Holly Trees

Holly trees seem common around my area.  Most are sharp-leaved.   A neighbor has a very old male one in the back yard.  I had a natural young female 3' one growing in the middle of my backyard (male, no berries; female, berries) when I first moved here 33 years ago.

The backyard was a wilderness of junk trees and vines and after a year, I set about clearing it.  I learned a few interesting things about my yard.  New places are SO fascinating.

First, there was a 10' wide clear path through the overgrowth and several of the junk trees on both sides had bits of barbed wire embedded in the bark.   The direction of the path was from a former farm above and seemed to lead to the swamp across the street.  I say "swamp" because it is mostly one, but there are pools of running water at the edges.  I think that was where a farmer led his cows to drink and graze decades ago.  And had strung barbed wire to keep them on the path to the water.

Second, when I started to dig in the backyard to plant crops, I discovered half was nearly pure sand and half was gravelly clay on one side, and loam on the other (where the trees and vines grew).  I concluded that my lot was once a stream overflow area.

Third, there was a gully (part of the old stream?) on one side of the yard, but it had been cut off when the county constructed a drainage easement along the new sub-divided lots on the new street I had the house built on.  I had the gully filled in with a truckload of "fill" soil (ironically from the former farm above, so the "fill" wasn't bad soil).

So back to the hollies.  It was such hard work cutting out the vines and junk saplings.  I used a chainsaw to cut into the roots in the soil.  Ruined a few blades, but it was worth it.  However, when what you are using is  chainsaw, everything looks like it needs to be cut down.  I managed to cut down my little female 3' holly tree!  All tree trunks look the same at ground level...

Amazingly, it survived.  There is a perverse law of trees that, if you want to kill them by cutting them to the ground, they regrow; and if you so much as "nick" a desired tree, it dies.  Well, this little holly chose a 3rd path.  It regrew with 4 trunks, giving it an odd look.  It is about 20' high today and I love it.

I have another holly in the front yard.  It was adopted rather like a cat coming to its Forever Home.  I had a friend who had an elderly neighbor (Helen) who wanted to renovate an area (she was elderly, but still active).  But she couldn't remove a fence partition panel that shaded the space.  My friend couldn't remove it either.

So he called me.  Ah the joy of "knowing how to do stuff"...

I found a large board in his basement and Helen had a piece of 4x4 sitting around, so I made a lever.  Soaked the area around the post holes.  We levered both posts up!  It wasn't like they just "came out"; we had to push hard.  But they did come up.

So one thing she didn't want was a small holly struggling to survive in the shade of the fence panel.  She wanted us to get rid of it.  Well, I'm a sucker for a struggler, so we dug it out with roots and soil to fit in a bucket my friend had and I planted it in the front yard.

It not only survived, it thrived.  And it has rewarded me with more red berries than any other holly tree I've ever seen.  But, like the Saucer Magnolia, it eventually had those drooping branches.  So I de-limbed it to 8' high.  And still there were drooping branches.  So I took my hedge trimmer, held it over my head and walked round under the tree until everything was 6' high.

It won't harm the tree.  Where I used to work, there was a row of holly trees on the south side.  The Building Manager had them all trimmed into positively unnatural perfect spheres each Spring and they never seemed to be bothered.

I have to mention something.  My friend tried some gardening when he moved in.  But let's just say his design tastes run to "simplicity".  After a few years, his yard looked like a doll house on a pool table.  I would say "sterile", he would say "clean".  But, in any case the friend's neighbor died 10 years ago.  The new residents agreed with my friend (former, BTW), and stripped out every living thing but lawn.

Helen's little 3' holly tree (now 15' high) is about all that is left of her long-time residence there.  I liked her.  She had the best clematis vine flowers I ever saw ("Bea's Knees" or something like that).  She (unlike my friend) liked to grow things.  So when I look at the front yard holly, I remember her by that.

I like remembrances...

An Interesting Person

I visit many odd discussion sites.  One is an atheist forum ( I am an atheist).  But because almost all of us there are atheists, a lot of the discussion is not about atheism.  One of the threads was about games.

I am a game-player.  And I don't mean the latest online game; old across-the-table board games.  This one guy and I started talking about old games.  We knew and had played the same ones.  So I mentioned a few odd ones.  One was a game were you searched for subs in 3D under a cover.  He said OMG, I loved that game but couldn't remember the name and he had been searching for it.  It was Sonar Sub Hunt. 

The green halves lift up and you snapped in plastic rectangles for subs and round ones for mines.  The grey things in the corners were working periscopes so you could watch your opponent move his destroyer around (just under the green covers).  If he brushed a mine, a buzzer sounded and he lost a destroyer (I think you got 3).  If he pressed a button it pushed a spring down and if it hit one of your subs, a light came on above (so no cheating allowed).

It was really quite a complex mechanical game for the 60s.  Sort of a version of 'You Sunk My Battleship'.  It was quite a popular draw for my neighborhood friends, and my Dad and I played it often too. 

Being basically a random-luck game, it was pretty fair for everyone, but it sure was interesting. 

My forum friend was thrilled to have the name so he could search for it on Ebay.  I checked, it is available there, for $100.

