Plum dead tree

The plum tree no longer shades our patio and family picnic table.
Its leafy branches shaded patio suppers and provided little ones with a safe perch three or four feet above the ground for 20 years after we planted it.
Every spring the boys thinned the fruit with hard fought battles employing the tree’s green early plums as projectiles. A procession of cats used the plum tree to reach the roof and feigned pitiful pleas for help getting down. We ignored their pleas and the cats always returned to the tree and the ground.
As the tree aged, first the lower branches and then the higher ones withered and died. Only their stumps remained to hold the grandchildren. In time, the tree dwindled to a solitary stalk on the stump.
My husband declared its days over, chopped down the tree, removed its stump and dug out the surface roots. He left the wood to dry on the picnic table.
The tree that for years shaded our picnics this summer warmed our campfires at a family reunion camp out.
With the idea that it might be fun to have the visiting grandchildren get together with their similar aged cousins, the Hershberger men cobbled together a website with ideas, plans, important items to bring and activities for the camp out. The women tried to conceptualize living in the woods with the bears and deer at the campground that promised: “No electricity, no showers and no hot water.”
The women packed food, clothes and plenty of wet wipes.
My husband pulled out our even-older-than-the-plum tree car top carrier. He patched an ominous crack and loaded it down with the tent, camp stove, camp chairs, sleeping bags and heaps of split and kindled plum tree wood.
He refused to buy a rack fro the car top carrier, said we didn’t need it. Instead he impressed me with his cardboard triangles wrapped in plastic tape, and they way they sagged into mush when it rained. Before we left, he rigged up a winch to the basketball goal, lifted the loaded carrier and slid a six-inch crate foam pad underneath.
He anchored it all with a rope to the front fender and ropes through the windows and doors.
The other Hershbergers arrived, looking a little neater and more traditional, but just as loaded down.
For the next couple days the men kept busy lighting plum wood fires over which they prepared perked coffee, griddles of eggs, bacon, sausages and marshmallows for S’mores.
When it rained, which it did a lot the first two days, the grandchildren huddled in the tents and played card games, wove hot pads, tried stitching, read books and colored.
When the sun shone, grandchildren ran around the campfire on nature scavenger hunts, hiked the trails, warmed up beside the fire after a swim or boating experience in the nearby cold river with their parents, toasted hot dogs on sticks and painted paper plates beside it as they waited for lunch. In the morning they ignored the fire and trailed a couple of deer around the campsite. No one saw any bears.
At night with the children tucked in their sleeping bags, the adults sat around the glowing plum wood campfire talking and tossing more wood on the fire. By the end of our weekend of togetherness, the wood pile had disappeared.
We left the plum tree’s ashes, reloaded everything else into our no longer leak proof, cracked, car top carrier and made it home in one piece.
With some help, the man that chopped down the plum tree reduced the carrier to trash. The Hershberger men and women added a camp out review and reflection web page and began talking about doing it again next year.
My husband began shopping for another car top carrier and a community tarp.
We won’t have any plum wood for the first next year, but the peach tree looks a little puny.