I drove by this small house everyday that had a scraggly looking Western Catalpa tree in the front yard. The rest of the yard was immaculate, with formal gardens. I often saw a little elderly Hispanic gentleman out there gardening.

One day, I spotted him chain-sawing off all the limbs and twigs on the tree. I thought, "Well, there goes another ugly tree..." What a sap I was...

A few days later, I notice the main leader on the tree is still there, rooted in the ground, with limb "stubs" all over the place. The guy has a step ladder and a chainsaw. He is "sculpting" grotesque and interesting goblin faces ala "totem pole" out of the stubs.

Days go by and I watch the tree and its faces getting power sanded to a smooth finish. Soon, he's applying coats of stain and shellac. The former tree, now natural totem pole (rooted in still), shines in a light brown.

Next, he's drilling holes in some of the "faceless" limb stubs. Next, he hangs ornaments from wires strung through the holes...polished old hubcaps, coke cans handcarved into ornate little rocking chairs, all kinds of homemade knick knacks hanging from the natural "totem".

I showed it to the wife and kids. They loved it. My kids are older now, but they still like to drive by the "totem tree" (if you rub it, its good luck).

Some people probably think he's a nut, but I think he's just an artist who marches to a different drummer...

Yarny enough???...:)

This may not be what you are looking for, but long ago my grandpa told us kids this story. (As I said, it was a long time ago so some of the details of the story may be fuzzy.)

It went something like this:
There was a young Indian maiden (...I know I should say Native American to be politically correct, but as I said this was told years ago.) Anyway, she had done something terribly wrong and her punishment was to have her 'first born' taken from her as soon as the last leaf had fallen from the great Oak tree. Well, of course she did not want that to happen so she began frantically praying to the Gods of nature to help save her baby. She prayed and she prayed. Autumn came and the leaves began to fall off the tree. She was so scared. She continued her efforts to ask the gods for forgivness and spare her child. Evidently she seemed sincere enough to receive their help. Some of the leaves hung tight to their branches all through the winter and the Indian maiden was spared the burden of losing her first born child.

According to my Grandpa, this story is why the last leaves do not fall off of the Oak trees until the new growth has started in the Springtime. I have always loved this story, even if it is just folklore. (I'm sure that I love this story because it reminds me of spending time w/ Grandpa.:)
~Louise in Iowa

ohh lousie i love that story,i have a lil oak tree in my yard that is always the last to lose it`s last leaves,it will sometimes have a few still hanging on after the new ones are filling in.i have worried and wondered about this tree since i bought my house 4 years ago.i call it my developmentally delayed tree...lol...i have planted a memorial garden for my daughters best friends baby boy Ben who passed away last summer at 27 days old from heart failure.he was 2 weeks younger than my granddaughter Elli and she loves to go see the `ba~beez` "angel boy on his knees in prayer on a small willow bench>that is in his garden.i will have to remember this story to share with Elli when she gets older,she is my garden helper when she is here and loves flowers,she is 15 mos. old and if she see`s a flower or even hears the word flower she takes a deep breath and goes mmmm....i can`t wit to tell her the story of the maiden and her baby.thank you for sharing....beth and elli in ga

Beth,
I'm glad that you enjoyed my Grandpa's story.
BTW, you reminded me of another childhood memory. Back in the olden days when I was in grade school I brought home an 'important' paper that I had done. I was very proud of it and was showing off a bit when my brother noticed that I had spelled my name wrong. I spelled it "Lousie" (as you had in your post:) and my two brothers jumped at the chance to tease their sister! They called me "Lousie Louise" for a real long time. In fact, occassionally they still will when they want to get to me, but it doesn't bother me anymore. It never really made me too upset, it was just a little embarrassing that I couldn't even spell my own name correctly. How can I expect anyone else to get it right if I can't even do it? :)
~Lousie Louise in Iowa

Trees4Me,

I loved your story. That man probably thought long and hard about what he was going to do - drew sketches and all, then he went an did it!

Wendy

Yeah, I bet he did, Wendy! I drove by there the other day and the tree's gone though :(

Your grandpa. Did he like to read short stories by O. Henry? Or maybe O. Henry heard your grandfather tell the story. It has to do with a sick kid who decides he is going to die when the last leaf falls off the tree outside his window. And everyday he watches and it doesn't fall. And the kid gets well in the spring. "The Last Leaf" I think is the name.

O. Henry was known for his plot twists, surprise endings. The leaf wasn't oak. It didn't fall for another reason... read the story.

