In my "Saving Grace" entry, Keith, five years ago, had effectively glued together a sixty foot tall, storm damaged tree, and most recently I was left with a heap o’ dirt unceremoniously dumped on a spirea hedge across the yard.  One thing has everything to do with the other; we are saving Grace again. 

Back to the maple; I’ve named her Grace.  On the ravine side of it, there was a retaining wall - a very poorly built retaining wall.  This engineering disaster was leaning, cracked, and in danger of falling into the ravine possibly taking the maple with it.  It was a potentially dangerous eyesore we’ve wanted to do something with since we moved into the house nine years ago.  Burying the wall seemed to be the best solution; taking it down completely would possibly compromise the stability of the tree.  Estimates were expensive, and when living in a 100 year old house, inside renovations take precedent.   

No one knows exactly why or when the wall was built; it really serves no purpose.  One neighbor thinks it might have been built in the seventies.  It was then when the house was raised to upgrade what is referred to around here as a “Michigan basement.” A typical Michigan basement is really not much more than a dugout; it usually has a dirt floor, brick walls, and a very low ceiling.  The fruit cellar in our present basement still has brick walls, and the brick columns throughout the basement remain, but the remaining walls are now cinder block, and the floor and stairs are poured concrete.  Our neighbor thinks the man who owned the house at the time used the left-over cinder blocks to construct the wall just because he liked to tinker and build, (which is evident from some of the rather odd “improvements” inside the house).  Our other neighbor, who just turned 97 years old (Happy Birthday, Gary!), doesn’t remember why or when it was built, but he remembers when it was “plumb and square,” which it hasn’t been in the last twenty or so years, he said.       

I finally got the dirt-ball rolling this summer when a friend of mine had a couple of yards of soil left over from a project that he was looking to dump.  Ah-ha!  Free dirt!  And if you’ve read any of my other blog entries here, you know that “free is good” is my motto.  Though the two yards was just a pimple of dirt in comparison to what was needed, it was a start. 

There were a couple of construction projects happening around town, and Keith contacted both companies to find out if they were looking to get rid of fill dirt.  Yes, they were!  Both companies sent someone out to the ravine to look, and written estimates were mailed – both came in at a couple thousand dollars.

In comes our neighbor – same neighbor who plotted with Keith to glue the maple back together.  His company was raising a house, much like our house was raised, to dig a basement below.  We were more than welcome to the soil, he said, and he and Keith made plans.     

Keith dismantled a set of rotting railroad tie and wooden stairs next to the wall, dumping the remains at its base to be buried, (the rumble in the picture).  He removed three layers of cinder blocks with a sledge hammer and a lot of sweat, so that the soil could be sloped more gradually.  The cinder blocks were dumped over the side of the wall too.

The first load of soil was brought in mid-August.  When it was dumped on the hedge I was more than a tiny bit perplexed ... and just a bit miffed.  I thought they’d just maneuver between the two maples out front, cut across the front yard, and dump the soil over the wall as my friend had when he brought the first two yards.  Why it was dumped so far from it needed to be, and on top of my hedge to boot, was something I couldn’t understand.  “Trust us,” they said, “we know what we’re doing.... We fixed the tree, remember?”  Yes, I remembered.

Over two months passed, and nothing moved.  No more trucks, no more soil, and I watched the hedge wither.  The “Trust us” idea began to seem a little bit harder for me to swallow.  Me of little faith.  The last week of October, on one of my days off work, they came … and they came … and they came.  Truckload after truckload of soil was delivered, and I now saw why they couldn’t maneuver through the two maples, and across the front yard.  I hadn’t realized how big the trucks were – 30 ton trucks with 16 foot dump beds on hydraulic lifts.  There was no way these could maneuver through the front yard.  And if they did manage to squeeze through the two maples out front, backing up to the wall was just too hazardous.  The already leaning wall would be in danger of collapsing under the weight of the trucks.    

The dumping process was both amazing and a bit scary to watch.  Essentially an elevated “pier” was built.  With each truck-load, the pier got longer and the trucks backed down it further.  I have to admit I was a bit nervous watching them, afraid the dirt would slide, and the truck would end up in the ravine. 

Once we had all the soil that was needed, my neighbor drove the Bobcat over the following weekend, moving, contouring, and smoothing out the soil in a freezing early November rain.

With a lot of generosity from him, and a little more than 300 yards of soil, the maple was once again saved.  As Keith says, “that tree isn’t going anywhere anytime soon”.  And look at this big new garden I have now; I’ve got all winter to plan it.  In the meantime, as all the neighborhood kids have found, it makes a pretty darned good sledding hill.

People always looked surprised when I tell them that I haven’t been in a shopping mall in nearly nine years. It’s not because there aren’t malls around here – I can drive a little more than twenty-five miles in any direction and end up in a mall parking lot (except west; driving west would leave me twenty-five miles offshore, in the icy waters of Lake Michigan). Saving gas and drive-time isn’t the reason I don’t shop the malls either.

