Life and death are wearing me out
Old trees out, new trees in.
The larch died. So have two of the cotoneasters. A transplant-shocked hornbeam has given up, too.
Say hello to my replacement larch, pictured above. A cutie, isn’t it? I will water it much more assiduously and pay closer attention, because larches intrigue me—one of the few deciduous conifers and with a species native to the Northeast. Tamarack larches collected from the wild are relatively easy to come by online and not too expensive. I will observe this one’s growth habits through the summer and wire it in the fall after the needles drop.
The title of this missive is shamelessly cribbed from the 2012 novel by Mo Yan, an allegorical tale of a Chinese landlord killed by communists in 1950, who then returns to Earth in various animal incarnations to live out the second half of the 20th century. I think about this book a lot, but as it’s been nearly a decade since I’ve read it and I’m pretty hazy on the details, I’ll be honest that I mostly chew on the title and central premise. Life and death are wearing me out. It’s like a family of raccoons has colonized my ear. I can’t stop running through that sentence again and again.
Do you ever feel like everything’s fucked and totally fine? All at once? This is where I often am. There’s the big-picture living out the last days of a crumbling empire before the flood of climate change kills us all stuff of course. But more importantly, because it’s all about me, my life is a mess! I have no career plan, my income is all over the place, I’m constantly playing catch up. I haven’t been on an honest-to-God date in forever. My 18-year-old sister learned to drive before I have. My trees are dying. I bring this up because it’s come to my attention that some colleagues think I actually have my shit together, which made me bark with laughter. I suspect it’s because I don’t complain about my life that much online like a millennial should.
Of course, everything is fine. Better than fine! I’m living one of the most fortunate human lives to have ever been lived. It’d be the height of solipsism to say I have capital-P Problems, and even my lowercase-p problems are a pretty good deal. I don’t need the talk; capitalism makes prisoners of us all, privilege is a hell of a drug, this I know. That’s why I chastise myself: Quit your kvetching and enjoy your life. It helps. A few years ago I realized medication helps, too.
Another thing that helps is paying more attention to small victories and less to the grand plan. The beech I’ve been playing with is looking much improved for the effort. I made enough to cover costs for another month. A Chinese evergreen I keep in my bedroom is leafing out like a roided crossfit coach. The party gays at the pharmacy at midnight liked my hair.
“Now I understand why you accumulate so many trees,” a friend responded when I told him about my plant problems. Nature is an improbable circumstance of the law of large numbers. If you want one great bonsai in 50 years, plant a forest now.
Look at this clethra extend its flower stalk, the pervert. I’ve been tracking the progress of these blooms for weeks. Not exactly a grand design, but it’s something to do, and it puts a smile on my face. Life and death are wearing me out. But I also keep chewing on another line, from an interview with Kurt Vonnegut: “We are here on Earth to fart around, don’t let anyone tell you different.”
Tree reading
Sometimes a fungal infection or genetic mutation causes a part of a tree to grow in a bulbous twisted cluster called a WITCH’S BROOM, and it looks WEIRD. It is also apparently the origin of many dwarf tree cultivars. [Conifer Kingdom]
A good take on the problems of buying carbon offsets via mass tree plantings. [Financial Times, hey I’m as surprised as you are]
The whole "things are good, but I live in a nightmare scenario" is something I think about regularly. I'm like one of those upper district extras in the Hunger Games. Not the rich ones with with weird clothes, but like the people below that, who have a house and food, and don't have to periodically fight to the death. So all the "problems" feel like made up nonsense when compared to everything else, but in that moment, oof.
I have a couple of trees that I bought on clearance from Lowe's trying to revive and score a killer deal, but none of them are regrowing leaves. They are still very much alive according to their root appearance and things like the scratch test, but the distinct lack of leaves has me very concerned about whether they'll actually make it.
Hear, hear!