cleanup

friday firesmith – after the flood

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For two and a half years the back part of my property was flooded. One seriously freakish rain event came in on the 12th of April, 2023, and over the next two years, three hurricanes would pass through, giving me a cat, but not giving me my land back.

It is fortunate I didn’t lose a dog, or a cat, during this time because there wasn’t enough dry land out here to dig a grave.

Some things I learned about having flooded property:

It’s cool as hell to kayak around a place you’ve only walked. That gets old pretty quick because having a flooded property means there so much more you cannot do.

Trees die when they’re submerged in water for too long. I lost a pine that was close to one hundred feet high, a Live Oak that had a serious lean to it fell over the first hours of the Flood, and it was nearly two hundred years old, and a good dozen or so trees close to the edge died, too.

The water finally dried up in July of 2025, and I had to scramble to get the fence back up before the dogs realized it was down. The Big Pine, well tall enough to tag the house, got the fence instead, and in that I was content.

Someone asked me if my compost pile was dead, and I hesitated. Dead? Yeah, as it turns out compost piles can drown. Mine did. Also, it takes a while for the engine to start turning again, and it’s finally cranked back up, almost a year after the water left.

But the environment of the back of my property has gone through a change. Many trees died, so there’s a lot more open sky between the branches. That brings in sunlight, and one thing I never truly grasped was this: floodwater, especially if it’s grown pond scum on top of it, is incredibly fertile.

A patch of land in the backyard had never seen floodwaters but it stayed wet for nearly two years. Soft rushes grew there, and a willow tree. I have never had either on my property. Pond birds, wood storks, herons, egrets, and ducks were spotted swimming or wading over the compost pile. The area was far too wet to mow, so now about a quarter of my backyard is still covered in weeds.

Worse, infinitely worse, the dead trees are all falling down now. My compost pile has been a favorite target of Water Oaks breaking apart and falling, but I have plans for these dead logs. They will be cut to serve as a perimeter of the compost pile.

The irony that I will now use more water keeping the compost pile wet, because of the overabundance of sunlight, is not lost on me.

When I first moved out here, twenty-five years ago or so, the back of the property was overgrown with weeds and vines. I hacked away at them, and saplings appeared once I fenced the area in, and released the dogs back there. The dogs scared the deer away, and the saplings grew. The first tree that grew tall enough to house a Cardinal nest died in the flood.

Nature carries on. My brief time here will be erased sooner or later, and all traces of my existence will disappear. Unless one of the trees I saved from vines and deer continues on and spreads its seeds throughout the property.

Oddly, I can accept that, if it is the only thing left of me on this earth.

Take Care,

Mike

Friday firesmith – in memory of trees: the fallen

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On April the 12th of 2023, a freak rainstorm dropped nearly a foot of water in six hours. The sound on the metal roof was surreal. A dull roar that simply did not end, the rain began with a vengeance at midnight and I dozed off and on until five then got up. There was no chance of getting the dogs out until the rain stopped. At six it was a slow drizzle and my little piece of the world had flooded.

The house was okay. We were safe. But the pond spilled over into the yard in a big way. Two more hurricanes followed that year. Most of the back of my property was underwater for two and a half years.

The Big Pine Tree near the pond died slow. The Leaning Live Oak fell over on Day One. A host of smaller trees fell or simply drowned in time.

The Slingshot Tree, a small water oak with two main branches died first. One of the last to die was the leaning tree where Sam, Sam, the Happy Hound dug under the roots to make a den. Sam would hunker down there, and Bert would try to drag him out. They would play like this for hours.

Lucas and Lilith played this game, too, much younger animals than Bert and Sam, they used the same toy in the same way. I remember a Black Racer making his way under those roots and stopping Sam from going after him.

Tuesday night I heard a thump and went back to sleep. The next morning the tree was on the ground.

I knew it would be. It had died late in the flooding, but was still dead. The trees surrounding the pond, so many of them are dead now, so many still standing, a feast for woodpeckers, but so many dead.

You can try to dictate terms to nature but then you are no longer living within nature. The drought lasted for eight months after the pond finally dried up. Now, rain has returned and we’ve gotten three inches of rain this week, which seems to be a lot but the fires in Georgia still burn east of here.

Homes destroyed, lives disrupted, smoke covers the eastern part of Georgia like the dire mists of Mordor. The sun rises red over in that part of the world. Their trees have burned, and mine have drowned.

I know most of the trees on my property. None fall within notice. I have been here long enough to see a place where no tree stood to have a tree, and the first bird nest. I have seen giants die and fall. I have seen small trees grow beyond my own height and reach for starlight.

But this day, I say to you this: A tree that holds memories of my pack has fallen.

These words are a memorial, and they are grief.

Take Care,

Mike

The tree broken, not yet fallen over. I still wonder how its root system held

Here it’s landed on the pile I started when I was able to start moving stuff out of the yard, and away from the fences. It landed with its kin. All the bushy looking stuff was once so shaded nothing grew there. The loss of tree has triggered a population explosion of smaller plants.