PHILLY FLOWER CHATTER

People are always asking me: Hey, Jon Spruce, enjoying the weather?

It sure is pretty to think so.

In all actuality, this is my busy season, not much time to enjoy the weather.  This is the time of year when I need to rise up the ranks, get my name out there as a contender for champion tree-hunter.

Spring?  That’s when I can really make my bones.

And it all comes down to flowers.

Funny, isn’t it? 

Years and years of steady watching, months and months of mindful observations, miles and miles under my feet and on my car and yet my whole reputation rests on those bright, brief modified leaves we call flowers.

It’s almost too much for one set of eyes but, contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to do it alone.

Like the old folk song says, help is on the way.

And the best help this time of year?

That’d be the truckers.

That’s right.  The biggest help at this time of year is usually found high up in the cabs behind the big wheels of all those trucks making traffic here in the city.

I’m talking about Bakemark and Aramark, Samuels & Sons and J. Ambrogi, Cintas Uniforms and W.B. Mason, plus all the other gypsy pilots navigating the Philly grid and barreling down the highways.

Best set of eyes in the entire city.

There we go.

All set now.

This morning, I dug out my old short-wave radio and, using a bit of good old fashioned Yankee know-how, I added a state-of-the-arts wireless antenna, hooked it up to these new-fangled Bluetooth headphones…

…and then plugged in the two-way microphone.

Okay, all I got to do now is find the right station, adjust the squelch and speak clearly into the mike.

Jon Spruce is back on the CB.

Breaker, breaker, this is Jon Spruce over here in Phillytown.  Need some assistance, boys.  Who’s out there?

The next part is easy.

Just lean in and try to catch some chatter on the only free press left in the United States of America: the citizen’s band radio.

Spruce, you old scallywag.  Is that really you?

Shiver me timbers, that voice is a real blast from the past.  That’s Goldberg, my old co-pilot.  I didn’t know he was in town.

Alive and kicking, Spruce.  Surprised to hear you too.  I always pictured you still keeled over in El Paso.

El Paso?  Oh man, I spent a bad week there one night.  Goldberg always did have a long memory.

Hard to forget, Jonny boy.  What’s your emergency?

Need some flowers for the blog, chief.  What are you seeing out there?

You’re a lucky son of a gun, always have been, Spruce.  I just passed some willows blazing away in Penn Park by the river.

Willows?  Goldberg always did have a soft spot for willows but I don’t know.  I’ve already covered the willow.  I need flowers, not willows.

Quit your griping, Spruce, and get down to the river before it’s too late.  You’ll thank me later.

SWEET LAND OF LIBERTY, OF TREE I SING

It’s Independence Day Weekend here in Philadelphia.  What a fine time to be in the city.

Block parties and live music, barbecues and picnics, burgers and ice cream, sparklers and fireworks, road-blocks and detours, this city truly lives up to the standards and expectations of Founding Farmer John Adams, who once wrote that Independence Day ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade…

…with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.

Well, actually, he always thought it should be celebrated on the Second of July.

Sorry, old man.

In the Fourth we trust…a celebration of the tried and true totems of American history: the bald eagle and the buffalo, Yankee Doodle and Uncle Sam and Lady Liberty…

…the light bulb and the television and the arcade game, the steamship and the automobile and the space shuttle, the pioneer and the cowboy and the rock star…

 

…and that Old Glory herself…

…that grand old flag we call the Stars and Stripes.

In the spirit of Independence Day, I made a quick pit-stop to pay my respects to our most famous seamstress, Betsy Ross.

She’s buried, right there in Olde City, at 2nd and Old Sassafras Streets, underneath that monumental American elm…

…rocketing over the colonial courtyard, bursting with heavy branches high up in the muggy Coyote sky.

Or, at least, we’re told that she’s buried here.

It turns out that Betsy Ross’s funeral was held on 5th Street.  Twenty years later, her body was exhumed and moved to the now abandoned Mount Moriah Cemetery near Cobbs Creek in West Philly…

…and then, just in time for the Bicentennial of 1976, her body was moved again to this half-museum-half-gift-shop restoration, to be closer to the parade of her colonial brothers and sisters.

 

Or was she?

Rumor has it that, back in 1975, her gravediggers found no bodily remains under her tombstone there in Mount Moriah. 

Only a few bones, found elsewhere in the family plot, were hastily authenticated as Betsy Ross’s and moved to this courtyard…

...just in time for the opening of the Betsy Ross Bridge in 1976.

It doesn’t matter.

Fiddle-de-dee.

Like we say here in America, when the legend becomes fact, print the legend.

And so the legend stands.

She’s buried here, First Seamstress of the United States, the beautiful and noble widow who made, with her own blistered hands, the very first version of the American Flag.

