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?

IN JUST-SPRING

It was just too nice a day to spend it cooped up in the office so I rigged up a quick little workplace, outside, in the shade of my favorite birch tree.

It was turning out to be a great day of work, with the sunshine lighting up my desk and the breeze dancing over my keyboard, lovely birdsong playing all morning long from the high, swinging treetops.

And, best of all, I was just about to close on one sweet-ass deal, putting the final touches on the big proposal that I’d been brokering for my boss all winter long.

I just love the feeling of a good deal going down.

I love everything about it.  I love riding the ebb and flow of a tight negotiation.  I like catching inside information.  I like wrangling over the details.  I like that pregnant pause in the action, waiting for the final approval, and I love getting things in writing. 

I love it when they start watering down their demands.

That’s how I know when to strike.

And I just love saying the word deal-breaker.

I took a break around ten o’clock, promising myself this would be my last cup of coffee for the day, and tried to catch some spring from the office window.

Wabun the Golden Eagle, Spirit Keeper of the East, was really here…wings spread wide, aloft in full flight.

I could see the callery pears already starting to burst with flowers.

There was also the ginkgo, just about to leaf out, two days after the rise of spring’s first new moon, just as I’d predicted.

Not that I’m the kind of guy who says I told you so.

And I really should catch up with the cherries.

All in good time, I told myself.  Once this deal goes down, I’ll have all the time in the world for tree-hunting.  I was jumping out of my skin…just one final approval away from the Big Bonanza.

The forecast? 

Nothing but blue skies ahead, one hundred percent chance of raining money…the longest, hottest summer ever…Jon Spruce finally living it up in Fat City, nothing but champagne and caviar, cruising around the city in my Cadillac, lighting my cigars with hundred dollar bills.

 

I got back behind the desk, back on the horn…and that’s when things starting going downhill.

 

I’m not really sure what happened.  Surprise demands, unforeseen commission rates, someone hit reply all and then some schlub in their Accounting Department turned out to have the ace in the hole.

After one short break, the whole deal went lopsided.

Meanwhile, I had my boss on the other line demanding the latest update, wondering what was taking so long.

 

I tried to get everybody back in the pool but they all had cold feet.  Just like that, they were unavailable or they were on another call.

And just like that…no deal, back to square one, back to counting pennies.

From riches, back to rags.

I don’t have the heart to summarize all the nitty-gritty details.  Rest assured, citybillies, it’s the same old story.

Heads, they win.  Tails, I lose.

NATURE'S FIRST GREEN

For the last week or so, I’ve been keeping my senses alert for the earliest signs of spring.

In a lot of ways, spring is our most flamboyant season but I just know, somewhere out there, it’s making a subtle entrance.

Despite the cold chill and the last flurries, I know spring is happening, can feel it in my bones.

The race is on.  Spring.  Nature’s first green.

But I didn’t want to catch the kind of spring that makes the news. 

That kind of spring is easy to see, hard to overlook.  It’s a princess.  I wanted to find the kind of spring that doesn’t need to announce itself, the kind of spring that opens the windows for the rest of the season, the trigger that draws back the curtains and calls the rest of the kingdom to rise.

That was my hunt: spring’s modesty.

I wanted to find the meek spring before its gets too gaudy and too flashy.

It’ll take keen eyes, a quiet mind and small hands to notice its arrival but isn’t that always the case when it comes to noticing humility?

There are, of course, the big signs of spring, signs so big that they are beyond my four dimensions, signs that go unnoticed by my own feeble five senses.

Like the length of days.  Beginning on March 17th, the day is now equal parts sunlight and moonlight.  Check the almanac.  Sunrise at 6:52am, sunset at 6:53pm.

The twelve-hour day is back.

We’re seven days ahead of Daylight Savings Time, six days past the new moon, two days beyond the Ides of March and three days away from the vernal equinox.

According to the Medicine Wheel, we’re in the transitional phases between the Big Wind Moon and the Budding Trees Moon.

But look at that calendar.

This March spans five weeks, enough room to squeeze in just a few extra phases.  This is sometimes called the Full Worm Moon, a time when the ground softens and the worms begin turning the soil and crawling back into the sunlight which is, itself, a trigger for the birds to return. 

Up north in New England, they call it the Full Sap Moon because it’s the harvest time for maple syrup.  Go even further north, up there where the new angle of the sun now bounces off the everlasting ice, and they call it the Moon When Eyes Are Sore From Bright Snow.

But all that is just pie-in-the-sky mumbo jumbo.  What really matters?  The world is no longer pointed north.  East has arrived, spring should be here, last moon of winter.

Thank Wabun, last moon of winter.

Now, where you at, spring?

STREETSIDE SPRING

There are five common street trees that are reliably known for early spring flowering: maple, pear, cherry, dogwood, magnolia.

Thanks to all those bright lights and all that heavy traffic, plus all that body heat, the inner city grid is warmer compared to the still wild parts of the city.

