EFFECTS OF SUMMERTIME HEAT AND HEDGEROW

There comes a pause in the summer's occupation, to borrow phraseology from Longfellow, when the hedgerow reaches its apex of youth and settles down toward maturity.

I arrive at this conclusion by a complicated, subjective theorem. It is somewhat like this. You estimate the length of the spangles of seed pods hanging from the ash tree limbs, then multiply by the width of the white oak sapling's leaves, add the new lateral growth of the sprawling grapevine and divide by the size of the young rabbits that were born somewhere in the tangled growth, such rabbits often startling me by popping out of dense growth just a step or two ahead of me.

To be more exact, you determine the state of deterioration of various birds' nests, measure the diameter of the swelling rose hips and factor in, by whatever mathematical process is easiest for you, the blooming aftermath of honeysuckle. All this must be done quickly else you miss the apex by a degree or two.

I haven't submitted this process to any nature laboratory yet. I'm too busy with other paper work beseeching the government for Golden Fleece grants to determine the difference in speed of the two rows of ants storing food in their cellar. One row, loaded, goes into the ant cave somewhere beneath my back sidewalk, the other parallel row goes out again to bring in another load. Wouldn't you like your tax dollars to go toward such a study?

Then I think I have a fix on the higher and higher flying of the purple martins as they prepare to move on south. Seems as if the Department of Interior would be interested in this. When the martins first come in the spring, the height of their flying is not much more than fifty feet above treetops. Now, as the hedgerow starts toward maturity, I can look up on a clear day and just barely make them out up, up, up.

Back to the hedgerow. I start my complicated calculations about the middle of July. It is a pleasant form of scientific (!) investigation.

The hedgerow (I, myself, me, yours truly gave it that name) was once a barberry hedge around private property, the barberry being the kind that has stickers. Ho-boy, it is the worst kind of hedge to keep free of weeds and other growing things such as ash, oak, wild cherry, sweet gum trees; trumpet, honeysuckle and grapevines; poison oak and ivy; fleabane, pokeweed, goldenrod, Joe-Pye, ad infinitum. And they all came to take up pleasant residence. The hedgerow grows wider and wider. Fallen autumn leaves blow into in and stay, providing a rich mulch. Except for the poison oak and ivy, it is a good refuge for wildlife and I (wild myself maybe) have spent pleasant hours, sitting, almost hidden in it, watching the mockingbird, cardinals, brown thrashers, doves, etc. build their nests.

I can see how quickly the cleared fields, yards and parks of America could revert to wilderness such as our first settlers encountered.

I doubt if my calculations about hedgerow growth would interest any governmental department. Some psychiatrist may be interested, in a tangential aspect! But I don't want to drive them crazy. So my calculations will be for my own benefit. Like the Little Red Hen who could find no help for her project, she used the results all for her very own purpose. I'll do the same.

I will know that the time is right to start looking forward as to how to make it through the winter until the hedgerow starts its new growth next spring. From time to time as I go to the basement, I'll bring up a glass jar or two. It is going to be a great tomato year and peach, and no telling what else. By the time the hedgerow leaves begin to fall I may have a whole row of canned colorful things decorating my kitchen shelf and the freezer jammed with stuff I bought or brought in from the garden.

Why the kitchen shelf? Shouldn't such things be on the basement shelf rather than on a kitchen shelf where pretty little things are displayed? Well, yes, there was such a time, but as the hedgerow gets higher and wider, my memory of where I put things gets lower and narrower. But if they are right there before me every day, if I want to make a peach cobbler, say next January, I won't have to wonder where I put those peaches. Maybe in the basement? Where is the door to the basement?

REJOICE!