Saturday on the Street

In 1830, in South Portland (known then as Cape Elizabeth) a New England farmhouse was built and its barn completed by 1848.  The town’s population was 1,696 people and only six families lived on the street where the farm was located.  The farm most certainly had significant acreage.  

In 1999, South Portland’s population had grown to 23,324, and the last remaining farmland surrounding this farmhouse was sold off to make a development of six homes.  In modern times developers put their road wherever best suits their plan but in 1830 the builders sited the home thoughtfully, based upon the sun’s path; they needed to maximize the solar gain as a heat source.  The home’s location then determined where went the developer’s road and the old front yard was paved to put in a street named in honor of the developer’s daughter.  The home, which we purchased in 2012, was left with a smaller, but still full sun front yard, enough space to garden and grow food and fruits.  

We have felt guided here in creating a healing space.  Neighbors have brought wounded birds into our garden, tucking them under the plants, as a place to heal.  Young Mothers bring their infants to gaze and we gift them vine ripened tomatoes.  We grow less as a matter of sustenance and more as a gift to be given, to be shared.  

Saturday on our street was very active.  Art work arrived from Chicago, from our dear friend Laurie LeBreton, a sculptor whose work combines handmade paper and mixed media.  She explains, “I work to access something beyond our concrete world and to find meaning and comfort as I do so. Recent themes have included healing, refuge and ritual.”  If yard placards tend to promote politics, Laurie’s speak to art and healing.  We embraced Laurie’s generosity and eagerly put them on our side of the street.  https://www.laurielebreton.net/

Also on Saturday, very large gooseneck trailers arrived to unload massive paving equipment, parked on the other side of the street.  A dialectic began between the mechanized and the natural.  If our “Orwellian” week was a “heavy equipment summer camp,” then this week has been about “massive paving equipment and road grinding at night.”  My son was over-the-moon delighted.  On Sunday night the City began grinding streets here, and the equipment has moved to several other jobs in town.  Nightly we have driven to see them work.  

Also on Saturday our work on the invasive Norway Maples continued.  Our friend Nate arrived, a journeyman carpenter, master of many trades, and he brought tools for tree work.  Nate taught my son how to use a come along, how to sharpen a chain saw, and to use the Phythagorean Theorem to calculate where the tree would fall.  My son put on his work boots and got busy.

Norway Maples are not native to America.  They were brought here first in 1756, by a nurseryman in Philadelphia, and became popular as an ideal street tree.  During the 1970s when the Dutch Elm Disease decimated the urban canopy, the Norway Maples became ever more prominent, but the trees promote a monoculture and grow rapidly, spreading seeds by the wind.  They shade out competition.  Because they grow fast, their wood grain is long, not tight, and they easily sheer and crack in heavy weather, which has become increasingly more prominent here in Southern Maine.    

Two years ago, during a late autumn wind storm, a Norway Maple, with 8” trunk, split and fell onto our swimming pool.  Thankfully we were able to repair the pool.  Last winter, a much larger Maple, 18” diameter, splintered and fell into the neighbors yard.  It leaned precipitously, and my intuition told me not to DIY but to get help.  

Nate used the “come along” – a sort of ratchet winch – to direct the tree away from the neighbors yard and to his designated spot. My son worked the come along, tightening the line by cranking to pull the tree down, as Nate cut into the trunk.

It took a village but the tree is felled, and we have firewood for our winter.