A while back, KC Compton wrote a blog titled “On Being A Locavore”; a locavore is a person who eats locally-grown food. I think “locastore” should be a word; someone who shops locally, supporting local businesses and by doing so, helping keep the local economy alive.

I read a “Letter to the Editor” last week in The South Haven Tribune, our small town newspaper. Ester Hansen wrote, “Did you know, local folks, that if you don’t support the merchants, many of them may have to close? Yes, they get a lot of business in the summer from the tourists, but that doesn’t stretch into the winter months. ... We need to keep this town vital and active.

“Before buying gas and driving out of town, look around in the local stores. Did you realize that your local merchants give back to the community? Unlike some of the big box stores, these folks help support many of our local events. They are constantly being asked to give to some cause or activity.”

The letter Ester wrote interested me; I had a conversation with a friend about the same subject earlier in the week. I was able to contact Ester by phone, thanking her for taking the time to write the letter to remind us – especially during the busy Christmas shopping season and a season in which many charities are asking for donations to help make Christmas a bit better for those less fortunate – how important the local merchants are to this community. Ester has been a South Haven resident for decades; I am just a year shy of my first decade here in South Haven. We talked about what a great small town this is to live – everyone is so friendly and generous.

One of those generous people is my friend Chris, who I had talked with earlier about shopping locally, and a person who is tirelessly involved with working with many of the local charities. Chris has always been an advocate for shopping locally. “I know these people,” she says of the merchants. “I shop locally because these are my neighbors. They are taking care of me in so many ways. They take care of our kids ... not only by making sure they are safe on the streets, at the skate park, or the ice-rink; they buy their Boy Scout popcorn, Girl Scout cookies and they are who I turn to for help with preparing food baskets. They deserve our support.”

Visiting the local merchants is quite a different experience than shopping in big box stores, or department stores. “Cindy! How are you? And Keith and the girls; how are they doing?” “You’ve got to smell this; Fraser fir scented lotion and hand soap. Oh, you gave it to Jan last Christmas? I spent the most wonderful day with her last week.” “Hhmmm … no, I don’t think we have any rosemary scented candles this year; I’ll look through the catalogs though, and give you a call if I find any.” And at the shop next door: “Rosemary candles … a gift for sentimental reasons? No, but I have rosemary scented incense; will that work? Here, here…just take it, no charge. It doesn’t cost much, and it’s Christmas.”

I asked the clerk at the toy store if she had a black lab Webkin, this decade’s version of Beanie Baby stuffed animals, only Webkins come with an on-line virtual world. It was a Christmas gift for Shannon, my youngest, who is best buddies with our new black lab puppy, Marquetta. The clerk searched through a big basket of the things, came up empty handed, then went to shelves stacked with them, and found the last one. She explained the Webkins in the basket were discounted for Christmas, but because she was sure the black lab was on sale at one time or another, shhhhh, don’t tell anyone, but I could have it at the sale price (oops, I guess I just spilled the beans).

And then there are the store greeters. “Hello, and welcome to Walmart” is not in their vocabulary. In fact, their only vocabulary is a series of woofs. There’s Mugsy at Props For the Home.

Willie at Ducy’s General Store has his own comfy place behind the cash register.

And Booker and Dewey sit opposite each other, appropriately, like bookends at Black River Books.

I do not mean to imply that I don’t have occasion to shop in the big-box store here in town, or make the drive to a department store in one of West Michigan’s “big cities”: Holland, Kalamazoo, or the twin cities of Benton Harbor and St. Joseph. Neither am I saying that employees at these bigger chain stores aren’t friendly, courteous, or offer a high level of customer service. They do, and some of these stores support our schools and charities. They also offer similar products than I can get in town at a less expensive price (rosemary incense and it’s-not-really-on-sale sale priced Webkins aside).

It’s the small-town familiarity that I prefer … and not the familiarity of walking into any Walmart in the nation and finding the same thing in the same place as in any other Walmart. It’s the friendly familiar faces that I see outside their stores cheering for our school sports teams, at high-school and middle school concerts, town festivals, local events, or just walking down the sidewalk. As my friend, Chris, said, “These people are my neighbors.” And neighbors helping neighbors is the back-bone of any thriving community.

And to the entire thriving GRIT community, I wish you a Happy Holiday Season.

Fifteen over-grown Bridal Veil spirea form a hedge at the top of our ravine, running alongside the sidewalk. I didn’t plant it – it came with the house and the six maples, one huge smokebush, a Seven Sisters rambling rose, and three straggly lilacs. That was it as far as the landscaping went on this town lot of nearly an acre – all of it planted decades and decades ago before anyone left of the old neighbors can remember.

