My Enchanted Garden

by KC Anneken

The Elm Tree

Just this minute, in my little forest there was a tremendous crash and smash and boom and shiver! Did you feel it? Now many years ago there was a giant elm tree among the other trees in this forest, and after a hundred seasons or so, the elm tree spirit decided to go on different travels and so removed from our dimension, but he left his beautiful huge naked image in the forest for the great horned owl and the red-tailed hawk to perch on the highest branches. And the wood peckers made their nests in his wood and found food.

The neighbors complained and complained that there was a big dead tree in my woods! They said this is so dangerous for their kids when they walk the path through the woods to school and play at shooting arrows at their targets tacked onto my trees. So I showed them another path to school down the driveway on the other side of my house and I put a fence around the woods and a no-trespassing sign on the fence because really, it not quite the thing to get bonked on the head while playing at archery or walking to school. You can still see these if you come in September, or anytime.

So the path through the woods became overgrown and the deer came with their babies into the woods, and the Great Horned Owl and the hawks and the bunnies and the birds also came, and they shelter and sing in the bramble patch that grows by the side of the woods. And it was wonderful, and I wondered about how long will the dead elm tree stand up, and when will it fall over and make a tangle on the ground for shelter for different creatures. But I had not thought about this for a long long time, and had begun to take his outline against the sky for granted.

Then this morning we chose! We came crashing down through all the other branches of the tree friends near by. Leaves and branches went flying, and all the birds scattered to the four winds as if the red-tailed Hawk had come to watch. But there was no hawk. There was silence and only the sky above and the earth below, and on the earth lay all about, giant pieces of beautiful elm trunk that had once cradled the Great Spirit of the Elm Tree. Now we shall see who comes to live in our new forest.

Downeys of the Elm

… and so the Great-Elm-Tree-without-leaves towered above the forest canopy, and every year, little by little, the bark peeled away and cracked and fell silently to the soft loam below, and the Elm slowly became like smooth, rich cinnamon. Do you know the shape of an elm? Let me tell you anyway.

The roots come out into a wide base and then narrow and twist on the way up and become the trunk. The trunk turns narrower in the middle and rises deliciously fluted and turned and sturdy and tall and majestic, and then it fattens and spreads out again into two or three or four thick and lush, high trunks almost to the clouds. It is in the crotch of this first divide that the grey squirrel made her nest and raised two babies one year. One baby was grey and the other was jet black. And they used to… ah! But this is not about squirrels!

As I was saying, then, the smaller and smaller skyward elm branches fan out over the land until they fall, weeping, almost back to the ground. If you see one elm alone in a field, you can tell it is an elm by its beautiful outline. The chills of the sight of one elm alone can shoot you right out of time!

Are you comfortable? Listen to this: Very soon after the Elm Tree Spirit departed for parts known and unknown, there came a Red Belly Woodpecker to investigate the property of the forest. Red Bellies, as you know, certainly do make a thorough survey and miss nothing at all. All day he went up the newly vacant Elm Tree and then he went down walking head first and going round and round the trunk in grand circles, until he was satisfied with his conclusions, whatever they were. But then he flew away and I didn’t see him for many summers. So who knows? One cannot always tell what Red Bellies do, or why. So I watched and waited and waited to see what I would see…

I heard him one Spring. It was early and cold and rainy, and when it rained, the cinnamon colored elm would stay dry under one of the big high branches which flung itself out from the trunk towards the southeast. Just exactly in this dry spot is where I found our Red Belly thudding away at Sir Elm. I will say now that it takes much longer to make a nest in a dead elm than I thought! And it is noisy business. (I wonder if you are wondering where the Downies come in at.)

Meanwhile, you will have to imagine Red Belly and his deeply chiselled home with its bed of green maple leaves at the bottom and soft grasses all in a cupped circle on top. Try to see him hanging outside his fine door to his cozy home, calling musically, CHIV! CHIV! to his mate to come and see. Picture two secret eggs being warmed by two Red Belly brooders. Sometime in May, if you mix yellow cornmeal and peanut butter together and put these crumbs in a big saucer by your door, imagine two fluffy babies all new and sparkly sitting in plain, unafraid view, peeping and chiv!chivving! to be fed by two bedraggled and very busy Red Bellies. You can see them all summer and winter and they will use the same nest next year and the next and next —if the tree is still there, that is.

I went out to check yesterday when the old Elm tumbled down, and his Red Belly nest is there alright, in a big split stump on the ground. I was glad it was already empty. All about are big dents and Elm skid marks and bounce markings. If you want, you can check each branch to see what you find, so I did, and from a very small wishbone branch that surely was once the highest branch the Elm Tree made, issued a peeping and chirping enough to make anyone crazy and run to warm the milk bottles. The storyteller right away propped up this peeping branch and had a cigarette, as this is the storyteller’s way…

Peering into the tiny hole in the branch, you couldn’t see a thing. The nest must be very deep, but there was a long, thin crack in the branch’s back side, and there you could clearly see black and white feathers jumping up and down with each peepish squawk. Two very hungry Downy Woodpecker babies, oh dear! So I watched with binoculars from behind a bush some distance away, the tiny hole in the Y-shaped branch to see who would come.

A Blue Jay was the first to stop by. If you are a Downy, you know this is about as good as getting bonked on the head by a falling tree on the walk to school through the woods. But it must have been the Great Spirit, Elias, because he left after a minute or two and didn’t come back. Then came Starlings and Grackles and Sparrows and Finches, and Cardinals, and pretty soon gloom settled into me about the Downies’ move from one hundred feet in the sky to three feet off the ground.

Now there is a neighbor, Henry, right next door who will do anything, and here Henry came with his ladder and the thing to do is to put the nest back as close as you can to where it was. Storyteller is thinking the ladder is not nearly long enough for this, and there are only twenty feet of Elm Trunk standing up still. But remember the handy crotches the elm tree makes? The one where the squirrel’s nest was. Ha! It is still there at the top of the twenty feet of trunk; a perfect place to stick the branch and tie it up with some stereo wire which just happens to be lying about. So up up up they go and all tied up nice and secure and quick as you blink. But so far with all the hubbub there is no Downy mama or papa anywhere at all, not to be seen and not to even be heard.

The next day (that’s today) one would surely put out some suet and some baby bird food like peanut butter and cornmeal and bread in milk and cat food soaking in water. And if you would do that, I bet you would see mama and papa Downy come by and collect a good bit and fly off with it in the direction of the Elm. And they do…