When I was six years old at Gilbert Elementary in Florence, Alabama, the principal of our school told us the O. Henry version of the story, not reading it, actually told it like he knew the sick kid and it was true. I would rank that 15 minute story telling as the #1 experience of my first school year.(and that was a long time ago, when the number one song was a C-AM-F-G ballad called "Tammy", when all the TV pictures were black and white. Now in the cyber age, in my late middle age, it comes around again.
)

What wonderful posts! Thanks, everyone, for sharing. I'm enjoying the stories and hope others will add theirs. :-)

Marilou

The 99% dead catnip that I purchased from a local garden center, and revived with Kool-Aid. (We're talking in 200 here.) Yup, still have it, and one of my cats loves it. The other one could(n't) care less.
My fig tree was struck by lightning about a month or so ago and if it wasn't dead already, I finished it off by trying to move/transplant it (WAAAHH!). Anyway, during the course of that day, I noticed one of my clematis vine sticking out, so I attempted to put it somewhere on the trellis. Imagine my dismay when it came off in my hand. I planted this unexpected cutting where the fig tree used to be, and added a trellis, but I wasn't expecting a thing. Great place to plant a clematis, but maybe next year. Well, surprise, surprise! That cutting took, and I noticed a single bloom on it about a week or two ago!! You could've knocked me over with a feather!!

Here's a link to O. Henry's story.

Here is a link that might be useful: The Last Leaf

Fish Ears, and Frog Legs

When I was stationed at the navy weather station at Point Barrow, Alaska, a once in a lifetime experience happened to me. It was summer and warm, but one of my station-mates read and re-read the instruments and finally concluded a kawillowa was about to occur. Now, a kawillowa is a rare occurrence. It's a sort of storm, short in duration, and the main characteristic is a sudden plunge in temperatures. Temperatures during one of these freak storms have been known to plummet from 78 degrees farenheit to -65 degrees in the span of a second or two. When I asked Joe how long we had before it hit, he consulted the doppler and announced, "An hour and 14 minutes". I had an idea! I gathered all my warmest clothing, all the tin cans I could find, & 200 yards of parachute cord. I strung the cans together on both sides of a neighboring creek, donned every piece of warm clothing I could carry, hid myself & settled in to wait. Joe had predicted the arrival of the kowillowa to the very second. Just as it was about to strike, I pulled the cords with all my might, rattling the cans and setting up a terrible racket along the stream. It scared the frogs half to death, so they jumped for the safety of the water. At the same time, all the fish in the creek lifted their ears clear of the water to listen to what the commotion was about. THAT'S when the kowillowa struck. It froze the water instantly, trapping the frogs half way in, and the fish with their ears sticking out. Fortunately the temperature moderated somewhat as I returned to the store room to fetch our rear bagger mower. I ran it down the ice, collecting the fish ears and frog legs. We had a fine feast of a local delicacy that day, with enough left over for another meal for our 7 man detail.

That was in 1974. I keep in touch with some of my buddies, still in the navy and to their knowledge, the weather station has not recorded another kowillowa since that day.

Al Fassezke (grammar and spelling errors copyrighted)

What a hoot, Al! That's a yarn if I ever heard one!

That's just so funny! I read the thread entitled Favourite Post earlier and couldn't quite decide between all of them which was my favourite, Al's story takes first prize any day!! Brilliant!!
Lisa

Now wait just a minute!! You haven't heard mine yet.

Now this is a "true" story, I know, It happen to me.
It was a long time ago when I was just a little boy. Times were hard and things were hard to come-by. We had a roof over our heads a nice warm place to sleep. But one day Mom came to me and said that there was not anything to eat in the house. We had an old rifle to hunt with but there were only to cartridges left. Mom handed me the rifle and two cartridges and told me to go out hunting to see if I could kill something for us for supper.
Now I was only 10 years old at the time but I had been hunting many a time before with Dad and my older brothers.
I knew where some squirrels always play is the tall oaks.
I found a nice big tree to sit down and lean against while I waited on one to show up. Well it did not take long and I had one. I wanted to see what else I could get with that last shot so I moved on to an open field. As I was approaching the field I saw some Bob-white quail along the old split-rail fence that circled the field. I sat down on the ground to watch the quail and sure enough they walked up a broken top rail of that fence and started walking along the next section. I only had to adjust my position a few inches and then took a shot at the first guail that was on the top rail. I could not believe my eyes when I went to get that bird. Now I know this is hard for you to believe but there lay not one bird but 10 birds. They were all in a straight row, one after another on that top rail. That last shot really paid off.
Now I was out of ammunition so I gathered up my one(1) sqiirrel and ten(10) guail and started home. I passed and ole fish pond on my way home and thought I might try to catch a mess of fish. I laid down the gun and squirrel along with the quail. I found a long stick for a pole. I always back in those days carried fishing line and hook in my hat. Scratched around under a log and found some worms. It wasen't long before I hooked a big-one. Well, while I was trying to land it, I slipped and fell into the water. I about drown before I got my footing and struggled out of the water. You want believe what happen next but I guess I will tell you anyway. I began to jump around for something wasen't right. My clothes were full of fish. There were so many that the pressure inside my coat popped a button off and it hit a rabbit right between the eyes and kill him dead as a door-nail.
Well needless to say we had plenty to eat for awhile.
Now how's that for a yarn? You can knit a sweater now!

