Invasive Species

In June of last year, a large branch broke off one of the Bradford pear trees in the library parking lot. It damaged a fence, but it didn’t harm anyone or any vehicles. This was the second large branch that broke off the same tree, the first time a few years ago. I spoke to the leadership and asked them to persuade the city maintenance crews to trim the trees way back, especially the heavy, easily cracking branches, before they snap and smoosh a human or someone’s car. They’ve yet to do anything. The only good that has come of those trees is that a neighbor down the street from the library snuck by, just after the branches were cut and made beautiful wooden bowls from the remaining detritus. We have them on display.

I used to have mixed feelings about the Bradford pear tree. They’re pretty ubiquitous and never more obvious than around this time of year when their snow-white blossoms explode, almost always the first flowering tree to do so. They aren’t bad to look at and provide a nice beginning to the season. A few days later, the world is full of white parade confetti as the petals are pulled off the trees by March winds or spring storms, making it look like a snowstorm. Eventually, the blossoms discolor and fill the gutters with dark brown dots that eventually wash away or disintegrate. During this part of the tree’s seasonal flowering, the air is filled with the sharp ammoniac smell of a dirty catbox.

 We have only one Bradford on our property. The other pear tree is a Cleveland. I got both from an Arbor Day mailing pouch and put them in the ground in our North Yard before I really knew what they were. They have grown fast, but I’ve worked to keep them pruned close, which they seem to love, but which makes them less likely to get huge and then drop heavy limbs all over my metal fence. 

Now, you may be fond of these pear trees. They have pretty green leaves that pop out fast in spring and add to the sense that summer is coming. They also shed their leaves late in the year, after turning a burning purple. Despite these observable traits, there are underlying evils that most people aren’t aware of. Bradfords and Clevelands are highly invasive species. But what does that mean?

An invasive species, once brought into an ecosystem, takes over and displaces other native species by outperforming and outcompeting them. They do this by operating faster than the established order. For instance, my two pear trees produce fruit beloved by local birds. The birds eat the fruit and spread the seeds, which land in fertile soil and grow into more trees. Because the trees aren’t fussy about the kind of soil they grow in, they can rapidly take over anywhere there is space. Cross-pollination between trees creates more trees that grow faster than native trees can, so even ground that might be suitable for a maple or oak will soon enough be taken over by a pear tree. Despite this rapid growth and spread, though, pear trees have incredibly dense yet soft wood. They split easily, and they lose branches, just like the ones at the library. This is one reason why, most years, I heavily prune them.

Pears are so nefarious that some states, including my former home state, PA, have banned them. At one time, they were used as a pretty landscaping feature. Now, people understand just how dangerous they can be and how much they disrupt the other plants nearby. Had I known when I planted ours, I wouldn’t have taken up a spade to let them live and grow. It won’t be too long, and I may have to consider taking ours down. Both because of the weather and frenetic weekend schedules, I didn’t get ours pruned this year, so I will have to be extra careful to make sure that I don’t miss again to keep them growing in the trunk and not in the branches.

Most of the time, I operate under the comfortable illusion that trees are trees. The more the merrier. Trees, generally, add oxygen to the atmosphere, act as carbon sinks, and provide needed places for birds and other fauna to live. They’re also quite pretty throughout the year. The problems arise when some trees upset the order of things and hurt the trees that are more beneficial to us.

Such things are deeply complex, but it is worth considering some of the ways that an invasive tree can turn the natural order on its head. Generally speaking, there are about 1,500 species of non-native trees or plants in the US. Many of them love the warm, moist air of the South. Some came here by accident or were planted without understanding the dangers (one might cite kudzu here), while others were carried here by fauna and dropped into the soil where they quickly replicated.

By my best guess, we have fifty in our yard. There is the Chinese yam vine, which grows edible tubers, but loves to grow on other native trees. Chinese clematis, which has gorgeous upside-down cones of purple flowers that bees and other pollinators love, but that coat native trees with vines that root into the bark and also kill the canopy. The vines will also trundle through the grass and eventually get caught in your mower blades. I speak from experience. There are at least two kinds of privet. One has large, glossy evergreen leaves, and the other is called olive privet. Olive privet branches are strong and hard to break, and make really good walking sticks, but also like to grow in and around the roots of native trees. 

