Published: May 31, 2009 11:54 pm         

The Off Season: Helicopters in the gutters, and other imponderables…

It is raining on this warm spring morning, and although it may sound a bit strange to you, I am comforted by the sound of the water running free in my gutters toward their downspouts. It was just a week or so ago that I cleaned the last of the maple seedlings out of them.

It is among one of my personality’s strange quirks, I suppose, but I can’t stand the sight of gutters filled to their brims with leaves and twigs and maple “helicopters.” I have driven past homes in which the gutters have bowed under the weight of it all; some have even been growing miniature groves of silver maples in the 4-inch-wide compost piles that trail along the edge of their roof’s eaves, and I wonder if the owners are simply waiting for pulp woodcutters to make them an offer.

I have vowed to myself that as long as I can muster the wherewithal to tie my boots, to climb a ladder, and to manage the breath and strength to pull a leaf blower’s starter cord, I’ll keep my gutters clean.

I know it is inexcusably stupid of me, but I have often been spotted on my roof as the first drops of rain from an oncoming storm are spattering around me, as I try to clean my gutters before the deluge sweeps them full.

Maple seedlings are a testament to the inescapable persistence of nature.

We had what seemed to be a near-record crop of the things around our place this spring, and despite the charm of seeing the “whirligigs” fluttering to the ground on breezy May days, their near-hypnotic soothing is soon replaced by the irritation and work they cause.

We sweep them off our deck, off our porches, off the sidewalks; we wonder how they can work their way under our car’s windshield wipers, how one spring we even had them drop down a 11/2-inch pipe to clog our bathroom vent line as if they were equipped with Norden bombsights. I have raked them up by the bushels, have been disgusted by their septic odor while scooping their wet carcasses from around my foundation, and now, we have already begun the summerlong process of pulling their sprouts from our flower pots and garden — anywhere, in fact, that there’s a bit of bare ground, even where there is not.

The whirligig — the paper-thin wing that is attached to the maple seed — is actually called a samara; it is referred to as a fruit because it is the end result of the trees’ fertilization. Samaras are perfectly engineered little pieces of work because the timing of their fall to the earth comes perfectly matched with spring’s windiest weeks. Not only are our yards and roofs and walks covered with the things, but if we look close enough, we’ll also see that they are carried into creeks and rivers, and they often remain airborne much longer than we can believe, all to help transplant even more maples to destinations unknown. In other words, these whirling little lopsided kites, often called “maple keys,” that we can find at our feet by the bushels are, in fact, pretty efficient travelers, dumbly preserving their own species in the most innocent ways.

I never cease to be amazed by what I see in my own little patch of the planet. There is a subtle insistence to the natural world that is and always has been a step ahead of me. Within a few days of mowing the lawn, I see the whitecaps of clover reappear; I always have flowers to water, weeds to pull, trees to trim. Rainwater moves the rock near my mailbox down to a spot a hundred yards away to pile it up in my yard, and every so many weeks I’ll shovel a few wheelbarrow loads of it and trudge it back up to a place where I want it.

The irises I love will eventually push my brownstone borders aside until I come along with a shovel and chop and thin their ranks and re-pile the rock in puzzle-pieced columns again. Just the other day, I stood in my mini-barn and was amazed to see that the deep green ivy I have let creep up one outside wall, has stealthily pushed its way into a tiny crack in the eave and is now sending a pale tendril into the darkness of the inside. Yesterday, I pulled a walnut seedling from a mulched flower bed near my deck, the half-shelled nut apparently dropped there by a squirrel or chipmunk.

I don’t use much pesticide and herbicide around our place because I know that in going after my pesky weeds, I may be poisoning a tree, that nailing a few ants might be taking out our struggling honey bees, too. Mostly, I pull the weeds and swat the bugs, but I won’t lie and say that I have never had a spray can of toxins in my hand; in some cases, a hoe or shovel or bare hands can’t compete with nature.

When I first moved to our homestead — almost 28 years ago — the woods that bordered our yard had encroached to within a few feet of our back door. I was less than half the age I am now, so with little more than an axe and a push mower and stubborn energy, I cleared out a hillside that now flourishes with hostas and ivy, irises and pines. I hauled in a dozen old railroads ties to hold the ground in place and stacked bucket-sized stones into retaining walls, yet I still pull and hack and sweat over the descendants of the hill’s original tenants. The wild grapevines still encroach, the poison ivy still waits along the wood line to invade, and maple seedlings sprout and silently grow under leafier plants hoping I’ll miss them…

Near one of those old ties, a tulip poplar seedling sprouted a few years ago; it is nearly 6 feet tall now. I planted what must be its parent in my front yard, for I have no other yellow poplars nearby; it is perhaps 50 feet tall now and graces its place near our driveway with wonderful fall color.

I have every intention of leaving the off-spring poplar right where it is — no transplanting it despite its being just a bit too close to a white pine I purposely placed nearby a few seasons ago. Like so many of those maple sprouts, it has emerged where it wants to be, and in this case, I will just leave it alone.

As is most often true, nature wins again.

Mike Lunsford can be reached at hickory913@aol.com, or by writing c/o the Tribune-Star, P.O. Box 149, Terre Haute, IN 47808. Go to www.mikelunsford.com to learn more about his book, “The Off Season: The Newspaper Stories of Mike Lunsford.”