Willow Falls

We've been wondering what to call our big new house, and we've been using the name August House, since we moved in here in August and we kind of like the sound of it, but today the wind came up and made me wonder whether a new name was in order--Willow Falls.

The big willow tree in the back yard, an old timer more than a yard across, went down today, probably when the big wind came up over noon hour and switched directions. But it could have been any time, and it was due. The wife wasn't expecting anything like this when she arrived home this afternoon, and she called me to tell me the news. When I got home it was just as you see it here, keeled over and fallen into the rose bushes. That's how things lie in the back yard. I'll probably cut most of it out of there tomorrow.

The poor old thing didn't have much going for it any more. The wood the fall exposed was soft as sponges, and only about six inches of the trunk appears to have been alive. When I haul things out of there tomorrow, much of it just as well be hauled off with a scoop shovel it's so soft. But still heavy. I'm glad it didn't fall the other way.

I write this now at the end of the Ken Burns series on The War, on PBS. We watched much of it, though other things lie pressing for attention. The last episode saw the end come for the Germans and the Japanese armies both. Like the wind in our our tree, the impact of war had eaten away the strength of the two opposing armies, and there was nothing much left standing, so when the armies came pressing in, at some point the whole thing came down and brought an end to conflict.