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closeThere’s a patch of faded red rock next to my driveway. Until last Monday, it was cluttered with logs.
They weren’t big logs, but a few were eight to 10 inches thick. Two or three were more than 3 feet long.
They were the remnants of my recent battle to tame two 27-year-old hedge bushes. Through the years, the bushes had transformed themselves into trees several feet taller than our house.
Someone told me they’re named “Xylosma congestum.” That seems appropriate for transformers who try to congest my yard. So early this spring, using my pruning pole and my electric pruning chainsaw, I cut them back to a couple of 10-foot-tall stumps.
Both survived nicely and now sport flowing heads of young, leafy branches.
That battle left me with a big pile of brush. I disposed of the smaller stuff little by little. Each week I cut, crushed and crammed as much as I could into our big, green-waste disposal can. The last of it went to the curb last week. Only the bigger limbs remained. I feared they might be too big to be accepted as green waste.
Mamie said, “Why don’t you put them out next to the sidewalk with a sign saying ‘Free.’ ”
So Monday I cut the big pieces into “bite-size” lengths and stacked them on the sidewalk. Then I thumb-tacked a “FREE” sign to the butt of one of the bigger pieces.
I think it was the next morning when I noticed some of the wood was gone. It gave me the same feeling as getting a nibble while fishing.
Mamie said she noticed a man and a little boy walking away with wood in a cart.
That afternoon, I glanced up from the computer and saw the same man (I assume) walking down the street with a two-wheeled garden cart full of firewood. It was the last of the wood.
The term “a win-win situation” has become a tired cliché, but it fits this transaction perfectly. I won free disposal and he enjoyed free firewood. I don’t think he and I have ever met. I know nothing about him; still our lives touched, if only in a small way.
The human race is a fabric woven of millions of lives supporting each other, sometimes touching one another however briefly.
When you see a label on a shoe or a shirt that says “Made in China” or “Made in Haiti” do you ever wonder about the man, woman or child who held it before you did?
Contact Phil Dirkx at phild2008@sbcglobal.net or 238-2372.
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