Willow trees, in particular, are comforting. Except for the ones that grew around our outhouse when I was a kid because I kept thinking about why they chose to grow there, and why they were doing so well. Sitting under those willow trees was not a particularly comfortable experience.
As a pre-teen, and early one, my closest friend Ron and I took to digging foxholes, either in his or my backyard. We were the same age, and at 13, my Grandma lived alone on a small farm my Dad had bought for retirement someday; my Grandpa had died. There, in the woods, Ron & I endeavored to construct a cave in the side of a steep ravine. The going was tough, progress very slow, hard clay soil, lots of roots. We decided to use my gradually increasing understanding of Chemistry and making stuff that goes "poof", to make and try some blasting powder. The rest of the story has been told here, but newcomers haven't heard it, and now I have revealed for the first time just why I was attempting such madness. Late Fall, still in the 8th. grade, in our basement I mixed, following a formula in "Henley's Twentieth Century Book of Formulas and Recipes", a concoction called "Berge's Blasting Powder". It contained potassium chlorate, sulfur, shaved wax, and sugar. I should have known better, for I knew, and had tested chlorate and sulfur, knowing it was used to make toy caps, and had exploded tiny amounts on my Dad's vise with a hammer.......... Now, I had about a cupful or so, in my big porcelain mortar & pestle, and upon mixing in the wax shavings...... no, it didn't explode; fortunately, it only inflamed suddenly with a loud "whoosh" consuming itself in about a second, my face, hair, eyebrows, etc.,. going with it. I had been leaning above the table top, the stirring hand being closest to the heat got a huge burn along the edge, little finger up to the wrist. My face wound up with 2nd. degree burn to most of it; my eyelids soon turned crusty, and the trip to the hospital with my Dad foretold of a nightmare while awake about to begin. Frank