Tapla wins so far. Hands down. Can't wait for the next one, Tapla.

Welllll...these are nice little stories, but.....
I'll never forget my ole' huntin' dawg, Blue. He was a purebred pointer. From the time he was jes' a pup, that dawg was a natch, ah mean, a complete natural. You cain't breed the kind of instink that thar' dawg had.

We knew blue was speshul when he wuz only 9 weeks old. I had filled up the old claw-footed tub out back with water I boiled in the sun. It was reeeeeal hot that year. It was sooo hot we couldun cook eggs on the sidewalks cuz as soon as the egg hit the sidewalk, it'd incubate and the prettiest baby chick would spring out of the joke, er uh, yolk. Within a matter of seconds, we'd have a nice little roasted game chick (unless we waited too long, in which case, we had a pile of chick-shaped coals).

...that was the year my neighbor, Hootie, wanted to grill hamburgers he'd kept in the iceblock freezer. Now, Hootie didun have hisself a grill but it didun matter. He'd jes' flip them frozen patties up in the air with a spatula...and they'd come down well-done (minus the grill marks). Best hamburgers I ever ett, and it was a real Hoot too....

anyhow, I was layin' in the clawfoot tub, soakin up the water and the rays, holdin' my little pup, Blue. There was a sponge floatin' in the tub with me, an' I set Blue on it so I could scratch my back...Suddenly, little Blue went into the straightest point I'd ever seen a little hound dog do, right on top of the sponge...I looked up to whar' he wuz pointin', and shore enuff, there was a big struttin' daddy pheasant. Whenever the pheasant moved, Blue didun move a muscle but the sponge pivoted around like my ole' Swiss Boy Scout compass findin' the North Pole...like I said, he was all natch' pointer...

Well, the next summer was even hotter...all our horses got cooked from the heat an' flopped right over dead, so this nice gentleman who always wrapped in white sheets (even around his head!) came into town and sold us some "heat-proof" horses...funniest lookin' horses I ever saw...they wuzunt swaybacks, they wuz what we called "bumpy-top horses"...Wassn't till my cuzzin Jimmie started smokin' them fancy factory-made city cigaretties that I realized them bumpy-tops were also called Cam-Ells.

Well, paw had planted some corn seeds he bought from some shady out-of-town character. It didn't look or taste just right when we harvested it, so paw told me to hitch up the bumpy-tops to the wagon, and haul it into the city and see if some of them ole' city slicks would buy our "speshul-fancy corn"...(them folks was soooo dumb, we used to pluck the legs offa pond toads...and grab up pond snails...and rotten fish eggs...and haul em to the big city...We'd sell em as "speshul French cue-zeen" and them folks would give us but BIIIG Ben Franklins for all our pond dwellins, which happened to double as an outlet for our septic tank).

Course, Blue was all growed-up by then. I loved to take him huntin' cuz of that natch-point he had in 'im. Well, we wuzz pullin' a full-load of that funny-corn, me & Blue, when suddenly, I heard sumpin' behind me that sounded like a Winchester rifle goin' off. I turned around to look, and lo and behold, it was the corn. It was poppin' into the biggest white snowflakes I dun' ever see'd. The bumpy-tops saw it and it was the end fer um. They wuzz heat-proof but they wuzun one bit cold-proof. They saw all that corn poppin' and thought it was snowin'. They all fell over and froze plumb to death.

As if that warnt bad enuff, suddenly Blue commenced to barkin' & wailin' and jumped off the wagon. He ran & ran till I couldin' see him no more. I never did see that dawg again...*sniff*...best durned pointer I ever had though...

Well, last year, I hitched up the buggy and went to see how maw & paw was doin. We wuzz drivin' down this lonely old road, way out in the sticks, till we couldun even see a road no more. I hate to tell ya this, cuzz I'm a natch compass myself, but we wuzz lost and off the road. I hitched up the horses to a nearby cigar-catalpie tree, and hopped down to take my bearin's. I walked over into a nearby meadow, licked my finger, and as I was holdin' it in the wind...I saw it. The SKELETON OF A DAWG, holdin' the most purrty point you ever saw...Now I'm not shure if it was the remains of my Blue, but I've seen stranger things, so mebbe it wuzz!

