May 26, 2003

• Much of today was spent weeding the flower beds and pruning the cedar tree.
  
  Any excuse to climb the big cedar, sez me.
  
  ‘Climb the big cedar’ sounds vaguely euphemistic.
  
  Anyway, the flower bed in the front has been taken over by lupins. I was out there pulling up the unbloomed ones, leaving the bloomin’ lupins for the bees to snack on. I sang the Dennis Moore song while I worked, and I’m sure the neighbors were wondering what other plants I had recently been exposed to.
  
  Then off to climb the big cedar, and cut off some of its limbs. Joy was experienced by all, especially the tree, which seemed to sigh contentedly when I cut off its vertical limb. There’s some more euphemistic talk for you.
  
  Seriously, they’ll grow these limbs straight up, parallel to the trunk. The one I cut today was weaving in and out of the higher branches, so that I had to spend a bunch of time twisting it around, like a picking a lock. Not that I pick locks, mind you.
  
  Spent a bunch of time laying on a low branch, watching people go by in the alleyway. They were unaware. I watched people and thought strange thoughts, like: A tree is like a Turing machine, in that it self-modifies via a relatively simple instinctual drive toward sunlight. It shoots out new branches continually, and will eventually tangle itself into unhealth. Further, if I clip off a tiny shoot of a new branch, I’m making it so that, 10 years from now, no one will have to cut an 8-inch-thick branch from that spot.
  
  I think about this kind of stuff. All the time. Though I did manage to create some brain-off time while I was draped out on that limb.

  • 7:11 am
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