Telmarines and wiktory

[mrissa]

I can't tell whether the vertigo feels really bad tonight because it is or because of contrast with the complete lack this morning. Ah well.

Those of you who have visited us and looked out the back windows or doors know that the back of our property is wooded. There is a wooded strip starting with our southern neighbors and extending north of us until you get to the lake. Except that today our northern neighbors have decided to be Telmarines. They hired a company to come in and dribble gasoline on our lawn and drive and walk all over it and park right in front of our house, blocking our mailbox--and guess what? The mailbeing does not deliver here when you block the mailbox--and making a great deal of noise and smell and chaos all day long. Hmm. Okay, to be fair to the Telmarines, I doubt this was their primary aim in hiring this company. Their primary aim seems to have been getting rid of lots and lots of trees, most of them healthy young birches and poplars, and also a bunch of scrub bush and underbrush beneath them. We were already, since we live in Minnesota, nr lk in real estate parlance. (Because--as I have said before and will say again--the whole state is nr lk.) Now we have lk vw, not just in winter but all year round. I like lakes, or I wouldn't live here. I even like this lake. But it turns out I like trees, too, and we were not short of lakes. And who is it that brings in machines to chop down the trees and make unpleasant noises and build a bridge over the Ford of Beruna? Telmarines. I know this one. I read it ages ago.

I'm sure I will get used to it. But I like being able to completely ignore our neighbors behind us for most of the year. I will miss it. It makes me want to plant a row of alternating ash and fir on the side yard until I'm sure they're going back through the door in the air to Telmar. (Not that I'd cut them down if they did go.) I would even be fine if it was a row of cherry and plum. Maple and spruce. I am flexible. I am just not terribly flexible about lack of trees.

(Note: I'm quite clear that this is their property and they may do as they wish with it. There are miles and miles between "you have no right" and "I wish you wouldn't.")

In more wiktorious news, the ban on brussels sprouts in the house has ended! I am so pleased. timprov was drawn in by a stalk of beautiful fresh ones at Byerly's, and I roasted them, and we discovered that while neither markgritter nor timprov is now turning cartwheels of joy over the prospect of brussels sprouts, neither are they fleeing through the door in the air to Telmar to get away from the smell, so we have an approach that will allow me to get my brussels sprouts fix without anyone else feeling that their home is unbearable. And the roasted brussels sprouts were nice enough and brussels sproutsy enough that I do not feel that I will pine away for braised or steamed. So there's that.

Comments

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

I wish King Peter were here to make regulations against the cutting down of good trees.

And, for that matter, against sending young fauns off to school.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I have never had much faith in King Peter. For me it's King Edmund or nobody.

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

sounds like hideous, unnecessary tree carnage. So sorry.

[kizmet-42.livejournal.com]

Roasted Brussel sprouts. Possibly the greatest way to cook that vegetable, ever.

I wouldn't have voted for flowering pear trees until this week, but they are lovely - spring with flowers, fall with absolutely gorgeous color. If I didn't have plans for dogwoods, I'd probably go with the pears.

[clarentine]

If you do, you might seriously consider the Cleveland Select variety as being less prone to sudden, explosive collapse within about ten years of planting...but you might also wish to take a look at the various Amelanchier species as being small of stature, gorgeous of structure and bark, and every bit as colorful in the autumn: http://www.paghat.com/serviceberry.html.

[fidelioscabinet.livejournal.com]

Bradfords and their ilk are supposed to be very vulnerable to ice-breakage--I don't know how much ice issue you have in your area, but I do hate to see a tree lose limbs big-time--luckily, they usually aren't tall enough to take out power lines, but still, it's not a happy prospect for the tree.

[pameladean]

No, wait, what? So you get to see the lake now, but what do they get to see now? I'd sic Tolkien's ghost on them, myself. (For some reason I feel that Lewis's is very busy.)

P.

