The Cassia Tree

Saturday morning was crisp and cool.  The sunshine was brilliant.  The skies bluer than a blue bird.  It felt good to be alive!  A gentle breeze blew as I walked to the barn in my bathrobe with my coffee in hand and opened the nesting boxes so the hens could lay their eggs.  The animals don't care that I'm not properly dressed.  

As I hurried back inside where my wife was busy preparing scrambled eggs with sautéed mushrooms and onions, I glanced out and saw the cassia tree putting on a show.

Each fall the tree blooms and the yellow flowers are brighter than the sun.  The flowers are so bright, you almost need sunglasses to look at the tree.  The flowers fall from the tree and create a carpet of yellow petals on the patio.

Here is a photo of the yellow blooms that cover the tree:

And an even closer photograph.  You can see unopened blooms that will soon yield even more yellow blossoms!

While the tree is certainly beautiful with its happy, cheerful flowers, like any good thing, there are some drawbacks.  This tree will freeze back in the winter.  You'll think the thing is dead, but in the spring, it sprouts back up from the bottom.  This past year it didn't freeze but one time and the tree kept growing and growing.  

The major downside with the cassia is its root system.  The Lord did not bless this tree with a good, sturdy root system that anchors it.  During any thunderstorm or certainly hurricane, the cassia will fall over on its side.  To remedy this, I positioned three t-posts around the tree and wove rope around the t-posts to support the cassia to keep it from falling.  For the most part this has worked.  The cassia has many trunks.  At our local nursery, Tricia got a good idea.  The owner of the business braided the trunks as it grew into one main trunk.  It seemed to make a stronger, better looking tree.  If ours freezes this winter, I will certainly try this!

Why Can't We Just Get Along?

In 1977, the Commodores released a song written by Lionel Richie called "Easy."  This was a smooth Motown song about the end of a relationship and that instead of being depressed, he was going to be "easy like Sunday Morning."  I like that song, except our Sunday mornings usually aren't easy.  While we do sleep later than we do on weekdays, we get up and get the chores done, feeding animals, milking cows, opening the nesting boxes, and filling water troughs while rushing to get back inside and get dressed and make it to church.   

Saturday Mornings are much more easy, but the three syllables in the word Saturday don't flow as well!  Saturday morning we woke up and did the normal chores at a slower pace.  The weather was one of those perfect, cool, blue bird days.  I planted a row of turnips in the garden.  I have not been able (yet) to develop a taste for turnips, but I like turnip greens.  We grow them for our cows.  They really dig 'em. 

I joked with Tricia that the weather was so nice that it was time to do some spring cleaning in the fall.  Our springs are very short.  We move from winter to summer so quickly, there's hardly any time to do spring cleaning.  Might as well do it now.  We put together a shelving unit for the garage, cleaned out junk from the garage, patched holes in the walls and primed the holes.  I found a hole behind some junk where rats had eaten a passageway into the walls!  I put carpenter's glue on the some steel wool and patched up that hole.  I was a little disappointed in Big Boy, our Great Pyrenees guard dog and Ginger, our hunting cat, for letting the rats do this literally right under their noses.  How could this happen?  I walked outside the garage and got my answer:

Asleep on the job

Well, ain't that a kick in the pants?!  Sleeping on the job.  That's exactly how the rats gained access.  I thought dogs and cats weren't supposed to be friends?  Big Boy and Ginger dispelled that stereotype by cuddling up together for a snooze in sunlight filtered through the remaining leaves on the pecan tree.  Seems like they are getting along just fine, right?  I had to go get Tricia to show her that dogs and cats can be friends.

I wanted to also show you something else in our backyard - our Cassia tree.  Every year at this time it blooms with beautiful yellow flowers.

Here is a closeup of the flowers:

The bright yellow color is certainly an eye catcher against the blue sky and brilliant sun.

There's only two weaknesses with the cassia that I can find. 

#1 It does not handle freezing weather.  It will die back down to the ground, but always sprouts back up from the roots.
#2 Its root system is incredibly week.  The entire tree will fall over with the slightest wind and rain.  We have both of our cassia trees staked with t-posts and rope to keep them from falling over.

It was an enjoyable weekend.  I hope you enjoyed yours!