So it isn’t hard to see spring’s arrival down here on the mean streets.

THE TANNENBAUM

Every working day, on my commute to and from the time-punching machine, I pass the following sign perched atop a warehouse that towers over the sound barrier of Highway 76.

Kindy’s Christmas Factory Outlet.

I’ve been looking for a place like this.

Every tree-blogger worth their salt has to tackle the Christmas tree…but how?  Where to go?

I needed an angle.

Maybe it’s this Kindy’s.  Maybe this sign really is a sign.

I checked the Kindy’s website and it looked encouraging…fine photos of bright homes decked out in colorful patterns of blinking lights…a boy perched on his father’s shoulders planting the ornamental star on the top branch…a handsome, slim family nestled around the illuminated conifer…plus promises of real live trees, photographed in a snowy lot, each tree shining green under a light dusting of downy frost.

Kindy’s has been around since 1980…the retail outlet for the Brite Star Manufacturing Company located in South Philly…and, according to its website, it is the premier stop for all things Christmas…the Kindy’s shopping experience [is] a fun-filled family holiday tradition.

This could be the place.

Look, I’m one hardened, sarcastic scalawag of a citybilly.  I’m a rogue and I’m a rounder and, yet, around this time every year, I just say hark that. 

I yearn to be swept away by the holidays.

T’is the season and I want to feel it…the spirit, the glee, the mirth.  I want to wash away my cynicism with good, old-fashioned holiday cheer.  I know my weather and I know my Wheel so I know not to expect a white Christmas, though that would be lovely…but I want all the rest.

I want to feel part of something...to feel connected...hard to do while living in this urban grid...hard to do, at this time of year, while fighting traffic, fighting crowds, fighting lines to the registers.  

I want that warm glow in the bottom of my belly…I want to turn into a happy stooge…heedless of the wind and weather…I want peace and joy on Turtle Island…I want to deck the halls…I want to sing along. 

I want to be jolly.

And so…with a seasonal sense of optimism, under a typical sky of the Long Snow Moon…scudding trails of storm-clouds twisting inside-out, revealing their dark and rainy hearts…I traveled through the mean streets to the Kindy’s Christmas Factory Outlet.

Ho, ho, ho.

CATCHING COLOR

There’s a famous quote from a nameless Native American in response to Daylight Savings Time:

Only the white man thinks you can tear a foot off the top of the blanket, sew it to the bottom of the blanket and come away with a bigger blanket.

It’s funny, but I’m not in the laughing mood.

Most people dismiss it as a minor inconvenience, whatever, just a glitch in the calendar.

But there’s a small, burgeoning segment of the population that isn’t fooled.  Growing stronger and more politically acute every day, there is a silent renegade minority that sees Daylight Savings Time for what it really is.

War.

It started a long, long time ago…in the very beginning of the Agricultural Revolution…there in the lush and irrigated fields of Mesopotamia…amateur farmers making rows in the shadows of ziggurats…domesticating the cow, befriending the dog, taming the seed, pulling the weed and propagating the tuber…the invention of the Modern Man…since the very cradle of civilization, it’s been an out-and-out war.

Standardized time versus solar time.  The industrialist versus the idle.  The trans-tribal commerce versus the neighborly barter. 

And twice a year, the time-punchers and the day-jobbers score a victory…Daylight Slavings Time.

I don’t want to start trouble…but I’m suspect.  I really don’t like early sunsets perfectly synchronized to quitting time.  I don’t trust that one bit.  I don’t like society and government deciding that sunlight is more productive in the morning than in the afternoon.  And I don’t like big business turning my clock.

That means war.

According to most scholars of the subject, standardized time has been winning the battle ever since the first World War when it was first decreed the law of the land.  It was re-enacted again during the second World War and it gained even more popularity at the same time our society started living to the rhythms of the global financial network, the electronic communication grid, the pocketwatch, and the transportation schedule.

The commuter versus the ambler.  The time-keeper versus the shadow-watcher.  At the desk and on hold or out to lunch and off the grid.  The broker versus the broke.

It’s war, I tell you.

And it really limits the time I have for tree-hunting. 

Just when the getting’s getting good.

That’s why I like to save one pre-approved vacation day for mid-November…some random day of the week…just punch out, boots on, machines off.

It’s called hookey.  It’s easy to do.  I just clock out.

I clock out and I catch me some color.

Some good, raw, primary color…

 

…humming in the crisp breeze, polished by the blue sky…

 

…that rustic, quilted pattern of color we call autumn.

THE SASQUATCH TREE

Hot enough for you?

Ain’t that just like Coyote?   Ain’t that just like the Strong Sun Moon?   

Blasting that unbearable, that stifling, that maddening heat just when you were on a roll.  Makes you want to just sit at home in air-conditioning and watch bad TV and bad baseball. Just when the days get long, just when the shore opens, just when the trees are bearing all that fruit, just when the local farmers’ markets are bedecked and bedizened with all that summer bounty.

