washing lemon trees with sake vinegar. burning plum incense now. two sticks. one held by the pewter bunny amy gave me for christmas perhaps two years ago, the other sticking out of a pile of the glazed tiles that came with this particular brand of short sticks. trying to cover the smell of sake vinegar. it was not the right kind of vinegar, i guess. much too fragrant for the job. but i did not want to leave the house to buy vinegar. and maybe vinegar is the wrong thing to use anyway. it does make sense somehow though. a cure i came up with myself, again over a year ago, when the lime tree was starting to die because of some bug infestation. perhaps the dead leaves on the smallest of my lemon trees was just a smart way to avoid the webbing bugs. the smallest one got it. it is in the window though, in the sun. there was not enough room in the sun for the little forest. the little forest is five little trees. all about four years old now maybe? all grown from pits found in lemons bought so i could avoid vinegar in the salad. and the vinegar felt like a cure. and i had to do the work outside. in sweater and jacket, with a pair of scissors. cutting off all the leaves. there were over a hundred, i think. some were very sticky from the liquid they released to get rid of the intruders. i gathered them and added them to the compost bucket. they will be gone around this time next year. after all the leaves were removed, i poured some of the sake vinegar into an old plastic container and with a napkin washed the little trees. they are twigs really, thin lemon tree twigs, and yet pretty mighty looking in their flat wooden container. i removed some of the younger ones completely. two in the back had already died. so yes, it was more than five. there are five larger ones. how had i not noticed earlier that there was a problem? i had not been paying attention to this particular set of trees. they were in the shadow, there were not enough clues for them that summer would return, and so they weakened. i hope that at least some of them manage to return to their senses. now that the little pests are removed, they should. i hope it is not too early into the short winter days. i hope they will make it. the trees look very handsome without their leaves. perhaps the procedure will make them age, just as it would age many other trees with leaves. there is an interdependence between the absence of leaves and winter. i hope it all works out. the smell of the sake vinegar is too strong. so now the fig incense is burning. it is better already. and the eucalyptus leaves i crushed earlier in the day now cover the ground for one of the young blueberry bushes. perhaps so the cold does not appear so severe to the young shrub. though it might be good for it to appear cold... i am not sure. trees are the expression of their surroundings. and surroundings are shaped by their trees. the proper cutting of a tree might look like torture, yet it might actually be good to the plant. there are other factors that matter very much. hmm...