This weekend was dedicated to cleaning up, and I am proud of all my neighbors for doing such a thorough job of making our streets tidy and safe again. It seemed like every tree service in the city was out in force, chainsawing felled or fatally damaged trees, and chipper machines were grinding away all day long.

I'm going to do a search online about the quality of firewood coming from city street trees -- probably our trees aren't that good for firewood, but I would like to have a tribute to them when the weather gets cold by fueling my outdoor firepit with a few logs from our recently destroyed trees. I imagine seeing their smoke go up between bare branches of the surviving trees, whispering to them how much we honored their spirit and loveliness, and as the smoke fades into a November sky I will thank the old trees and the new ones for all they did and will do to connect us to nature in such a paved over environment.

We had a tornado in Brooklyn in the Bay Ridge and Sunset Park neighborhoods (south of where the recent one hit) in 2007. I really, really hope these two incidents are a strange repeat of once-in-a-lifetime events. Although with global warming, weather instability is a big part of the picture. This makes me feel like starting up my compost routine again, although diverting my trash from the NYC landfill is hardly a fix for a global problem. Some little thing I can do to feel I'm playing my part, I guess. Other than that, I can pray. Or move. I almost left the city earlier this year, when I nearly got a job upstate.

The cleanup continues in my neighborhood. Street trees are all trimmed of major branches, so now it's time to tend to the trees in the backyards. It's common to see a line of workmen marching out of tiny little townhouses carrying the cut remains of a 18 - 24" diameter tree. Then they bring the pieces to the street and proceed with chainsawing there, in front of the truck where their mulcher is roaring away. All parts of the tree go into the mulcher -- brown wood and green branches. Nobody has the luxury of time to make firewood.

I'd still like to go ahead with my firepit tribute, though. I can't carry firewood at this point (two weeks post-surgery, I'm healing but have a ways to go), but maybe I can get some neighbors to help. We have space at the back of the building, where the deck overhangs, where we could leave the wood to season before burning it.