Dot`sThoughts

Winter is finally showing it`s beautiful/ ugly side. Only about 6 inches of snow so far. it keeps starting to snow, but so far has only added a dusting. here I sit waiting to see if it will just be light flurries or turn into a real storm brfore it is thru. So pretty to look at as long as I am inside looking out-- but OH how cold it is getting to be and the furnace is running almost nonstop. .
Must confess that looking out the window and seeing the small wooded area covered with snow reminds me of the younger days. Where I grew up there was woods on one side and across the back of our properties. So I grew up playing in the woods, climbing trees when I was still real young, scaring our Mother whenever she looked out the back or side windows to see us up so high. She told me a few years before she died that she was most scared when seeing me following my older bros up so high. I will always be grateful that I learned real young so I could climb up after my little ones years later.
There was this one day when my twins were about 3 yrs old and I had made a sandpile for them to play their cars on. I was getting lunch ready when something made me feel I should recheck on the boys. I had just looked about 5 min. before. But, I went to the window and there playing was just one of the twins. So, outside I went to find the other son. At first I didn`t see him anyplace. Then something made me look up-- there going even further up the huge back tree was my 3 yr old and still climbing higher. I ran out and started climbing. When he saw me he started laughing and climbing even higher. My long ago experience allowed me to climb faster till I could reach him. Then the fun started as when I started carrying him down, he became frightened and grabbed at each branch that we passed. His hands would freeze on the limb and I would have to try to hold onto him and a branch at the same time to keep us both from falling. The other hand was used to pry his hand loose , lower us to the next lower branch before he could grab on again. This continued all the way down that tall tree- with him so scared about coming down that he kept grabbing every branch we passed and his hand freezing there. Seemed like ages before we were close enough to the ground to climb the rest of the way. Then was more fun as the first branch was over 5 feet off the ground and I just had to hold him tight and jump down the rest of the way . I feared I might fall on him since I couldn`t hold on to anything. He was so scared I didn`t think I ever had to worry about him doing that again-- at least till he was older.
The neighbors kids went after their Father, who came over to help, but I was almost off the tree by then. The neighbor told me " Why didn`t you yell, I would have gone up the tree after him for you. If you saw your little son way up in a tree, would you leave him there to go higher while you went after someone to help you? I think most people would do the same thing I did and hurry climbing up the tree hoping to reach him before he fell out of the tree. Another neighbors daughter asked me " Aunt Dot aren`t you going to spank him" I told her he was punished enough since he cried and was scared all the way down. I wasn`t realy her Aunt, but most of the kids in the neighborhood called me Aunt Dot.
Then a few minutes later I was out back talking to another neighbor when her daughter came in saying, Aunt Dot, Roger`1s up the tree again". Since she was one to exagerate a lot, her Mother just told her to go play. But, to me she sounded like she was serious, so I ran and looked out the window and sure enough there he was again climbing up the tree. So, this time I decided something had to be done before he got hurt. So, I got out the scout hatchet and a saw and started cutting off the lower limbs so he couldn`t reach them. All went well for another 10 years till the youngest son was almost three-- a little younger than his older bro had been. Of course, he couldn`t reach the lower branches, so I wasn`t worried.
Then came the day that he found another way to reach those lower branches. He had taken the big cart belonging to his older bros and leaned it up against the tree with the handle side up. He had his tricycle sitting beside the upturned cart. Then he was able to climb up, stand on his trike, from there he climb onto the top of the handle end of the cart and low and behold- there he was climbing the tree. I managed to reach him as he was starting to get onto those smaller weaker branches. I was getting scared this time because I wasn`t sure those thinner branches would hold both our weight as I brought him back down to the larger branches. One good thing was that he wasn`t scared, so he just laughed all the way down, holding onto me instead of the branches.
Well, you probably already guessed what happened next. I stood on a ladder and cut off more of the lower branches.
Years later this old tree finally died. It fell during the night. We got up to see it laying across our back yard. The Lord was sure with us that time. Sitting behind the tree was a neighbors building, on another direction was another neighbors Garage and the third side would have landed on our Building that was the grocery store at that time. So, it fell into the only open place across our back yard. It was so large that some of the branches laid onto the Store roof, but did no damage. We were days cutting it up with a chain saw-- into logs the size to fit our Ben Franklin. We covered the logs and let them age for about three years before we burned them.
So we finally won against that old tree.
Funny how watching those flurries outside and seeing the snow covered wooded ares brought to mind. At least it has gotten from 9 degrees F at 8am to now close to 30 degrees. I have emptied my dogs frozen water and refilled the dish already 3 times today and it is frozen again. But she is still insisting on staying outside in her coop so I need to do my best to keep fresh unfrozen drinking water out on the porch for her.