A friend was talking about needing to take down a tree. I recommended the man who so deftly removed ours a few years back. I asked if his was dying.
"It's an ash, and you know about their fate." He gave me the benefit of the doubt, that I would be savvy about such diseases. "It's not dead yet but if we wait until it is it will be too dangerous to climb. There is something you can do, injecting a kind of poison to kill the infestation, but you have to do it every couple of years. We asked the people we bought the house from if they had been treating the ash."
"What's an ash?"
The other day I was driving with a woman who knows her trees. She commented on an especially beautiful one and I asked her what kind it is.
"An oak," she informed me. Her son is an aficionado of trees, and can name just about every species around town.
I am not well versed. Unless there are obvious clues like apples hanging from the boughs. Or the leaves turn into white stars, like the dogwoods in my yard.
I decided to download an app to help me with the gaps in my knowledge. It turns out there are a slew that make it ridiculously easy. Take a photo of the tree or plant and it will tell you all about it. While I was in the app store I clicked on one to identify bird calls. How fun is that?
One time I was upset with someone I love. They had hurt my feelings, and I began to fester. Rather like an infestation of nastiness. I imagined something I could do that would hurt them. Make them sad. As events unfolded, the breach was mended before I could inflict retribution.
The next day I felt deeply ashamed at my intentions. How could I have wished pain on someone I truly care about?
Maybe there is an app I could install that when I point it at my thoughts, I could identify them for what they really are. Then I would be in a position to cut off dead limbs.
