The year 1950 was a good time to tell the story of our great crack willow trees.
They began in the spring of 1850 when Grandpa was the pilot, the captain of the crew, on a raft of white pine that floated down the Susquehanna River. His 11-year-old nephew went along.
Cuttings were taken from a tree at Lock Haven. Two were carried in Grandpa’s pocket, the third he used for a cane on the walk 100 miles home.
The cuttings planted in front of his house grew easily, and four generations of our family enjoyed the beautiful trees.
They were untidy trees. Winds brought brittle branches to the ground, and the ground was strewn with their catkins in the spring and all summer long with their fallen, shining leaves, but it was never a hardship to sweep them up.
Every spring, the boys turned some of the willow witches into whistles. A rope swing was tied to a spreading branch. My brother built a comfortable rustic seat large enough for three in one tree.
He hunted for hours in the woods to get suitable branches for the attractive, durable seat. A rustic ladder went up the trunk; the two sides of the ladder extended above the cross pieces and were properly curved for a handrail to make the climb end easily.
We called it “The Woggle-roost.”
Baltimore Orioles and Their Nesting Habits
Baltimore orioles hung nests on slender, high branches. The blue jays, downy, nuthatches, and chickadees found their way from those trees to a suet shelf outside my bedroom window. The shelf had been half of a round cheese box lid.
The downs were the most constant visitors: the first to come in the fall, the last to go in the spring.
The blue jays came rarely but cleared the shelf when they did come. The chickadees and nuthatches ate out of my hand.
Mourning Cloak Family
Mourning cloak families grew up far out of our reach. One July day, the spiny caterpillars were hurrying down a willow, loosening their skins, getting ready to shed them.
Their leaf-eating days were past, the colony was dispersing, and each one was about to hunt a place to fasten a mat of silk to hook the end of its body and hang there while it changed from a larva to a chrysalid.
We caught as many as we could, put them in a barrel, and tied a muslin cover over it. In a few hours, all was quiet, and the cover sagged, heavy with caterpillars.
Four days later, the barrel was opened, and the muslin was thickly covered with healthy, brown chrysalids that squirmed funnily when touched.
Two weeks from the day the chrysalids were formed, the suspended shells were empty at six o’clock in the morning, and at the bottom of each one clung a soft, undeveloped butterfly.
At 10 o’clock, many were hardened and fully grown, and it was a pleasure to see 101 of the beautiful mourning cloaks, with dark brown wings bordered with a row of blue spots and a yellow band.
44659 by Nell Mcmurray