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Nothing great to show today, just an observation on Life.
I live next to a rain forest and all kinds of stuff grows up there very rapidly. A lot of trees will grow up in just a few months, instead of years. Most folks around here call this specimen here a “trash tree”, because it is not native, does not produce anything, is not ornamental, it just grows fast and reproduces fast. I am often cutting these down in my yard because I don’t want them competing with my other trees for nutrients or shading them out or what not.
I have noticed that with this species in particular, even if I chop the thing up into logs, if I toss the logs back into the jungle next door then each one will put down roots and begin growing a new tree! Kind of scary, actually. Well, after I cut this sapling down, I thought I would just throw it by the side of my driveway and let it sit in the sun and exposed for a few weeks to get thoroughly dried out and then I would throw it over the fence. That should take care of it!
Well, I was doing yard work last weekend and noticed the log. It was growing branches! Look at the end here–it is completely scarred. There are no roots to speak of; it is just growing branches into the air out of the old trunk. When I saw this I thought to myself that this illustrates perfectly what life on this earth is all about: a tenacious will to live, despite enormous odds.
It was just that kind of a weird day. Earlier I had picked up a toad that was about to get weed whacked, and I noticed that it had an enormously swollen tick attached to it. Curious; I thought ticks only bothered warm blooded creatures. I guess if there is none around, cold blood is as good as warm. I should have taken a photograph of it, but I felt so sorry for the toad that I plucked off the tick and popped it between my fingers. Good old toad, helping me with my yard. I put him in a nice, cool, safe spot and off he hopped.
Then, turning over an old pile of logs, I saw a huge centipede! I don’t know if you have ever been stung by a centipede, but it is bad, bad, bad. Not like a hornet sting, but worse. Like acid being poured on your skin–a kind of chemical burning sensation that comes and goes in waves long after the wound has been treated. I was glad I was wearing gloves! I brought one of my chickens over to see if she wanted it. She gave it a few pecks to see what it was, and then walked away from it. Probably figured it was too big of a mouthful, although I daresay she could have handled it. She dispatched a Green Anole that I had caught for her earlier handily; perhaps she was just not hungry enough?
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And even though I am as tired of cat pictures as the next guy, still I cannot help myself sometimes. So as a “bonus” picture today you get a cat! I will tie it into the above by saying that the sapling has become my cats’ favorite scratching post while lying there beside the driveway. So not only did it suffer the deprivations of soil and water, but it was also ignominiously clawed severely by three cats!
