciting interlude and an interesting morning of bonhomie when we act out rather than simply know the definition of neighborly — congenial, friendly, amicable.
It was nice visiting with y’all, neighbors, after the storm. I’m very sorry about your trees – I sincerely hope the ones that survive remain healthy, however truncated they are now.
And so it goes: life itself and the weather in Iowa – we never know what either will bring us from one day to the next.