Including the heirloom tomato, one of the greatest foods of all time… 

…and I do mean all time.  Although this is relatively a new food on the farm stand scene, it’s actually been around for a long, long time.   

This is, by anybody’s standard, an old food.

According to the farmer’s almanac, the first of the tomatoes are normally ready by the first full moon of July, usually by the rising of the next moon of the cycle: the Ripe Berries Moon.  That makes sense. 

After all, the tomato is, technically, just a giant berry.

But this abnormal heat – this gut-wrenching, sweat-pumping, underwear-clumping heat -- has launched tomato season a week or so ahead of schedule.

Ain’t that just like Coyote?

I’m not complaining.  Citybillies, take Jon Spruce’s advice: get your hands on some local 2012 heirloom tomatoes.  If there’s one thing out there enjoying this heat, it’s a tomato.

I even got a recipe for you.  Fry up two slices of bread, preferably sourdough bread.  Schmear on a guilt-free layer of mayonnaise.  Add thick slices of ripe tomato.  Sprinkle on some good salt.  Eat over the sink, alone.

The heirloom tomato is, without question, the greatest comeback ever in the long, troubled history of grocery.  Back when it was first marketed to restaurants and to grocery stores, it went under the name of ugly tomato.  It was the corporate way of explaining to the paying public that these tomatoes were supposed to be wrinkled, cracked, scarred, misshapen and, even, ripe when green, orange or yellow. 

Only years later did they start selling it under the more distinguished name of heirloom.

Yes, after years and years of subjecting the public to the year-long, season-defying crops of perfect, consistent, bland, dry, tasteless tomatoes, the Big Ag marketers had to re-educate us on the old-ways lesson that, in the wild, things sometimes get a little ugly.

Does this look ugly to you?

Each tomato is like its own little starburst.  Each one is like a little sun.  The best part?  Although you can tell which tomatoes are the same kinds of tomatoes, each one has its own rays of colors, its own patterns of wrinkles, its own carousel of flavors.

The tomato as an individual.  Sorry to say, but it’s a 21st Century Concept.

Well, more accurately, it’s a 21st Century Comeback.

These tomatoes hearken back to the good old days, before that large-scaled, mass-produced onslaught of big, red, perfect tomatoes, available year-round, bombarded the produce departments of nation-wide supermarkets.  Before the invention of refrigerated tractor trailers.  I don’t even understand why anybody even serves tomatoes outside of Coyote’s moons.  I’m talking to you, all you sandwich and hoagie shop managers.

More accurately, though, these tomatoes hearken back to the ancient farmers of South America and Mexico, the first civilizations to propagate the modern tomato.  From what we are told of heirloom varieties and seeds, these are the descendants of the kinds of tomatoes that people used to enjoy hundreds of years ago, going back to 700 AD.

Their return to our world of grocery and farm stands is a gift from the Old World, a true and treasured heirloom.

There are some trees that can also be considered heirlooms. 

Even though they may now be common all over our city grid, there are some trees that had disappeared for eons but have returned to our modern world.

Heirloom trees.

These trees hearken back to the Old Days, to the wild back-wood groves of colonial country or, even further back, to the very first days of trees themselves, to the primordial soup that bedecked and bedizened the landscapes of the super-continent we call Pangaea.

People are always asking me: Jon Spruce, if you had a time machine, where would you go?

The answer is Pangaea.

PATTERNS: A KEY TO NAMING THE TREES

People are always asking me: Jon Spruce, how would you define ‘nature’ using only one word?

One word?  That’s easy.  Patterns.  The one word is patterns.

If you said cycles, I wouldn’t kick you out of the cabin.  That’s an excellent word to describe nature but I can’t see nature's cycles in my lifetime and I certainly can’t see them tree-hunting on these city streets. 

When I stare into the shaman’s fire and think in terms of nature’s endless cycles, I see images of Pangaea dispersing into continents, India crashing into China, dinosaurs surviving as birds, ice ages melting into rainforests, magma rocks building sedimentary shelves, underwater volcanoes sprouting sandy islands, drought and rain burying fossils, a 2.5-inch cone that I can squeeze between my fingers growing into the California Bigtree we call Sequoia and, above it all, the milky cloud-cover spinning forever around our blue planet.  And moss.  Lots of moss.

I’ll stick with patterns.  When I’m out tree-hunting, I’m looking for patterns.  The patterns help me identify the tree.   

Maybe it’s the way the branches are growing – opposite or alternate?  Maybe it’s the pattern of leaf shapes and sizes.  It could be the bark or the fruit.  If I can recognize the pattern that the tree is growing into, then I got a good shot at putting that tree into a family or a group, one step closer to knowing its name.     

Patterns in trees.

I’ll show you what I mean.