[reveritas.livejournal.com]

... dealing with that awful Prince Caspian movie.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I thought of orcs, but orcs do not conveniently go through the door in the air to Telmar; you have to kill them, and I don't actually want that.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Oh, and also we suspect--at least I suspect--that what they get to see is their new, much more aggressively manicured backyard. Whee.

[laurel]

Ick.

I hate tree carnage like that.

My parents live on a hill above a lake and they left the hillside wooded with just a meandering woodchip path and steps made of logs that leads down to the lakeshore. Rest of the neighbors? Chopped everything down in their yards. Better view of the lake, I suppose, but a very bland view.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

That's just it: who wants to see the lake as a hole in the ground with water in? The lake needs to have lake grass and trees and like that. Sigh.

[coraa.livejournal.com]

jmpava turns out to like brussels sprouts roasted, but not boiled or steamed. I like them either way, which I get from my mother, who also likes them boiled, chilled, and dipped in aioli or mayonnaise.

I also like them shredded, sauteed briefly in a little butter, and tossed with chopped apples or pears and walnuts or pecans.

In conclusion: hurray for brussels sprouts.

[txanne.livejournal.com]

Instead of butter, try bacon grease.

[pnkrokhockeymom.livejournal.com]

Um yah.

[skzbrust.livejournal.com]

Roasted. Never thought of that. Must try. Yes. How long, at what heat; or what indicates that it is time to cry hold! enough! with the roasting experience?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I tossed them in olive oil and sea salt with some peeled cloves of garlic and put them on a foil-lined cookie sheet. They went into a 350-degree (F) oven for 35 minutes; they were starting to sort of caramelize at that point, on the side that hit the foil. I suspect they would have been fine if I'd sort of shaken the pan and left them in longer, too; they may be very forgiving little things.

[apis-mellifera.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, very forgiving. We like them roasted until they're crispy all over their outsides around these parts. Quite delicious.

[aedifica]

I did that tonight! I think it would have been even better if my brussels sprouts hadn't been frozen (they were from the CSA but nevertheless arrived completely frozen, and I'm confused about that) but still pretty tasty. Thanks for the instructions.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Glad to be useful.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry for your loss.

My house in Lancaster had a small paved back yard. It was part of a row built in 1872 for workpeople, and the front door opened directly onto the street. (The other way around, when you came in, you were directly in the room lined with bookshelves and desks with computers. People took one step in and said "What a lot of books!") At the back, behind the little yards of the row of houses, was a row of trees. Behind that was a carpark and beyond that were some modern houses and then a canal, and town, and eventually the Lake District mountains, which we could see from our bedroom on clear days, occasionally with snow in winter.

The row of trees cut off sight and sound of the car park and the modern houses, and could be seen from our bedroom and the kitchen. When Z was a baby, I'd take him to look at the trees when he was fretting, and this nearly always worked. Directly behind our house was a scotch pine, a horse chestnut, a rowan and a beech with leaves that went the exact shade of carandol's hair every autumn. The trees had been planted at about the same time as the houses, I think, but some of them were second generation -- the rowan for instance. Or they might have been there before, they were all native trees. Maybe it was all trees and they cut down some to make the canal and more to make our house and then more again to make the modern houses and the car park and these were all that was left of the time when a squirrel could go from the mountains to the sea without touching the ground.

And they didn't belong to us. I knew that.

One Thursday morning, when Z was three and I'd been living in that house about seven years, the council, to whom they did belong, decided without warning to cut them down. No amount of pleading or begging or crying or desperate telephoning would stop them.

I'd always thought stories about people chaining themselves to trees were ridiculous, until that day, when all I could think was "Where can I get chains in a hurry?"

The guys with the orange coats and the chainsaws talked like orcs, but the people in the planning office who had wantonly decided that they had to cut those trees down talked like Saruman.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Ack ack. I am sorry, even though Z is much more than three by now.

They can't take our own trees, at least, which is a comfort. At first I thought the guys with the chainsaws and all were taking out the dead or diseased ones, which would make sense, make room for the healthy ones to grow. But no.

