When I was renting, a tree once fell in the front yard of my duplex. It didn’t fall on the house or on my car. And since I had no wood-burning fireplace, I had no interest in it.
When The Bride informed me that the magnolia in our front yard was looking sickly, I likewise had no interest in it, but came up with a plan anyway. We were having dinner guests, including a gardening guru. So I asked Gardener Mike about the “sickly” magnolia, to which he gave me a diagnosis without even having to see the tree.
“Magnolias,” Gardener Mike says, “like acidic soil, which we don’t have in Texas. So just put some iron around it.”
What an easy chore, I thought. Give the tree a couple of pills, and I’m done.
But, oh boy, I was such an arbor illiterate. This might be the toughest chore in the annals of home ownership. The Bride bought the needed supplies, handed me a rusty iron spike and a hammer and informed me of the plan.
“Drive this into the ground around the drip line,” she says, explaining to me that the “drip line” is where the branches of the magnolia end.
“All the way around. Pull the stake out. Fill the hole with iron granules. Once you’ve completed the circle, move in and to another circle.”
This, she says, is called concentric circles.
I call it, The Ring of Hell.
“Keep going until you’re at the base, and the bag is empty,” she says.
I have a 12-inch spike, a regular-size hammer and a 40-pound bag of Ironite. You do the math.
So I drive the spike into the rock-hard ground. And I pull and grunt and tug and pry out the spike, then fill the little bitty hole with the little bitty granules of iron.
I slide over and hammer in another hole. My father’s voice comes to me out of the wind, singing the only song I have ever heard him sing: “John Henry was a steel-drivin’ man.”
Clang. Clang. Clang. Clang. Grunt. Grunt. Grunt. An hour later, and I’m hearing Johnny Cash sing another line to that song:
“I’ll die with my hammer in my hand.”
My neighbor pulls up as I’m about to finish my first circle.
“It must be chore day,” he says, laughing.
It being an Olympic year, I consider practicing the hammer throw. But I decide to let him live, and drive the stake in the ground. By now, I have learned why vampire hunters use wooden stakes. My hands are blistered, raw and red. I am delirious. I almost pour my cola into a hole and Ironite into my mouth.
Four hours later, I have determined that the bag of Ironite is replenishing itself. The Bride suggests that I have sunstroke. But with her help, the chore is completed. We agree that if the magnolia ever needs iron again, we will use my medicine and not Gardener Mike’s.
It’s called an ax.