English ivy, which sounds about as friendly as you can get, is highly invasive. Spread by birds that eat the berries, it can kill trees by covering the bark and destroying the cambium, outcompeting them for carbon and sunlight. It also digs into the crevices in your house’s brick facade, turning the pointing to powder and, if left untouched, lethal to the soundness of your home. I work all year, every year, just trying to keep this to the natural areas. It is so hard to eradicate that most years I weep with exhaustion, just to have kept it from choking the trees we want to keep. 

Then there is the grass. Grass is not native anywhere except in the plains states, but some natural wild grasses can and do grow. They have almost all been outcompeted by other forms of invasive grass that, although pretty to look at, are devastating for the local ecosystems. Johnsongrass, one of the most common, is devastatingly hard to get rid of. Our former neighbor planted grass just next door, and it has slowly been taking over for the whole time we’ve lived here. It’s funny to think that I spend so much time just working to keep invasive species from destroying our property, but all around our neighborhood, county, and state are examples of battles that have been lost, especially in non-residential sectors, where invasive plants can grow without intervention.

In PA, my brother and his neighbors are being encouraged to stomp and kill the spotted lanternfly, an invasive species that is lethal to trees and other agricultural pursuits. Penn State University suggested that the spotted lanternfly, which was accidentally introduced from China, is responsible for $99 million in agricultural damages since 2019. And because the eggs can last for years, and be just about anywhere, my home county has had to put out some very strict rules to prevent more introduction and damage to PA’s beautiful forests and fields. The “stomp them when you see them” ad campaigns are a little jarring, too.

For me, the one really annoying invasive species around home is the stink bug. Also originally from PA (where it was introduced from China) it has made its way down the eastern seaboard and is now to be found in your home and mine, always somehow looking to get out and if you try to help it, it will fill the area with a sour sulfur blast that will make your eyes water and the dog look at you accusingly. There’s nothing to do about either bug in terms of eradication using insecticides or other mass destruction means, mainly because those options would also nuke native species. 

I don’t suppose we could figure out a way to engineer the lanternfly or the stink bug to attack only dangerous pear trees. I could easily cut down ours, once they are ransacked, and plant pretty pink dogwoods in their place. Of the five dogwoods we had when we moved here fifteen years ago, there are only two left. The attackers aren’t invasive, but no less dangerous. Anthracnose, a fungus that infiltrates wounded or badly pruned trees, takes only a couple of years to fully destroy a tree. The dogwood borer, a moth that also attacks the tree and bores into and under the bark, can easily kill a dogwood in just a few years. Assuming that all dogwoods are extremely susceptible, it looks like our trees and all dogwoods will be going the way of the American chestnut, black and white ash tree, and the Eastern Hemlock. That’s not good for anybody.

So, yes, I happen to be a hypocrite, having a distaste for invasive pears, while having planted two variants on my property. Live and learn. I just hope that whatever damage I may have inadvertently done to my property as a result can be fixed by planting other trees in other places and encouraging native species to have as much room to grow as possible. The battle may be essentially unseen, but it is one that does matter.

So the next time you’re walking around your neighborhood and are tempted to gasp at the pretty white blossoms in yours or your neighbor’s yard, remember that what you’re actually seeing is something that is slowly shifting the local ecosystem away from health and stability and rapidly toward a dangerous precedent that may be helping to kill other native trees. And if you happen to be passing my trees, will you turn a blind eye, for now, please?

The Night of the City Workers

Author's Note: Since 2017, I have recalled the following story almost weekly, as one of the people involved in it has figured prominently in events thereafter. It also forms the basis for one of my guiding principles: everybody out there, regardless of their beliefs or ours, is someone who can make a huge difference in your life, and we ought to remember that and act accordingly.

It was a week before Christmas. We were rushing about, anticipating visits to and from family, trying to get the house ready, trying to get all the presents. Micki once coined the term “hectivity” in her weekly syndicated column and it works perfectly to describe things in that moment. As usual for that time of year, we didn't need any more anxiety or stress. It was then that all of our toilets and showers started backing up at the same time. 

This was the early 2000s. The boys were quite young. I was still pretty new as a homeowner. There were some things I could do, but we had been quite lucky up to that moment. Unfortunately, we didn't have a regular trusted plumber, yet. I called one of my lifelines, either my brother or Pop Bare or Pop Schramm (Micki’s father) for help. I tried everything they suggested. Nothing worked.

Our former house was built in the late 1980s and we had a convenient cleanout, so I went to Lowe's and bought a rubber pressure set. The cucumber-shaped black rubber nozzle fits on the end of a regular garden hose. When water flowed into it, it expanded against the inside of the pipe, and a jet of high-pressure water sprayed out of the tip. This, ideally, would clear any blockages, but it just filled the drain line with more water. When I cut off the spigot, Micki ran out to tell me that all the inside drains were making unholy noises and strongly encouraged me to call a plumber.

