Crafty Marketeer Has Branded

There’s a detour at Bridge Creek Road.  The last time I took the route prescribed I couldn’t make it in first gear, heading up the hill to the left on Old Ford Road.  Today, I was determined to hit the approaching downhill with all I had and see if I could power up it.  Enervated, proceeding rather slowly, with a slow-moving tractor making its way up the road behind me, I mounted the hill, with an eye to the family yard on the north east corner there as they’ve yapping dogs and I wasn’t in no condition to outrun them. 

From here on it’s a gentle slope along Old Ford Road.  Many of the houses have stately old trees in front.  One home has two large Catalpa trees.  I’d like to know if they are different species, as they look different, but I’m sensitive to riding up a stranger’s property and photographing their flora.  I’d tried to identify the same wiry oak that I’ve unsuccessfully worked up on Old Huguenot Street.  Before it had leaves, I’d tried the bark.  No luck.  And even when the leaves were fully formed this Seek app could only say it was an “oak.”  Today it finally yielded that this was a Pin Oak.  (aka: Spanish Oak, aka: Swamp Oak”) Now I’m seeing Pin Oak’ everywhere.  That explains the spindly tree in our front yard and the one in the bank I’d noticed as well.

Adams Fairacre Farms up in Kingston doesn’t have any Pin Oaks but they do have a few interesting trees.  This must be past the season as there isn’t much left.  If there were a Copper Beach Tree. I’d very much like to get one, but they’ve haven’t got one, and there aren’t any honey locust either.  But they do have a Bloodgood, London Plane Tree.   It’s about ten feet tall and the leaves have that characteristic pale green on the one side and silvery moss on the other.  The bark has yet to molt that fascinating texture that the shady trees of Shanghai which the French planted always boast of.  At the top there are a few of the chestnut-like balls which the tree always drops. 

I go and find a guy named John who explains that they can deliver it to my place for fifty bucks, but that I ought to be able to get it into an SUV.  And after I check out at the cashier and with my groceries that I ostensibly came to procure she adds the not insignificant cost of my new plane tree two bags of mulch and a fertilizer bag of what a crafty marketeer has branded “Moo Doo.”  John and another fella have the tree bundled up and they wheel it over to my Toyota while I go get my sack of Moo Doo.  They have it slid up to the passenger seat without having had to bend any branches.  

Driving, I refine the narrative which will help to explain this extravagance to my wife.

Friday, 06/12/20