So I threw in another odd game I had played and said NO ONE had ever heard of it.  It was called "Feudal".  HE had and loved it, and described some of the strategies he used.  They were my strategies too.

And since MY strategies were not the ones my only opponent (a roommate) used, it was interesting that we thought alike about that..


So we compared more complex games from Avalon Hill.  That company specialized in replicating historical battles in great detail.  Like, in Gettysburg, all the units entered the board at the correct times and by the correct roads, the terrain mattered in attacks and defenses, etc.  He played that for years too as did I.

We also compared playing other games.  We both played the same games and hated the same ones.  We are even almost the same age.  We have both tried to find local game clubs that play such games, without success.  We even like one computer game; Civilization 2 (that is a game where you start as a primitive society and slowly build or fight your way to either world domination of launching a spaceship to Alpha Centauri to establish a new colony.  You can also play the Civ games online against single or multiple players and against bots.

But it turns out that we are on opposite sides of the country and both hate traveling.  We will never meet.

But it is nice to know there is someone out there like me...  There aren't many.

Neat Neighbor

This may all seem a bit weird.  I have a cross the street neighbor who managed to get permission to build a McMansion on the wetland across the street.  And he is the father of the Crazy Guy who lived next door to the property.  Yet he is friendly and we talk.

This guy is SLICK!  He not only got permission to build on a wetland (by bringing in 10 loads of soil), he bought the utterly unbuildable property next to his IN EXCHANGE for 6 acres of wetlands behind him.  I would NOT play poker with this guy!

On the other hand, he is utterly friendly and helpful to neighbors. 

The wetlands behind him have been draining for years.  It is now mostly woods and creeks.  So we were talking yesterday.  He has a personal herd of deer in his 6 acres and hunts regularly (with a crossbow!) and there are several good fishing spots there too. 

I tried not to drool while he described it all.  I very briefly mentioned that I was an experienced deer hunter in my younger days and still enjoyed fishing, but didn't outright ask.  But I would sure like an invitation.  We just compared some hunting and fishing experiences though. 

This guy is ultra-competent.  He does his own deer butchering and aging.  He grows corn for the deer (not where he hunts).  He can recognize most of them individually by sight.  He enlarged his concrete driveway by himself!  I saw him atop his 2.5 story house last week inspecting his shingles!  He goes to bed at sunset and gets up at dawn.  He snowblows other peoples' driveways just for something to do!

He doesn't seem to own a computer.  He mentioned being at a target range a mile away and thought he recognized some of his deer there, and thought the properties were adjacent.  When I asked if he had "googled" it, he "said" he didn't know what that was (but keep in mind this guy is slick).

He mentioned that turtles all came around when he was fishing in the back area because they had learned he injured the fish when he got the hooks out of the fishs' stomachs.  So I mentioned that I had learned a trick for that.  You go up through the open gills with a long nose plier, get ahold of the top of the hook and twist it so that it slides right back out.  No harm.  I'm a catch and release type.

That got his attention!  He likes to catch fish, not harm them.

And I mentioned that I had bought a really good hunting crossbow a few years ago but didn't know where to hunt.  But I didn't push it...

He says there are too many deer around here, and I agree.  I mentioned that there are too few places to hunt, and he agreed.  I told him I had driven to southern maryland and back 2 weeks ago looking a lots and saw 4 fresh-dead deer obviously killed by cars.  I have a concern about that.

Years ago, a friend and were driving home after a day of fishing and he hit a deer.  He stopped to look at the damage to his car; I went to look at the deer.  My friend questioned my priorities, but I wanted the deer out of the road because if an unsuspecting driver hit it, it could actually overturn the car.

An injured deer can be dangerous by kicking, so I kicked it a few times myself.  It was dead, so I dragged it off the road.  It wasn't a busy road, but I would have felt terrible if some other driver had been injured hitting it.

We got to my house and documented the car damage for insurance purposes.  But 3 days after, part of my left hand went numb.  I feared it was carpal tunnel syndrome (because I spend a lot of time at work typing).  After having a doctor basically electrocute me in small doses (enough to finally send me into shock), I learned the deer impact had caused a fracture in my 5th (6th?) vertabra of my neck, impacting the ulner nerve. 

To this day, the little and ring finger of my left hand aren't entirely "there", if you know what I mean. They move fine, but I can't feel them like the other fingers. 

So I do not love deer overpopulation...

 I stopped hunting deer when I was 22 and bowshot a doe.  Field-dressing her, milk gushed out.  I was fine with intestines and stomach, etc, but milk?  Dang.  It meant I had orphaned a fawn or two, too.

But I would like to hunt again.  I can't use a bow worth a damn (never could really) but I can use a crossbow.  And I would give the meat to charities that accept it for food for the homeless.

But I need a safe place to hunt.  There are CRAZY gun-hunters out there who fire at anything that moves (my dad was shot by one once).  And here is this neighbor with a personal herd of deer who says he has too many there...

And I want him to invite me to hunt with him...

I'm just not in his circle.  Yet.

We have some things in common.  Hunting, fishing, DIY home and yard stuff; general compency.  It could be interesting.  He's slick and I'm not.  I don't even cheat at solitare.  But I am also "slick-proof".  He might find that to be a relief.  Or a challenge.  LOL!

But I sure could use a real-life, face-time, neighbor friend...