Or did she?

MEMENTO MORI ME

I grew up in this house.

This isn’t a particularly original thought but, boy, it sure looks a lot smaller than I remember. 

It just seems too small to house all those memories, all those holidays, all those meals, all those toys and all those birthdays…and it doesn’t look big enough to contain the big family that used to call it home…one happy couple, one beatnik sister and five rambunctious boys, including one future champion tree-hunter.

It’s also missing some trees.

There used to be larger roses and more evergreen shrubs guarding the walkway to the front door.  There used to be a dwarf pear tree and a rose of sharon on the driveway side of the house.

On the other side of the house, there used to be a sour cherry tree. 

At the end of long summer days, I would cool down under the sour cherry tree with the Lippincott brothers and we would throw our pits over the fence into the neighbor’s in-ground pool, sorry about that.

I found an old photo of the house and that’s when I remembered another tree, now missing…

…that tall Norway spruce rubbing up against the side of my childhood home.

These are the trees of my past…the trees of yore…the phantom trees that can no longer be found except in old photographs and fading memories…happy Memorial Day, citybillies.

Contrary to popular belief, trees do go missing.  I wish they wouldn’t move around so much but they do.  They come and then they go.

Philadelphia, too, is haunted by its own host of missing trees, none more famous than the Great Elm of Shackamaxon.

THE PENN TREATY

Shackamaxon was the name of the Lenape village located right here along the Delaware River within the borders of the Philadelphia charter, in the neighborhoods currently called Port Richmond and Fishtown.

According to a few histories, Shackamaxon was the capital of the Lenape nation and the seat of power for the chief of the Turtle Clan.

In the village of Shackamaxon, there was a great elm.

MY COUNTRY, TIS OF TREE

Happy Independence Day, Philadelphia and all of its trees.  I’ll try to take a break from all that Original People mumbo-jumbo and spend a day celebrating the totems of the United States of America.

The national animal?  The bald eagle, although a case could be made for other native animals: the beaver, the bison, the shad, the crayfish, the painted turtle or the moose.

The national flower?  The rose.  That’s a little disappointing.  There are a lot of reasons why it could be the marigold, the dandelion, the prairie rose, the yucca flower or actually the sunflower, one of the few flowers native only to this Turtle Island.

The national tree?  Officially the oak.  Another disappointment.  How about something very specialized to America, something akin to Turtle Island: the sequoia, the tulip poplar, the ponderosa pine, the southern live oak, the Joshua tree, the bristlecone pine or the saguaro cactus?

Well, you can’t say I didn’t try. 

And the national colors?  The red, white and blue?  I don’t know.  Maybe it’s just that we’re in the heart of the Strong Sun Moon, but I am enchanted and bedazzled by so many more colors than just those three.

There is no scientific basis for the following statement but I am going to say it anyway: it takes a real strong sun and a real high heat to brew all that summer color.  The first colors of the year are usually white, red, yellow and, of course, green…but, by the time we get to the Strong Sun Moon, we get the oranges, the blues and the purples, plus all the different shades and blushes of the original colors: the pinks, the crimsons and the jades.  In the summer, we go all the way around the color wheel. 

I believe, just on a gut instinct, that it simply takes longer for the trees and plants to produce those complicated colors than it does the reds and whites and greens.  But, like I said, I have no basis to believe that it’s true.

Except for my own eyes, of course.  Here is a typical farmstand in the very beginning of the Hardy Zone Seven growing season, mid-May:

And here are some farmstands in the heart of the Strong Sun Moon:

 

 

It’s just a theory but I’m saying that it takes more time, more sun and more heat to make all that color.   Although, come to think of it, the rainbow swiss chard kind of destroys that theory. 

Well, you can’t say I didn’t try.  Let’s move on.  Let’s go downtown to historical Philadelphia, see what the trees are doing over there.

SOUTH PHILLY TUNDRA, WEST PHILLY WOODLANDS

The other day, I was snaking my way through the streets of South Philly, trying to avoid baseball traffic on my way back to the rat-race of Center City.  It was, typical for this week, sunny and brisk, clear and windy.

I ended up on Ninth Street, heading north, ballgame on the radio.  Stop signs on every corner kept me moving at a snail’s pace, the perfect speed for urban tree-hunting.

I might as well have been hunting underwater.  

SOUTH PHILLY STARK

This part of South Philly is an urban tundra, as treeless as a clear-cut, unwooded, unshaded and unseasoned.  Lately, all over the city, I’ve been breezing around, absolutely bedazzled by the budding trees and leafing branches, spinning in circles trying to catch all the colors like I was trapped in a kaleidoscope. 

Then this.