I dislike the hedge. It’s overgrown. Most of it doesn’t get enough sun and as a result is as straggly as the lilacs which I removed because they never bloomed in the shade of a maple. In addition, it’s a Japanese Beetle magnet; in July a moving cloud of iridescence rises from it as the insatiable plant-hungry beetles emerge from the ground. I'd rip the whole thing out if it weren't keeping the sidewalk from falling down the short, but steep bank, and into the ravine. That, and for one or two weeks in late spring it redeems itself with cascading branches of white, arching over the bank like waves about to crash onto the garden below.

In a classic case of Be Careful What You Wish For, I returned home from work one day to find a large portion of the hedge buried under a pile of dirt. I knew the dirt was coming; I just didn’t think it’d be dumped on top of the spirea…..which is across the yard from where I needed it.

And why and where we needed the soil is a story unto itself, and has to do with a very special maple.

The day after Thanksgiving, I finally was able to rake leaves. The time between the bulk of them falling and our first snow was so short that most of them never got raked. Even the leaf sucker trucks that come through and vacuum leaf piles that are raked to the curb didn't get their job done on time....the snow-plows turned up piles of leaves along the with snow. The temperature reached into the fifties though on Thanksgiving Day, the snow melted, and we probably wouldn’t get another chance to rake before winter set in for the season.

All the leaves have fallen off the trees; every branch is bare … except for on the big Norway outside our back door. A few leaves remain, still stubbornly clinging to the branches, holding on and refusing to let go. I laughed, thinking it must be the glue running through the tree’s veins that hold them there.

Glue? Yep, you read correctly. Glue. When the weather warms in March, I like to tease my husband by saying, “Spring must be on the way; the glue is running.” While all the other maples have sap running, this huge one – at least 60 feet tall – has glue running through it.

Five years ago, we had an unbelievably horrific wind storm. Crack! I've never heard anything so loud. The maple split right down the center – a split twelve feet long, and wide enough for a small child to pass through. We were sick. How do you replace the grace and beauty of a mature tree – something that has lived since before you were born, and by all rights, should be something that lives on long after you are gone? It was especially devastating because we had to have an equally large one that had been struck by lightning taken down the previous year.

I had my boss, an arborist, come take a look. He said because of the extent of the damage, and the close proximity to the house, he'd take it down immediately. Or in a last ditch effort, a tree company may be able to put an industrial sized bolt through it, pinning the two halves together. My immediate response was to plant four trees in the near vicinity – an American Hornbeam, a serviceberry, a white spruce, and a New Horizon Elm, (a fast growing hybrid resistant to Dutch Elm disease).

Keith’s response was quite different. He refused to let it die - or to listen to sound advice. He and the neighbor schemed ways to save it; the best plan they concocted being to saw off the smaller of the two halves up near the top of the split, cable the trunk together, and tar the split. Did he listen to David, my boss? Did he pay attention to the web-sites I showed him: one titled “Can These Trees be Saved?” which had a photo that was an exact replica of our tree with the caption underneath that read, “Say Farewell to a Friend", or another site that jokingly suggested trying wood glue. Of course not. Stubborn man.

A week later, bright and early, as I was heading out the door for work, they came: our neighbor, who owns a construction company, a crew of five guys, a backhoe and a come-along. Surgery was about to commence. I was glad I was going to work.

I was kept posted throughout the day about how the life saving heroic surgery was going. The solution this surgical team came up with – and I am still, five years later, trying to figure out how they came up with it – was to glue the thing back together. GLUE! Two big five gallon – maybe ten gallon, I forget, it was a long time ago – drums of carpenter’s glue. Forty-five dollars per drum – that part I do remember. They poured it down the crack, and cabled the tree together up above the crotch. My tree-surgeon husband, (doesn’t every woman want to be married to a surgeon?), then requested I bring home pruning paint. He went through four cans of the stuff, sealing the split, still oozing glue. I think he used cement in there somewhere also, but I wasn’t asking. I’m honestly surprised he didn’t turn it into a silver maple by covering it in duct tape.

Poor guy, he truly believed this would work – that he’d save the tree. I wondered how we were going to explain to the tree service guys why their chainsaws were gumming up when they were called in to cut it down.

But it did work – half a decade has passed, and the tree is flourishing. A friend told me this proves the resilience of nature. He is right, but I also think it shows the tenacity of man – the willingness to take a risk; to be stubborn enough to not give up when the odds are stacked against you. My husband refused to give up, and the tree responded beautifully. It has become somewhat of a legend among people who know the story. It’s the first thing they want to see when I show them around the yard, and people I haven’t spoken to in a while always ask, “How’s Keith’s maple?” One of my co-workers at the nursery, with only a touch of sarcastic humor, now recommends wood glue for storm-damaged trees.

But what’s all this got to do with a damaged hedge on the other side of the yard? There’s more to follow ... along with another three hundred yards of dirt.