Ha! Good one!
Firewood lore, traditions, and history
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Ha! Good one!
woodbooga
cords of mystic memory
beech lore
Beech's closely grained wood, with its smooth even surface, made it a versatile wood. At one time, before paper could be easily and cheaply made, Beech slabs were used as writing surfaces. Beech and book have the same word origins.
O.E. bece, from P.Gmc. bokjon, Old Norse bok, Ger. buche, and M.Du. boeke
Beech's closely grained wood, with its smooth even surface, made it a versatile wood. At one time, before paper could be easily and cheaply made, Beech slabs were used as writing surfaces. Beech and book have the same word origins.
O.E. bece, from P.Gmc. bokjon, Old Norse bok, Ger. buche, and M.Du. boeke
woodbooga
cords of mystic memory
pop music and wood lore
Which medium btu wood, common to temperate and colder climates, has a common word origin with a certain Icelandic pop singer?
Hint, the heat value of this wood was the subject of a recent thread in this forum.
Which medium btu wood, common to temperate and colder climates, has a common word origin with a certain Icelandic pop singer?
Hint, the heat value of this wood was the subject of a recent thread in this forum.
Wife'nHubby
Addicted to ArboristSite
woodbooga
cords of mystic memory
Ding, ding, ding! We have a winner!
O.E. beorc, from P.Gmc. berkjon, O.N. börk, Sw. björk, Du. berk, Ger. Birke)
I'll have to try much harder to stump this crowd!
Wife'nHubby
Addicted to ArboristSite
Your hint gave it away! 
Plus, I scored some free birch on Craig's List this weekend.
Shari
Plus, I scored some free birch on Craig's List this weekend. Shari
woodbooga
cords of mystic memory
Some Robert Frost
Frost wrote this poem in a town about 7 miles from where I grew up.
I think of this poem on occasion when I remember scampering out in the woods as a kid. I also think of it anytime we get an ice storm or an accumulation of that wet sticky snow - the kind that makes birches forego their heavenward reach as they bow down to the earth whence they came.
Birches
WHEN I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.
But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay.
Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them 5
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells 10
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust—
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You’d think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed 15
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun. 20
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm
(Now am I free to be poetical?)
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows— 25
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father’s trees
By riding them down over and over again 30
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away 35
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish, 40
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It’s when I’m weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood 45
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig’s having lashed across it open.
I’d like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over. 50
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:
I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.
I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree, 55
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches. 60
Frost wrote this poem in a town about 7 miles from where I grew up.
I think of this poem on occasion when I remember scampering out in the woods as a kid. I also think of it anytime we get an ice storm or an accumulation of that wet sticky snow - the kind that makes birches forego their heavenward reach as they bow down to the earth whence they came.
Birches
WHEN I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.
But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay.
Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them 5
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells 10
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust—
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You’d think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed 15
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun. 20
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm
(Now am I free to be poetical?)
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows— 25
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father’s trees
By riding them down over and over again 30
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away 35
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish, 40
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It’s when I’m weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood 45
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig’s having lashed across it open.
I’d like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over. 50
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:
I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.
I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree, 55
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches. 60
fugazi42
ArboristSite Lurker
Frost's other firewood-related poem, The Woodpile, also comes to mind.
http://www.online-literature.com/frost/758/
http://www.online-literature.com/frost/758/
Wife'nHubby
Addicted to ArboristSite
Not poetic, rather prophetic: When my father passed away the first line of his obit started "He's taken his last walk in the woods......"
Shari
Shari
woodbooga
cords of mystic memory
This is probably my favorite non-Frost or e.e. cummings poem.
We didn't heat with wood growing up, but it reminds me of my dad. I'm prolly not alone and hope that some day my son will read this poem and think of me.
Those Winter Sundays
Robert E. Hayden
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,
Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?
We didn't heat with wood growing up, but it reminds me of my dad. I'm prolly not alone and hope that some day my son will read this poem and think of me.
Those Winter Sundays
Robert E. Hayden
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,
Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?
woodbooga
cords of mystic memory
Another bit of trivia
OK, the birch one was too easy. Let's kick it up a notch:
The second largest city in Northern Ireland takes its name for a Gaelic word for this slow-growing hardwood valued for its high btu value.
Name the city and the tree species.
Hint - or red herring: there is a connection between the answer to part one and the Robert Frost poem "Birches."