In a panic, now and heart sinking, I called a random plumber from the phone book. I will not put his name into the record for posterity here, save to reflect on the words of our current beloved and deeply trusted plumber, when I told him this story: “He's something else.” This is Southern understatement that can be roughly translated as “You ought to have called literally anyone else.” How could I have known? 

That guy determined that he couldn't manage the blockage himself. He offered to have a friend with a backhoe come out and start digging up the lawn. Otherwise, he said to either call Rotorooter or the city. This was before smartphones, so I again called my lifeline for help deciding. Pop Schramm said Rotorooter would be exorbitant and they might not be able to fully fix the problem, which he gently hinted might need to be dug up to be fixed properly. 

In the space between our house and our neighbors on the right (looking from the porch to the cul-de-sac) was a sewer cleanout. This manhole- lidded cement throat caught water from every house in our section of the development and drained deep to an easement behind our neighborhood. Now desperate and fueled with Incredible Hulk-like strength, I went to my toolbox and got a crowbar and with some time and determination, pried the lid off and peered in.

The first thing that hit me was the smell. Grey water, human waste, the strange, salty smell of rusty metal and damp cement. Even though it was December and cool, large reddish cockroaches, sometimes called palmetto bugs, or smokey browns, skittered in the shadows. I think somewhere in my psyche a connection was made with a particular book I first read in high school. I half expected to see a red balloon float up and hear maniacal clown laughter.

There were rebar ladder rungs leading into the depths. I was briefly tempted to crawl down there to see what was blocking our lines, but had a pang of claustrophobic panic at the thought that some curious neighbor might see the lid askew and helpfully put it back. I would be trapped down there forever, flashlight battery fading, screaming unheard, and coated with too many six-legged friends. The panic rose. My chest hurt, and the world spun. I felt helpless.

Things were spiraling out of control and growing well beyond my meager ability to handle the stress of the situation. Pop Bare, my brother, and Pop Schramm all had the skill, mechanical inclination, and well-worn experience to face such nightmares calmly. Like seasoned gunslingers, they had all faced similar situations and managed them. 

I was drowning.

At the worst moments of our lives, there is a calm voice that cuts through the frenetic chaos in our heads. Sometimes it is a strong memory. In my case it was Micki. She calmly reminded me that her dad said to call the city. “It’s after-hours,” I replied, still panicking. “Call 911. This constitutes an emergency,” she said. So I called.

I told the dispatcher what was happening and they put me through to the foreman of an on-call crew. They said they would be out within the hour. As promised, their trucks rolled up into the cul-de-sac before an hour had passed Out stepped a posse of sturdy guys, hard hats, and bright vests, calm as the United States Marines.

Like all such workers, they were unperturbed. Nothing I said could rattle them. Guys like this have seen every kind of possible plumbing horror and they have faced it with unshakable calm. These men were like chilled steel as I explained to them what the problem was. They nodded, knowingly, and set to work. One of them, a bear-like fellow, with a growling, rumbling voice and a kind face gently reassured me.

I'm sure I was in a state. The memory is strong. This was one of those moments where I came face-to-face with my own inability to do anything to solve the problem. I was probably vibrating with anxiety. He told me to go sit on the porch and I nodded and stood on the driveway, unable to calm down, let alone sit.

I watched and listened. After a long time standing in the chill air, I went into the house to get a jacket. When I came back a couple of the guys, including the man with the deep voice, had come up to the porch with a 5-gallon bucket. In it was a massive clump of something that looked like wet and curling hair. I thought maybe someone flushed a big Cher-style Halloween wig or something. “Roots” the burly guy rumbled. He then explained what had been happening in our drain line.

When the contractors built that house back in the late 1980s, they ran a drain line from it to the sewer, where I had removed the manhole cover. In the intervening twenty-odd years, the ground had settled and the drain line was disconnected about halfway up. It was only a half inch off, but it was enough for nearby trees to send hair-thin root tendrils into the gap. Come to think of it, I thought, the trees had always been healthy in our yard.

The other plumber had been right. It would require a dig to fix. The city workers took out their camera and ran it up to the roots and then turned on a heavy-duty auger-thing that severed the mass of roots and cleared the blockage, even though the disconnection was well up on our property and definitely “our problem”. 

