There's a lot of noise outside-  truck noises, engines roars, beeping. Finally  have to stop blogging and get up and look. The city is finally cleaning up the mess outside from the storm. There's a front-loader that my friend, Teri, could drive, picking up the logs and branches and battering the giant trunk. I think the theory is that the giant fallen trunk will fall to pieces if the operator bashes into it enough. Strange. I'm just glad to see they are doing it because there was some trash talk about them not picking it up since it is not a city tree and it would be really unfair for my next-door neighbor to have to pay for it since the tree fell onto her yard. As it is, she had to pay to have the top of the tree removed from her yard because it was on her yard and legally neither the city nor the other neighbor was responsible to pay for it  ( storm + healthy tree = Act of God).  Now if they would just come and collect the giant wires that laying on the street, all would be back to normal. (The photo above is not from our street, but is the front of the huge football field of debris from the December on Cape Cod.)

All my neighbors are now eyeing their trees with a cynical glare. I am afraid that by spring they'll be a rush on taking them down and I'd hate to see our neighborhood denuded. We have lovely, old trees here: maples, oaks, European weeping willows, even some elms, and birches. They soften the small lots and jumbled houses. If people would just learn to have them properly pruned and not turn them into giant, inflexible toothpicks,  we'd be safer. In front of our porch are three birches - we lost one a few years ago. I've decided we need to buy two more this spring and plant them so we have a little stand of birch. I love their white, chalky, striated bark.

I saw the first advertisements for seedlings in the NY Times this week. I was so excited!  I don't plant from seed anymore, except for sunflowers and morning glories, but just seeing the seed packs and little buds lifted my heart on a cold, January day. I've been looking for some narcissis to pot inside but I appear to have missed the season. The Holland tulips are flooding the market right now and the supermarket was engorged with their colorful heads. I think I have to spend a little money and get several bunches over the weekend. I for one, am having my little tulip head colored also - those gray roots are peeking through the scalp, only they don't bring colorful flowers, just more gray.