OK, the birch one was too easy. Let's kick it up a notch:
The second largest city in Northern Ireland takes its name for a Gaelic word for this slow-growing hardwood valued for its high btu value.
Name the city and the tree species.
Hint - or red herring: there is a connection between the answer to part one and the Robert Frost poem "Birches."
PatrickIreland
ArboristSite Guru
Londonderry, and Oak. I think I may have had the advantage on that one...
woodbooga
cords of mystic memory
Londonderry, and Oak. I think I may have had the advantage on that one...
Ding-ding! Hot dog, we have a wiener!
Before the Brits audaciously re-named Londonderry, it was Derry, from the Gaelic doire, meaning oak.
The Robert Frost connection: much of his best-loved writing was done while he lived on a small farm in the southern NH town of Derry. At some point, Derry was set off from the adjoining town of Londonderry, which was settled by Scots Irish in the early 1700s.
FUN fact for spud lovers: Londonderry, NH has the distinction of being the first town in British North America where the potatoe was introduced.
Good Timber
Good Timber
by Douglas Malloch
The tree that never had to fight
For sun and sky and air and light,
But stood out in the open plain
And always got its share of rain,
Never became a forest king
But lived and died a scrubby thing.
The man who never had to toil
To gain and farm his patch of soil,
Who never had to win his share
Of sun and sky and light and air,
Never became a manly man
But lived and died as he began.
Good timber does not grow with ease:
The stronger wind, the stronger trees;
The further sky, the greater length;
The more the storm, the more the strength.
By sun and cold, by rain and snow,
In trees and men good timbers grow.
Where thickest lies the forest growth,
We find the patriarchs of both.
And they hold counsel with the stars
Whose broken branches show the scars
Of many winds and much of strife.
This is the common law of life.
<a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=S9UtAAAAMAAJ&ots=gvSxGaaiTL&dq=Tote-Road%20and%20Trail%3A%20Ballads%20of%20the%20Lumberjack&pg=PA3&ci=122,256,696,425&source=bookclip"><img src="http://books.google.com/books?id=S9UtAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA3&img=1&zoom=3&hl=en&sig=ACfU3U0VMGunv4snabizBkFOBu2kHM-XEg&ci=122%2C256%2C696%2C425&edge=1" border="0" alt="Text not available"/></a><br/><a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=S9UtAAAAMAAJ&ots=gvSxGaaiTL&dq=Tote-Road%20and%20Trail%3A%20Ballads%20of%20the%20Lumberjack&pg=PA3&ci=122,256,696,425&source=bookclip">Tote-road and trail ballads of the lumberjack By Douglas Malloch</a>
More tales,by Douglas Malloch, Download and Save! enjoy!
http://books.google.com/books?id=S9...i=book_result&resnum=4&ct=result#PPA28-IA1,M1
<a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=S9UtAAAAMAAJ&ots=gvSxGaaiTL&dq=Tote-Road%20and%20Trail%3A%20Ballads%20of%20the%20Lumberjack&pg=PA106&ci=237,338,628,360&source=bookclip"><img src="http://books.google.com/books?id=S9UtAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA106&img=1&zoom=3&hl=en&sig=ACfU3U2touvS5swtD-PrLn9UEQpwFtgqgA&ci=237%2C338%2C628%2C360&edge=1" border="0" alt="Text not available"/></a><br/><a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=S9UtAAAAMAAJ&ots=gvSxGaaiTL&dq=Tote-Road%20and%20Trail%3A%20Ballads%20of%20the%20Lumberjack&pg=PA106&ci=237,338,628,360&source=bookclip">Tote-road and trail ballads of the lumberjack By Douglas Malloch</a>
Good Timber
by Douglas Malloch
The tree that never had to fight
For sun and sky and air and light,
But stood out in the open plain
And always got its share of rain,
Never became a forest king
But lived and died a scrubby thing.
The man who never had to toil
To gain and farm his patch of soil,
Who never had to win his share
Of sun and sky and light and air,
Never became a manly man
But lived and died as he began.
Good timber does not grow with ease:
The stronger wind, the stronger trees;
The further sky, the greater length;
The more the storm, the more the strength.
By sun and cold, by rain and snow,
In trees and men good timbers grow.
Where thickest lies the forest growth,
We find the patriarchs of both.
