Rethorykal Questions

Some kids just like sticks.  Sticks to carry around, sticks to walk with, imaginary javelins, machetes, any number of THINGS that a child might need to be able to wield…

My walk to school was along paved streets and through reasonably-well-manicured patches of gardens, but still, I could find a stick when I wanted one to carry as I walked to school.  Sometimes I’d store favorite walking sticks in the scraggly boxwood shrub just at the edge of the local dentist’s office property. That as as close as you could get to school property; the bush grew right against the concrete berm which held the posts of the school’s chain-link fence.

At home, sticks were even more functional — my father used his real machete to trim branches from trees down into stakes for tomato plants, zucchini, eggplants, loofa squash [that never set fruit, but it was fun to keep trying]…. sugar snap peas, morning glories…. These sticks were much taller, and had sharpened points to enable them to be set deeply enough to hold the vines and trellises.  Local spiders were fond of these structures as well, and the neighbors knew that flashlights shining in our yard on a summer’s evening meant not that there were burglars, but that we were out watching webs being built and moths being caught.

Now the tables turn a bit — I have crabapple, oak, chokecherry, river birch, and maple trees that need pruning, and my parents didn’t take the stakes with them when they moved — so what you see above is a sampling of the stakes I brought them.  Granted, I may also need to bring them some decent dirt, too, but the gardening continues…

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