This June it looks like Ireland in Mount Shasta, or at least, like Seattle. It has been raining (and hailing and snowing) for weeks so everything has that intense saturated green foliage color you only get when the sky tones are dim. Iris are just beginning to open out, and fruit to set on the pear, cherry and apple trees in the garden.

Around town, individual tree pruning of all the down wood we got back in the late January storm, has given way to the big commercial arborists with their boom trucks, up and down all the streets in our part of town pruning street trees away from the wires. This morning an old california box elder I have admired out my front window in all seasons, the one that reflects the late day's golden light back to me, got sliced down, chunk by chunk. I watched the two hard hat guys up in their cherry-picker whack it up and heave it down into Frank G's yard like too-thick slices of Pillsbury dough off a frozen cookie log. Well, oh well- it really was rotting from its center. It would have come down onto the auxiliary power line next winter again just as one-quarter of it did in January, leaving me without power for six days. Still, I'll miss its golden leaves in October, and the shield it provided from our huge dry sky, all summer.

Down at the south end of town at the old mill yard, there is about a football field's worth of dead trees just like it, piled up to a depth of six feet and more. That's a lot of wood, and shade, waiting for the chipper. Well- oh well! We all become dead wood ourselves sooner or later if we live long enough.