And they hold counsel with the stars
Whose broken branches show the scars
Of many winds and much of strife.
This is the common law of life.
<a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=S9UtAAAAMAAJ&ots=gvSxGaaiTL&dq=Tote-Road%20and%20Trail%3A%20Ballads%20of%20the%20Lumberjack&pg=PA3&ci=122,256,696,425&source=bookclip"><img src="http://books.google.com/books?id=S9UtAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA3&img=1&zoom=3&hl=en&sig=ACfU3U0VMGunv4snabizBkFOBu2kHM-XEg&ci=122%2C256%2C696%2C425&edge=1" border="0" alt="Text not available"/></a><br/><a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=S9UtAAAAMAAJ&ots=gvSxGaaiTL&dq=Tote-Road%20and%20Trail%3A%20Ballads%20of%20the%20Lumberjack&pg=PA3&ci=122,256,696,425&source=bookclip">Tote-road and trail ballads of the lumberjack By Douglas Malloch</a>
More tales,by Douglas Malloch, Download and Save! enjoy!
http://books.google.com/books?id=S9...i=book_result&resnum=4&ct=result#PPA28-IA1,M1
<a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=S9UtAAAAMAAJ&ots=gvSxGaaiTL&dq=Tote-Road%20and%20Trail%3A%20Ballads%20of%20the%20Lumberjack&pg=PA106&ci=237,338,628,360&source=bookclip"><img src="http://books.google.com/books?id=S9UtAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA106&img=1&zoom=3&hl=en&sig=ACfU3U2touvS5swtD-PrLn9UEQpwFtgqgA&ci=237%2C338%2C628%2C360&edge=1" border="0" alt="Text not available"/></a><br/><a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=S9UtAAAAMAAJ&ots=gvSxGaaiTL&dq=Tote-Road%20and%20Trail%3A%20Ballads%20of%20the%20Lumberjack&pg=PA106&ci=237,338,628,360&source=bookclip">Tote-road and trail ballads of the lumberjack By Douglas Malloch</a>
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PatrickIreland
ArboristSite Guru
Fun fact - I've stayed in Londonderry, NH... and I'm from Bangor in Ireland about 13 miles from Belfast), have also stayed in both Bangor (hippies!) and Belfast in the USA. We spud-chuckers get everywhere...
woodbooga
cords of mystic memory
We spud-chuckers get everywhere...
It's all I can do to resist tossing some tuber lore into the mix. The potatoe has had one strange career. Lots of Europeans thought it was poisonous, or, at best, unfit for human consumption.
So they fed it to the Irish.
My folks came from Limerick. You'd get your mouth washed out with soap by my auntie if you mentioned the word 'McCourt,' which she considered to be a 4-letter word.
PatrickIreland
ArboristSite Guru
It's all I can do to resist tossing some tuber lore into the mix. The potatoe has had one strange career. Lots of Europeans thought it was poisonous, or, at best, unfit for human consumption.
So they fed it to the Irish.
My folks came from Limerick. You'd get your mouth washed out with soap by my auntie if you mentioned the word 'McCourt,' which she considered to be a 4-letter word.
Ask your old family back home how they feel about Cromwell - it'll be a knuckle sandwich you'll be dining on that night...
Wife'nHubby
Addicted to ArboristSite
Kind of wood related: Anyone ever use a divining rod (or dowser)? I had an uncle who was a dowser. I always heard this trait was inherited. His only child couldn't do it but his grandson can.
Shari
Shari
Not sure where the connection is but, start with two coat hangers or long thin metal flags. Put a bend in the end about 8" at an right angle so they go into your closed hand and hang out the bottom of your hand.
Point parallel with hands close together and practice over a large bowl of water in a area that is free of underground rebar, pipes, electric, gas lines, etc. Stand erect and walk up to the water and let your hands go over the bowl. They should cris cross at the exact center of the water. Practice slowly......Loose grip on the rods where the tips are almost hanging loose but parallel to the ground and they are loose in the grip.
Basically this is like an Needle with a compass routine. The needle moves over magnetic disturbance in the earth.
I think what your referring to is a willow sticks or fork looking for water....I imagine you could practice with the willow and water. Other Dowsers will have to chime in here.
I use mine all the time to find underground utilities. I always call JULIE before I dig, but sometimes can mark better than they can....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowsing
I just tried this and it didn't work - maybe I should take the coats off the hangers?
