Acquaintances and Friends

Today I met Sue and Pete when I was on a walk in the waning edge of day. I wanted to get in a few miles in the fresh air before dark, which meant getting out of the house before four. There’s a place about a half mile from our house where I have only ever waved at the folks. Today they were outside, cutting up a massive pine tree, piling the branches beside the road. My first impulse for stopping in was simply because I wanted some of those evergreen branches, especially the ones that still had pines cones attached. I kept walking to my turnaround point, and when I got back to their place she was still out side, poking up a small bonfire. I waved, smiled, and headed up their lane

One doesn’t just ask outright for pine branches, though, when one has never even talked to the neighbors. First we talked, introduced ourselves, “I’m Sue,” she said, “and Pete is taking a break in the house.” She told me they had been working the entire day, trying to get that tree cut up. This spring our neighborhood was traumatized when a rotting tree branch fell onto a car during a storm, killing the hapless driver. Sue knew that lady; she went to the same church. Ever since then she has been bothered by any dead-ish trees in their yard.

“Sue,” I said when a suitable amount of small talk had been made, “what are you planning to do with all these pine branches?” And she told me that Pete was going to keep cutting them up and clearing them away until they were all gone because they are that sick and tired of picking up pine cones and raking needles and worrying about the tree falling onto the house.

Now we do not have a single evergreen on our land, and every time I want to decorate with something green in winter, I have to find some public land to cut a few branches. Today especially I was hankering for the scent of fresh cut pine, so I asked Sue if it would be okay to cut some of those branches to decorate my house.

“Sure, you can take the whole thing,” she said, “but you know about those needles…” and I assured her that I do know and I don’t mind at all.

I walked on home and got my trusty little Subaru with a garden tote in the back and a clipper. When I got back to their place, Sue brought me a box of pine cones because she has six buckets full. Pete came out and we stood in the twilight, talking about the neighborhood in the good old days. He went to school with the man who sold us our property. He knows everybody. Same as Jim, who was born in the house just across the road and now lives just on the other side of the woods. And Dianne, one house over, has lived there for nearly sixty years in the house her husband built, and the other neighbors have been there for their entire marriage, which is about twenty years. We are very much the new kids on the block.

Pete likes to garden, and he told me about his way to get peppers to set fruits, (plant them close together to help them pollinate ) and we discussed our odd tomato year. I mentioned that I’m doing mostly no-till gardening, and he said, “Oh, yeah. Ruth Stout method.”

I almost laughed out loud. Who would’ve thought that I have a neighbor named Pete who knows about Ruth Stout? It just made my day.

So did my evergreen arrangements on the porch.