elms of fury

for those of you who don't know, our little yard upstate has five tall, sassy spruce trees and an ancient but prolific apple tree and all along the back fence and then one side of the yard are nine hundred seventy three horrible rock elms. i suspect that at one time they were scattered all around the yard and the larger trees drove them back to the edges of the yard and banished them there, crowding each other, an ugly line of mangy dogs.

they are horrible trees. that's not something you're likely to hear me say often. it's difficult for a tree to be horrible or ugly. their very nature is all sorts of life affirming and reaching toward the sun and all that. but not rock elms. their horrible lower branches droop over as if they're trying to claw their way back into the earth. if a long line of them stand together, it is difficult to tell when a branch falls off or when a tree is dead. they are garbage trees. these were likely planted as a fencerow by someone who didn't realize or didn't care that they'd grow well beyond forty feet up while their lower branches would reach outward and downward, slapping at each other like sullen children.

they shed these lower branches like baby teeth so we are never surprised when we drive up on a friday night to find the yard littered with two and three foot long sections of tree filth. but we'd been gone two weeks, gallivanting around delaware and then brooklyn, so we missed what must have been a very large storm that slammed into our little yard. the majestic spruces stood their ground, swayed and likely dropped a few needles and cones, but didn't budge. the gnarled little apple tree gave up all but three or four apples, shed every single leaf, but kept its arthritic limbs right where they belong. but those horrible rock elms lost their minds. and quite a bit else.

we arrived friday night around ten pm. dark. rainy. ridiculously warm at 58 degrees. the headlights rested on three fairly substantial treetops lying in the driveway. i got out of the car and dragged the carcasses up onto the yard so the sweetie could pull up to the house. as the sweetie turned the car toward the garage, the lights lit up the back yard, home to even more of the stupid elms. we got out and, aided by a flashlight, gazed on a scene of tree carnage. secretly, i was pleased that the storm had done what we didn't have the heart to do- wiped out several of the more horrible trees. it is not in our nature, the sweetie's or mine, to deliberately destroy a healthy tree that's doing nothing wrong other than being ugly. but it is beginning to look like it might be the nature of these trees to fall down onto things- in this case, my precious apple tree and also one of the spruces that was already assaulted over summer by another of the awful beasts as it fell to its death.

they are now on the list. right next to crabgrass and squirrels and cedar-apple rust. and earwigs. it is not like they're doing their job, anyway. they don't exactly provide shade with their scraggly canopies and i have no idea how anyone ever thought they'd screen off the sight of that abandoned factory sitting up next to the back yard. but rock elms are some of the best firewood you can get. and the sweetie has been begging nearly a year for a chainsaw. and christmas most certainly is coming. the rapture of the rock elms is close at hand. i'm pretty sure of it.