Which reminds of the time my cuzzin Jimmy an' me wuzz campin' out under the stars in our hammocks. The mosquities wuzz but BIIIG that year. Suddenly, a whole swarm of them beasts dive-bombed Jimmy in his hammock. Now, they didun spear him (or he wouldun be here today to verify the veracity of this story), but them monster skeeters hit his hammock soooo hard, he spun around for nearly an hour. It took him a week to stop pukin' his guts out, he was so dizzy...

We took to usin' them new-fangled sleepin' bags after that, to sleep under the Big-Man's star-spangled heavens. That ended too, though, cuzz of the hot summer. That heat spread into everything, includin' maw's homemade roadkill chili. We'd eaten a whole crock of it (the chili), and suddenly, you know whut it duzz. And boy did it!!! Suddenly, both our sleepin' bags was blown clear off of us by one of them chili-gas attacks. Jimmy's bag flew up sooo high, the army boys at Chuck Yeager Air Force Base picked it up on their radar gear, an' before you knew it, a bunch of f-16's wuzz shootin' down our sleepin' bags. After catchin' some of them green Martian boys, the army & air force wuzzun takin' no more chances...and that was the end of our sleepin' bags....*sigh*...

I could tell you more uh my happenins, but my honey sezz she ain't got big enuff galoshes to walk through this room without gettin' her ruffled dress all soiled...

but I hope you good gardenin' folks all enjoyed these here true stories of my childhood....

whoops, gotta go, she's pullin' on my leg now....

One time, there was this total idiot who couldn't speak in complete sentences, and was famous for using words he created. Almost a Forest Gump type of guy, always stumbling into lucky situations, but without the lovable quality. Somehow, he managed to steal an election with the aid of his brother, and became president.

People's rights started to erode. At a college commencement speech given by this guy, students were threatened they would be arrested and not receive their diplomas if they participated in a silent demonstration. Later, it became legal for the government to enter anyone's home without their permission if they were suspected of certain anti-government activities. People were detained for extended periods of time without being charged of any crimes. In Miami, police in riot gear, without any provocation or threat of violence, brutally assaulted unarmed citizens conducting a peaceful protest on a public street.

To keep things lighthearted, or maybe to distract everyone, he would occasionally use slanguage while giving important speeches to international audiences. Whew, what fun it was, watching reporters world-wide trying to translate this nonsense into various languages. We had plenty of time to monitor his hijinks after our employers relocated our jobs to foreign countries.

Then there was the crazy time when he started an actual war under false pretences. Although this country supposedly had weapons of MASS destruction, they refused to use them to defend themselves when our forces invaded. They opted for the long-term plan instead. You know, the one where they hide their supposed weapons so well that nobody can ever find them. This way, after they have completely lost control of their country and have been killed or arrested, they can say, "See, we told you we didn't have those weapons." After destroying much of this country and grossly underestimating the probability that this country's people would continue to finish destroying their own country, he gathered the better part of 100 billion of our favorite tax dollars and started building all new stuff for this country because his buddies had companies that could make lots of money by being the only contractors allowed to do so.

Then, ...wait, sorry - this isn't a yarn. I'll come back later if I can fabricate anything that even approaches this level of incredulousness... but I doubt my imagination can stretch that far!

I keep accurate & detailed records on all my plants. I have found a way to simplify the process and minimize the amount of time it takes to keep these records up to date. I decided that for my purposes, there were only three areas that warranted the keeping account of what my plants were doing & when. The careful selection of these three areas was key in freeing up my time to pursue plant interests aside from record-keeping.

1) Each time a plant leaves the growing bench without authorization, I mark it down. I strictly enforce the "three strikes & you're out" rule. It seems to be working as the incidence of AWOL plants is very low.

2) When a plant pitches a fit & stops transpiring until it turns brown, I make a mental note of it. Before placing a "black mark" on the record, the plant is first put on notice that if it doesn't mend it's ways, it will be discarded, along with its special page in my book of records. Often a quick trip to the near vicinity of the compost pile is all it takes to correct this aberrant behavior.

3) Plants that pretend they are suffering for trite reasons (like lack of water or fertilizer) will be threatened with the same three strikes rule as outlined in example #1. I remind them with something like "There are starving plants in China - so you don't have it so bad". I tell them they will have to wait until spring to be fed. At that time, I don't yet mark anything down, choosing instead to put the plants and their records from example #1 in plain view; the obvious implication here being "You could be in their shoes". This usually gets them (and me) through 'til spring without having to mark anything down - but I would if I had to!!!

Let me know, please, if you have need of additional aid in structuring your own set of records.

Al Fassezke