by Susan O’Connor

When I was a child our family adored pecans, toasted or in pies. My parents, two sisters, and I spent many Thanksgiving holidays picking up pecans at the farm in Georgia where my grandfather was born. The time between Thanksgiving and Christmas was spent separating the meat from the shells. Everyone worked to get the job done.

After a while, my parents decided to plant a pecan tree in our backyard, to go along with the palm, pear, and apple trees. We all watched our pecan tree, waiting and waiting for those first pecans, none came.  In the second year of our tree, instead of pecans, we sited what we thought was a big spider web in the top of it. Mother told us all about web worms and pecan trees.  Mama Hollis, Mother’s mother, was to eat lunch with us that memorable Saturday. I couldn’t wait to tell her about the worms in our tree. When I told her, she suggested that Mother and Daddy needed to burn the web out of the tree. My parents didn’t want to start any fire because of the dry fall season we had experienced.

That afternoon, Mama Hollis stayed with us while Mother and Daddy ran some errands. As soon as the tail light lights of the ’54 Bel Air was out of sight, Mama Hollis was wrapping part of an old sheet around a piece of wood left from one of daddy’s building projects. The three of us watched wide-eyed. We’d never seen anyone make a torch.  Not only that, she was disobeying our parents – a truly terrifying thought!

Well, she dipped the torch into Daddy’s lawn mower gas can and then lit it. We followed at a respectable distance. She climbed up on the kitchen stepladder she carried in her other hand. Then, she lit the web sack. It began to burn instantly as did the surrounding dried leaves. Quickly, the entire tree was ablaze with bits of red, glowing leaf parts floating in the air. The burning leaves landed on the very dry grass, which proceeded to burn. The fire seemed to skip across the grass and all directions.

Our neighbor heard us, smelled the smoke, and saw the fire. Grabbing her garden hose, which was a soaker, she ran toward us. Another neighbor had been trimming his bushes ran ahead into call the fire station two blocks away. We could hear the engine pull out of the station, coming to save us. However, since our house was on a small court, the fire truck drove right past the turn for our street. By now, all the adults and children that lived around us were outside. Some neighbors brought regular hoses, that were not soakers. One man jumped in his car to chase the fire truck to have it return to our house.  Between the fire truck, that finally arrived, and water from other houses, the fire was put out.

When Mother and Daddy got home, the three of us had never in our lives been more thankful to have been innocent bystanders in the explanation of why part of our front yard and side yard was crispy black.

Susan O’Connor, an intern in the 2016 Master Gardener Class, and is now a Master Gardener, lives in Montgomery.  For more information on becoming a master gardener, visit www.capcitymga.org or email capcitymga@gmail.com.