I just don't understand buying that house at all if you didn't want a tangle of trees in your backyard. There were other houses.

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

The past three years, I've attended the Church of the Omnipotent Poplar*, and the idea of just cutting them down bugs me. Our entire lab is poplarcentric! They suck up potentially bad things and harbor interesting red bacteria! They can be planted as a cash crop! They are happy and green-shiny-leafed in cutting form!

*not actually omnipotent, especially around TNT

[lake-effected.livejournal.com]

the people who have the property behind mine were busy turning woods to lawn today, and I felt a similar sadness and impulse to go madly tree planting at the end of mine. I wish they wouldn't have - they must have a couple of acres, and I don't know why the trees at this back end would be a problem. Even though they also have the right to do what they will with their property. I guess I don't understand a world in which acres of grass is better than some grass and acres of tree.

Plus, watching trees come down? It is like watchng a death. They are so clearly living things...

[timprov.livejournal.com]

I would totally go for fruit trees or maples out there.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Where did I put my "shocked" icon....?

[columbina.livejournal.com]

There are miles and miles between "you have no right" and "I wish you wouldn't."

A fundamental truth which, I think, is not well-understood by a large segment of the current populace. Alas.

I had to go look up "Telmarine." I've read the books but only two of them ever did anything for me and I could not have told you anything about Prince Caspian in the latter day except that it contains a Prince named Caspian.

We got some really fresh young Brussels sprouts the other day. There are ways to make the old ones tasty (shredding them helps), but if the planets align and you can find really young ones (which means you grow them yourself or know a farm that does, because industrially, all the young ones go into frozen foods), it's an amazing thing.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I found that I had remembered Prince Caspian with a great deal more astronomy than it actually had. I remembered it as "the astronomy one." The actual Narnian astronomy in it was fairly minimal. Ah well.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

My mom's previous house was out of town, in a rural area with a pasture across from the front yard where the owners ran longhorn, and in the back, off to the side, a large bass tank that we owned 3/4 of. The person who lived in the house that backed up on to the 1/4 of the bass tank that we didn't own was nicknamed Clearcut Charlie by my parents, as he refused to let any straggler that was in the zone between lawn-height and "tall tree with no lower branches" height stay.

And once I learned that his day job was a prison guard in a town 45 minutes away, where he sat on a horse all day holding a rifle, supervising prisoners in the fields, suddenly I recognized his obvious desire not to have anything in his land that someone could hide in or behind.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Understandable does not always mean pleasant, to be sure!

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

The thing that converted me to liking brussels sprouts (I never hated them, but this was the thing that changed it to active liking) was sprouts lightly steamed then tossed in butter with flaked almonds in a hot pan. Butteriness and crunchiness and just a bit of caramelisation. Yum. I think I might have to investigate the roasting as well, though.

The thing that got me liking parsnips was parmesan-baked parsnips (http://www.deliaonline.com/recipes/cuisine/european/english/parmesan-baked-parsnips.html).

I'm sorry about the trees.

[reveritas.livejournal.com]

This is dumb, we need to change situations. I wish our next-door neighbor would whack the tree that's in his yard but half in our yard, to the point where they had to build the fence with a (LARGE) notch in it at the bottom to accommodate the roots, and it rains needles over our yard and roof all day and all night. If we don't rake them for a month we get about 6 big garbage bags of needles. But as with your problem, it's his tree, and we can't tell him what to do. But lord that thing is a pain. I have no sunshine in the backyard and totally acidic soil because of it.

[mamapduck.livejournal.com]

You may not stop them from cutting down their trees but you do have every right to insist their workers stay off your lawn (everyone, in chorus...) since they cannot behave respectfully. I'd be billing Telmar for the replacement of gasoline damaged grass. I also think planting your own trees is a fine idea. You like trees and you're entitled to have your own if you so choose.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I think billing Telmar is a nuclear option I prefer not to invoke with the neighbors if I can help it. Mentioning that there was a problem--because I don't think they were home to see it--is far more likely for us.