Treeballs

[excerpted from original kolumn - date approximate]

Anyway, getting back to what I was saying in my last column (which there is virtually no chance of anyone remembering due to the tremendous amount of elapsed time since caused in turn by yours truly’s utter lack of discipline and increasing friskiness with deadlines in general), another reason Texas and France seem virtually identical is this- 7.) both countries feature tree-balls!

I feel I need hardly add here that noone would be happier than I if I knew the correct scientific word for what my bride and traveling companion (the lovely, usually well-informed Mrs. Kelp) and I ignorantly term “treeballs”, and that I feel safe in predicting that the real word for them is noticeably more dignified than the unfortunate replacement word which we now feel forced to employ, “tree-ball”.

However, it must also be admitted that while the word itself may seem ungainly, it is uncannily descriptive of that certain unique form of nature known to my wife and myself only as, well, y’know, “treeballs”. That’s exactly what they look like- little balls of green leaves and sticks that seem to get caught in the trees in Texas and France -does anyone out there know what I’m taking about? What do you call those things? If it turns out they’re tumbleweeds, that’ll be great because that would mean they have tumbleweeds in France!