Jim Visits

  It's been almost five years to the day since Jim last visited here but he and his wife are staying near Cincinnati and yesterday Tom and I had the pleasure of spending some time with him. I met Jim at Miami University - Middletown in 1970 and we hit it off in a geology class and have been dear friends ever since.

Jim (l-r), Tom and myself

 He arrived about 11:15 am in his wife's ruby-red Ford Bronco and after maybe half an hour to get reacquainted, we drove to Brookville where we had lunch at a fairly new Mexican restating, El Bronco.

 Of course we had plenty of time for conversation, but Jim offered to do some work: show me how to remove honeysuckle stumps. How could I turn him down? He said he figured out a technique when he lived on a farm in West Chester, Ohio. It involves cutting the side roots with an axe and them hitting the stump with a sledgehammer. It works!

 He removed more than two dozen in half an hour and I am grateful that I can now mow the path in our nature reserve without hitting stumps.

 Larger stumps remain and this technique won't work as easily for them. But at least now I know there is an option rather than burning or digging.

 Jim took a shower after this exercise and left about 5:30 pm to head back south. Let's hope it's not another five years before we get together again.

 [For my own record, it was five years ago (06/2000) when we found some Kentucky Coffee seeds at Miami University and I brought them home and managed to get one to sprout/ Tom even filed the hard shell to get germination underway. That tree is not about five feet tall!]