I am back from Seattle…I hate leaving Seattle, though I love coming home.
Except…there was something very disappointing when I came home. 🙁
You remember the tree-removing from last week. Of course you do. Well, after the tree-removing, there came the inevitable wood-removing.
There were several options for this. Wood could be left for me, to burn in my fireplace. Except I have no fireplace.
Wood could be given to friends. I asked around…most of my friends didn’t need any, though the Bournes are interested in taking a small amount.
Third option: the wood could be donated to a church, which uses it for heat in the winter. Ah! Great option!
So I selected part of 2 and part of 3: leave as much as the Bournes want; donate the rest to the chilly church.
At the end of Cutting-Down Day, it fell to me to contact Chilly Church Guy and arrange for wood pick-up. Which turned out to be rather more trouble than it needed to be, but, whatever, such is life. Of course the only time he could come was last weekend, when I was away.
But, no problem, he could just come and take most of it, and leave a smallish pile for the Bournes. And thus it was arranged.
So I got home today, and indeed, the majority of the wood had been removed…and a small pile had been tossed to the edge of the driveway…RIGHT on my matilija poppy.
The poppy I drove back from Mendocino earlier this year, carefully planted in EXACTLY the right soil, with EXACTLY the right drainage, and the little rhisome-stimulating pills directly on the roots, and the pot planted with it with the bottom cut out, and have been watering it every week INDIRECTLY a deep slow soaking but NOT TOUCHING THE ROOTS….anyway, you get the idea.
The poppy that we’d left framed with wood, all around it, making what I thought (though I was clearly mistaken) was the obvious point that THIS IS A PLANT NOT A WEED, IDIOT.
It bloomed earlier this year, making flowers that look like this (though I swiped this picture from the interwebs):
Just like fried eggs. Adorable.
But now the plant looks like this:
The circle is its pot, in the ground with it. The stems in the circle are what used to be the plant, completely snapped off at ground level. The dead foliage next to the circle are the stalks of the broken-off plant. Ruined, dead, killed.
I called the tree people…practically in tears. I was too upset to call the Chilly Church Guy directly, I don’t even want to talk to him. Here I was, trying to do a good thing, and my stupid poppy is dead, that I tended all spring and summer.
The tree people’s receptionist is very sorry, and the owner is going to call me back, but I don’t even know what to say, what to ask for (if anything)–it’s not the money, it’s hardly any money at all, really. It’s the hours of tending and care, it’s the killing of a precious living thing that I cared about.
Yeah, I am probably rather too into my garden…sigh. But, this was VERY unhappy-making. 🙁 🙁
Anyway, here is what the treeless bed looks like right now:
I am only home for a few days before it’s time to go to SpoCon, so other than watering (and eating DELICIOUS cherry tomatoes), I’m probably not going to do much in the yard for the next little while. Maybe that’ll give the sawdust time to become part of the ecosystem. Also, the tree guys are going to come back and remove the stump at some as-yet-undetermined time. So no point rushing out and planting anything. I imagine that next spring will be the first real opportunity for new things, on any major scale.
Which I think will be pretty cool and exciting. It’s already very nice, the light and openness outside there now (that picture was taken after the sun had gone behind the trees next door–it’s going to be Very Sunny all day there). It doesn’t feel empty at all; instead, I can suddenly see and appreciate all the rest of the things planted out there–the Asian pear, the Japanese maple, the lilacs, even the neighbors’ roses. 🙂
Damn, I want my matilija poppy back, though.