At first, all I had been told about Austin's Mountain Cedars was that the pollen made the evening skies a beautiful purple and provided for amazing sunsets. Liars!
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| Isn't that a lovely shade? |
It turns out, that the tree is really a juniper, not a cedar. The official Latin name is, Juniperus ashei.
I studied a little Latin:
juni for "worthless" + perus for "plant" and ashei which is the word for "hateful." Worthless plant, hateful.
For the first year, I was kind of like...
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| Could explain my grades that year. |
I moved back to Fort Worth where the early cowpokes either strung-up or shot every mountain cedar caught north of the Brazos River; and so enjoyed October through March again, which was kind of like...
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| Yep. |
But then I was transferred back to Austin a few years later, and by December, I was thinking like...
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| I have a moral duty to: Kill. These. Damned. Trees. |
The company transferred me back to Fort Worth; then off to grad school in Wisconsin; back to Fort Worth; off to California; and back near Fort Worth again.
Then, ten years ago, I was back in Austin, and the first October, I was like...
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| We have a moral duty to make these trees suffer! |
By February, I was like...
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| My God! The trees are attacking! |
And like...
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| If war is what these trees want, then... |
But after ten years of this, I'm like...
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| Gotta go! We're doomed! |
