10/18/11 AN UNUSUAL SHRUB, A GOOD SHADE TREE AND A MODEST LITTLE PROPOSAL

STILL A FEW ROSES BLOOMING

EUROPEAN SPINDLE TREE

...COLORFUL FRUITS

BASSWOOD AS A STREET TREE

NOTE THE TOOTHED LEAF MARGINS AND HE HEART SHAPED LEAF BASE

...AND WINGED NUTLETS

Tuesday, 8;00 AM.  39 degrees, wind W, calm.  The sky is overcast but the barometer is up, predicting sunshine.
    Fountain Garden Park downthe hill from our place has a number of nice, unusual trees and shrubs.  One that is spectacular now is the European spindle tree, Eunomyus europeaus, kindred to the burning bush everyone knows so well. The great attraction of the spindle tree however is not fall leaf color, but its unusual and colorful fall fruit. It is now full of small pink fruits that split open to reveal bright red-pink  seeds.  It does not have much else to recommend it, but right now it is spectacular.
    A native tree that is just now turning yellow in Bayfield is the American linden, or basswood, Tilia Americana, in the basswood family.  It can be an excellent street tree given moderately good conditions.  There are other species of Tilia that make good tree and park trees, including the European, or little-leaf linden.  The Redmond linden is a hybrid and is a good shade tree.  Lindens bear small yellow flowers in the spring which are extremely fragrant.  The linden fruits are double, pea-like little nutlets, which are attached to a rather large winged appendage that gives them considerable mobility.
    I have been watching news of the Occupy Wallstreet movement, and have a modest little proposal to make regarding the charges that all the world’s ills are caused by stockbrokers and bankers.  It is based on how China rather routinely disciplines and controls  economic greed and illegal activity. 
    In emulation of the Chinese, I propose that periodically and at random, a suitable number of stock brokers and bankers be dragged to the public square and shot.
     Give the angry mob what it and every other angry mob throughout history has always wanted; blood running in the gutters, and heads on pikes.  The mobs provided powerful support for Mao, Stalin, Castro, Chavez and Hitler (how about one of the mob’s apologists organizing a nice little Crystal Nacht for those nasty  Wallstreeters and their Shylock neighbors).  Tossing body  parts to the crowds worked for the Roman emperors. Heads in baskets satisfied the mobs of the French Revolution. Why would it not work for 21st Century America? 
    For good measure, and to please every faction, a few government bureaucrats, and perhaps a few representatives of less than popular ethnic and religious minorities could be dealt the same fate, thereby satisfying everyone’s blood lust.  And of course we could go even a bit further to the left, like Pot Pol of recent Cambodian history, and shoot everyone who wears glasses, or more appropriate to our advanced society, anyone who can balance a check book.
    The only problem with my modest proposal is that historically severing heads from shoulders has never produced very positive results; never produced any wealth, never produced social justice, never produced freedom or democracy; never produced anything except the inevitable, iron fist of the dictator and  Napoleon’s “whiff of grapeshot.” 
    Anyway, I think my modest little proposal is worthy of serious consideration.  Isn’t class warfare fun?