On my three-quarter-mile walk between home and work are a number of office buildings, a home for the elderly, and a couple dozen condos. But to my great joy, an abandoned orchard extends out about six acres from the middle of my route.  I call it “my orchard” because I hardly ever see anyone else in it.  I see their traces though: mostly piles of landscaping waste, litter from an old vagrant’s hideout, and some bittersweet vines robbed by folks like me who use bittersweet for fall decorating.  My most frequent outdoor adventures are in this old orchard—my own little playground, which I sometimes share with our grandchildren.

Along the condo drive is a long row of Austrian pines, red pines, and some Colorado spruce.  The cones from the Austrian pines are about avocado size—which is the perfect kicking size.  So I will sometimes target one poised and ready on the asphalt and kick it some 300 yards all the way home—just like I kicked cans when I was a kid.  It gives me great satisfaction when I can keep it rolling pretty much in a straight line.  Nonetheless, I do zigzag quite a bit.  The other day, in fact, I almost zigged right into one of our neighbors walking the other way.  She and her husband often, shall a say, look “askance” at this old dude with white chin whiskers who seems to have entered and gone deeply into his second childhood—what with my also climbing the pine trees to collect oozing pitch for my homemade wood preservative, or my standing in the drive chattering at the red squirrels or mimicking the cardinals and robins to see what kind of reaction I get.

What I don’t know is how many askance looks I get from inside those office buildings when I venture off into what they probably view as just another “empty” lot waiting for a building.  (I’m thinking about chaining myself to a sumac bush or something if I see the bulldozers coming!  I suppose I could build a protest platform on the top of the orchard’s tallest tree like Julia Butterfly Hill did in her redwood.  But a sparse 20-foot walnut is not very regal—and I don’t think I can get wireless out there.)

But back to my kicking the pine cone.  It brought to mind a little quiz I sometimes do with school kids—and even at times with my colleagues at RBC.  The conifer cone test.  I thought maybe y’all might like to take it.  Below is a photo of six different cones.  The largest, rather foreshortened in the picture, is actually a foot long without the stem.  The smallest is about a half inch.  The cones come from a white pine, a ponderosa pine, a sequoia, a Douglas fir, a redwood, and a sugar pine.  Here’s the object of the quiz: see if you can match the cone to the tree—without going to Google images or Flickr!

I’ll give you the answers tomorrow.

See you outdoors!

Dean

Click on the photo to see it full size