The burly guy said that it was close enough that they had no problem helping out and wished the family and me a Merry Christmas. Soon enough, the cul-de-sac was empty.

Here's where the story gets good.

In 2017, lost and looking for help, I joined an AA meeting downtown. The guy who welcomed me was the same burly man with a deep, booming voice who helped a stressed-out young man all those years before. Now, he helped me again, by welcoming me, guiding me, reassuring me without judgment, and with seemingly endless patience through the Program. 

It’s funny how things turn out.

The moral, once I was able to grasp it, seemed simple: there are a lot of good people out there who do help and genuinely care. Those city workers took pity on a young homeowner and went above and beyond to help because they could. Yes, it was Christmas, but I have a sense that they would have done it at any time of the year. 

The part of all this that hits me, though, is that you never know when you're looking at the face of someone who will one day be a friend who helps in a far more significant way. Be nice. You might be talking to someone who will one day become a beloved friend with the wisdom and experience you need access to. 

That experience has resonated with me ever since. I was basically a kid with zero hope of getting away without spending thousands of bucks. We didn't have to repair a nasty, tangled problem that would rapidly ruin our house. An act of kindness and pushing the rules a bit was all it took to prevent (or postpone) a nightmare situation. And it introduced me to a friend who would do way more to help than I could ever repay.

Recliner Times

Recliners have been a modern American luxury for almost one hundred years. Edward Knabush and Edwin Shoemaker changed the face of domestic comfort and napping in 1928, which influenced the La-Z-Boy Company’s development of the modern concept. Based on reclining dentist chairs from the 1830s and the Morris chair from the Civil War era, Knabush and Shoemaker, now almost forgotten, created the prototype for the beloved definition of comfort. Little did they know that their innovative redesign of the chair would become the centerpiece of almost all living rooms in the modern world. You might be hard-pressed to go into any home on your street and not find at least one recliner. They have become ubiquitous.

When visiting other people's houses, I look to see if and what kind of recliner they have. Does it rock? Swivel? Recline to a point where one's legs are just slightly higher than one's head? Does it have hidden bins and receptacles for phone charging or a built-in mini-fridge? Does it offer vibration and massage options?

Most importantly, as a connoisseur of afternoon naps, will the chair cradle the sitter in such a way that a brief 30-minute nap won't cause a crick in the neck or back? These are important questions. Sometimes, if they are generous hosts, I will ask to take their recliner for a spin. I’ve always been amazed at the nearly infinite combinations available and the incredible luxurious comfort afforded by what is basically just a place to sit that rapidly converts into a place to lie.

We have two recliners, and they have seen better days. We inherited them from my in-laws, and they served both families remarkably well, considering how heavily they have been used. With three active young men, their friends, our friends, family, a menagerie of pets, many family holidays rammed into their floral print fabric, plus many more sick days, snow days, movie nights, and power-outage days, our recliners have given their best to our backs, legs, and posteriors. They have endured, but have taken on much wear and tear over the many years we’ve had them in the family. They have also accumulated visible signs of their age and use.

Dog fur, cat nails, drink spills, stains, and the eventual use-induced strain of the internal mechanisms are all evident now. They’ve gotten easier to sit in, but harder to get out of. This past Thanksgiving, our very pregnant niece said that although Micki’s chair was comfy, she had to have three menfolk help her to resume her upright position and exit the chair. Her unpregnant husband, a big fellow like myself, said he found that my chair slew him to one side when he popped out the footrest and stretched out. He said it was like sitting on the side of a hill. Our late geriatric pug had to stop sitting with Micki because her chair kept trying to eat the poor little chap. A few years ago, we took a page from Pop Bare’s handbook and bought covers for the chairs to protect what remains of their floral print fabric, but the chairs cause the covers to wrinkle, gather, twist, and get irremovably tucked into chair crevices, so that we are forever straightening and adjusting them.

We’ve talked about getting new ones over the years, but life is busy and full of other necessities. It can feel a little extravagant to think about purchasing new recliners when other parts of the house need urgent attention. Also, we both work at least forty-hour weeks; Micki way more than that, sometimes, and we often have equally filled-up weekends, which makes it hard to find time to do more than fantasize about all the things we’d like to do to get the house where we’d like it to be. 

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I remember very well the first time I ever sat in and enjoyed the recliners. We were newly married, visiting the in-laws in South Carolina. Micki’s dad always had chores for us to work on. He liked to get up early to beat the heat. By lunchtime, we would be back indoors, in the cool. He would put professional golf on his massive TV, and we would sit in their matching recliners and promptly doze. More than once, Evan, when he was still quite small, would scootch up there with me and we’d both nap. Those are some of my best and favorite memories.

