Long ago, a little evergreen volunteered beside the cover for my sump pump.  It was cute; I left it alone; it grew.  By the time it was big enough for Xmas lights, it was big enough to complicate access to the sump pump.  Oops.  It was also the kind of juniper we call a “cedar” and had needles that lived up to their name: sharp and stiff enough to penetrate my yard gloves.  Ouch.  By the time I gave up on it, there was no hope of uprooting it.

Resilient in my own small way, I pruned away all the branches of the rogue cedar to leave a pole of weather-resistant wood rooted firmly in the ground.  I bought a flag intended to be flown from a building’s wall and mounted the bracket for the flag’s metal pole near the top of the cedar pole.  From 2017 onward, I climbed my big stepladder to insert the metal pole into the bracket for Memorial Day and Independence Day.

One day in 2023-06, I looked out the window and saw that the metal pole was drooping.  Wind and rain had been too much for the bracket screws.  I remounted the bracket lower on the cedar pole, where the surface was flatter and longer screws could go deeper.  I cut away the old top of the cedar pole, so it would not entangle the flag.  So far, so good.  (The stepladder is no longer needed here, so gusts of wind are less worrisome.)  While the flag is not as high as before, it is high enough.

Happy July 4th!