I’m 35,00 feet high, looking out at fluffy clouds, thinking about palm trees, the Gulf of Mexico, and, inevitably, about gardens, as I look out at the flat, marshy Florida territory, just before landing at the Fort Meyers Airport.
Naples, and my sister’s lovely condo, is a twenty-minute drive away.
Here are a couple of suggestions you may find helpful…
Some Michigan deciduous shrubs and trees, devoid of foliage, need to lose weight.
If one of your trees is sprouting whiskers -smallish branches emerging from the lower trunk, blurring its line- remove them now with sharp pruners. Dormant, it won’t notice a thing.
(Fascinating factoid: Men shave off whiskers roughly 20,000 times in an average life. Don’t ask. I read it somewhere. My mind is a sort of cluttered bin stuffed with odd bits of useless information…)
ANYWAY- Tree trunks hosting thick, leafy growth right at the base need help, too. Tree suckers look awful in the warm season. These large, unsightly pseudo-branches rob it of nutrients that would otherwise be directed upward. Furthermore, they give the embarrassed plant an undignified look, rather like wearing one’s pants around one’s ankles. Chop those thicker whiskers gone.
Give shrubs the eagle eye, too; prune away any weak shoots or branches that snuggle too close to, or rub against, a neighboring branch. Lop off stems that grow inward, or wander off in odd directions. My big hibiscus tree always needs some judicious snips at this time of year.
Many shrubs, like deutzia, or fothergilla, do very well if left alone, except for annual, simple inspections. (Silly me: I bought the fothergilla because I fell in love with the name. Fortunately, it is a lovely, carefree bush, gorgeous in three seasons.)
Step away and look, often. You can’t glue mistakes back, so think before you thwack…
While thinking of thwacking, I remembered the gorgeously feathered adult bald eagle I’d seen perched at the very top of a large, leaf-bare tree just off the highway on the way to Flint’s Bishop Airport this morning. The huge predator sat quietly on a branch and scanned the ground far below for careless mice. Then its 80-inch wings unfolded; it dived-- Right then I had to look away and concentrate on driving. But I shuddered.
Life on the edge…
Suddenly, still flying high myself, I gasped! Just off my Air Tran jet’s huge wing a flock of white cranes whizzed past, flying in the opposite direction. They were so incredibly close!
Before I could properly absorb what had just occurred, I felt and heard the wheels lower for landing. A nice, normal sound.
Way back when I was a pilot in California, I used to encounter birds- ducks, mostly- taking off from Santa Barbara airport grassland lots of times, exactly when I did. We never bumped, but those threats always left me thoughtful.
Today’s close encounter of the bird kind reduced my usually complicated life down to a few simple hopes:
-I wanted to plant my feet firmly on the ground
-I wanted not to dwell on how suddenly the lives of fowl, mice and men- can just stop
-I wanted to sniff Florida flowers.
So far, it’s been a ‘wishes granted’ day for this human.