Life is full of changes, big and small. When we moved to our house, almost sixteen years ago, the recliners came from the SC home of my in-laws to stay with us. Micki’s mom came to stay with us, too. The chairs served the family again in this new capacity in a much bigger and fuller house. When Ma moved to assisted living, she got her own special recliner for her room, and Micki and I started using the den as our main entertainment and relaxing space, and we have been using them to rest, relax, watch movies, entertain, and celebrate holidays ever since. Ma always gets to sit in one when she visits, of course. We always try to be as generous with them as she and my father-in-law were when the recliners lived in their houses. 

As long as they didn’t fall apart, like the ill-fated Blues Brothers police car when we pulled the little knobby thing to flip the feet out, we kept using them. And we’ve tolerated a lot of deterioration over the years. Micki’s chair’s back frequently slides out of the metal support channels, and the locks designed to keep them in place no longer work. The gap between the back and the seat of my chair is so wide that I have had to stuff a towel in there to keep it from devouring me like the alien plant in Little Shop of Horrors.

We’ve spent enough time in these wonky old chairs that our bodies have become accustomed to the twisty, crooked positions we have to adopt to sit in them. A few weeks ago, while suffering the small agonies of a bad cold, I got so uncomfortable in my chair (in which I’d been sitting for hours uncounted), I actually moved to the couch, just to let my back straighten out. When Micki caught my cold, she opted to recover on our much more comfortable bed than spend hours being forced into positions even the Elephant Man couldn’t have managed for days on end. Right before that, when we were being threatened by whole inches of ice by the Sky Gods, she slept in her chair, and I slept on the couch, just to be in a different part of the house in case our big Leaning Oak toppled under the weight. The next day, she was stiff and sore as a result.

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In the last year, we have slowly begun to get the house back up to a standard. It’s not that we live in a dilapidated nightmare house, but that we’re busy people and these things take time. As Pop Bare always says, “you can’t fix everything on day one.” The repairs we’ve made have helped us to feel more comfortable with the house and have also highlighted the areas we still need to manage. As I wrote the other week, we recently had the kids to our house for the weekend, and the freshly painted rooms made it that much more welcoming.

On one of those common adventures that Micki and I find ourselves on, we swung by an ice cream shop for a much-needed midday treat and spotted a sign for a furniture place. She mentioned how nice it would be to replace the old beds that we have in our spare bedrooms with new beds. We store-hopped and eventually found a place that had a frame, a mattress, and box springs that we liked. We discussed it and based on their prices, planned to buy two matching sets, so that when the kids come at Easter, their rooms will be that much more comfy. That’s when fate stepped up behind me and whispered in my ear, “Have a seat in that recliner, over there.”

It's a funny old world. I sat and began fiddling with the sliding compartments for cups, then gave the recline function a whirl. It was like sitting/lying on a cloud. The fabric was smooth, almost like suede. The cushioned seat didn't hurt my tailbone. The fluffy back felt like a dream. Given the time of day, I might have napped right there. I got up, and Micki gave it a sit while I checked out the ‘love seat’ version, which was just two recliners connected by a wide, comfy middle section, like it had been caught in mitosis. She got up, tried the love seat, and played with the bins. I sat back down in the recliner.

As I did, a tiny little girl went by with her mommy and meemaw and gestured a little paw in my direction and asked, “Tanta Bloss”? Admittedly, it had been a few weeks since I'd trimmed the chin fungus, but, sitting there, white (ish) beard and all, the little one inquiring if I was Jolly Old St. Nick I had a premonition.

Two little granddaughters standing by my comfy recliner, a Christmas tree in the background, and me pretending to be Santa. At the center of it all, this recliner in which my keester was plopped. I had no intention of suggesting we enter into a haggle with the salesperson, feeling that was a little too audacious for me.

So, we put our heads together and came out of the store with two new beds, a brace of recliners and a new love seat. Then we went to shop for sheets.

It was later, as we rested from our adventures in spending that I mentioned how our backs might ache in the new chairs, at least until we get used to sitting in non-jacked up chairs. Micki agreed and said how nice it would be to have that problem. Sometimes you just need new furniture. As loath as I usually am to spend money, I'm relieved. These new chairs will have so many memories on them and in them. As always, it is tough to say goodbye to the old stuff. That's just my nature. Still, we were ready for new recliners. And I'm looking forward to getting used to them. We both are.