Whatever the Problem

The piles of broken branches at the curb in front of people’s houses aren’t getting any smaller.  In fact, in many cases, they’re growing.  Recent high winds that brought branches already weakened by March’s ice storms and heavy snow the rest of the way down.  I’ve been hauling white pine and maple out to our pile, and there may be more to come.

     Weeks ago, the city informed the populace that the city would take responsibility for disposing of branches piled by the curb.  The city has been working on that project, but progress isn’t obvious.  Word is, the city didn’t realize the scope of the damage.  The folks managing the cleanup are approaching city council for additional funding to support hiring private contractors to help with the job.

     In the meantime, the debris piles sit or grow larger.  I noticed this morning that the dog has begun to take an interest in the windfalls, nosing around the edges as if there might be wildlife taking refuge inside them.  It seems the ice and snow and wind and city policy have created unplanned habitat for critters.  Always a silver lining.

     Daughter Number 3 and her husband also have yard cleanup challenges, but one of them is ongoing:  gum balls.  Sweet gum trees grow wild in North Carolina, where D#3 and her husband live.  Up here, they have to be planted.  Some people do plant them–not, apparently, understanding quite what they’re getting into.  Gum trees produce hard, spherical, spiky seed pods.  In profusion. 

     The pods, called gum balls by those in the know—a group that may well include everyone living in North Carolina–are hard to live with.  The tree seeds stick in pets’ fur and paws, pierce skin, are slippery to walk on, and generally make a mess.  They pose a particular problem for children at play.  Why not avoid gum balls?  There are too many of them, and they spread over too great an area.  The gum ball-afflicted homeowner can always cut down the offending tree.  One of our neighbors who has small children recently took that approach to the problem.  Short of such drastic action, there is no convenient way to picking up balls.

     That is, there has been no convenient way.  D#3 recently purchased a gum ball roller, and it works a charm.  D#3’s husband—family gum ball manager-in-chief—now strides cheerfully through their yard, pushing the roller along in front of him and leaving behind him a swath of grass free of the gum ball blight.

     He is delighted with the roller, happily extolling its virtues to all and sundry.  “Not only is this an excellent tool,” he says, with exuberant gestures, “but it spreads happiness throughout the land.”  His own happiness is clear in the video our daughter made of him using the roller.  His happiness has also been clear to his neighbors, who have borrowed the roller and, last we heard, not yet returned it.

     Borrowing the tool would be less of a problem up here, as there are so many fewer gum trees.  On the other hand, no one in our neighborhood seems to have acquired a gum ball roller.  Or be pursuing other means of policing the spiky seed pods.  The householders seem just to let the slippery balls fall where they may, including on the sidewalk.  How to spread the word about gum ball rollers?  Perhaps we should encourage the manufacturer to use the video of D#3’s husband gleefully using the tool.  Who could resist that kind of marketing?

     On Lexington, a street around the corner from ours, is a house with a fountain in the front yard.  I don’t know what the rule-of-thumb time of year for turning on fountains is, but I’m guessing it’s sometime after the end of March.  It was nineteen degrees Farenheit when I first checked our outside thermometer this morning.

     On the other hand, some people are just optimists.  Or have had enough of winter and plan to ignore the rest of it.  One of my friends, for instance, declines to wear her winter jacket after a certain date each year.  Even in her case, though, that date is farther along than the end of March.  In any case, when the dog and I passed that house on Lexington this morning, the fountain was on.  It was also covered in giant crystalline structures that shone gloriously in the sun.

     Whatever the problem—destruction wrought by winter, the ongoing Gum Ball Menace, or impatience with winter—there may be an upside.  For someone, human or otherwise.  And sometimes the solutions to problems bring unanticipated joy.

31 March 2023