Seeds of the Future

Once again, I have dropped the thread of this blog, as the realities of a little homestead overtake me (okay - maybe a “stead-ette”). I’m tempted to follow the last post with more of the same - as I watch this harvest season so full of reaping the whirlwind. But I’m gonna stick closer to home; after all, I have more than enough of my own gaffes to work with. And if my retirement savings has now dwindled to the point that they are planning to shoot it around the center of the Large Hadron Collider, at least I have a freezer-full of badly preserved food to live on.

As the garden begins to wind down (which means the tomatoes, peppers, melons and eggplants sudden take notice of the weather and start blossoming, like a ne‘er do well child who at 54 decides to become a doctor, teasing his poor mother, breaking her heart), I am now into the seed saving phase. I am learning to recognize when seeds are ready to be gathered: about a day before I find those brown exploded husks on the ground by the dead plant. So far the only seeds I’ve been able to capture are the ones too big to get away, like beans and peas, and the ones that are so prolific as to be weeds, like calendula, marigold and lettuce. Not to say that I will be able to keep them over the winter (a jar of pea pods has turned black with mold -- if only I could find a mold-processing service who needs my harvesting skills!), but this is all part of my first year farming course: City Rube 101. Last week I celebrated the year anniversary of signing off on the counter offer to this place, and told myself how far I’d come from the days when I was driving down here, on the sly, before the deal was sealed, to mow the waist-high weeds and paint the eroded window sills before the rains started. Now I have waist-high buggy vegetables, and the window sills (and everything else!) on the main house are painted and snug - see the before/after photos (I think you can tell the difference). I did, as planned, treat myself to having contractors do the porch and the painting, and I am very happy with the results! Only 765 more projects to go!

Today I’m gonna keep this short, since I have 3 bags of bug-infested windfall apples to surgically prepare for cider, another quart or so of berries to preserve somehow (I might try berry-stuffed cabbage rolls) and the summer clothes to get up into the attic (finally bought a step ladder, a vast improvement over the knotted rope.) More later.

Weather or Not...

We’re having a bout of “newcomer’s weather” in our little town… that’s the unexpected, sometimes disastrous weather shifts that all the natives will solemnly tell me “ain’t the usual weather, no way”. On the one hand, it’s a relief to know that three days of 100 degree-plus baking followed by lightning, hail and rain that brings 57 degree days is not run of the mill. As one of my neighbors says, “Thankew, Jesus!” On the other hand, I am getting worn out creating an emergency greenhouse around the veggies -- this must be the sixth time this growing season! There is a part of me that is so sick of salad that I’m happy to see lettuce bolting, but it’s not only a waste but added work to turn it all under. These don’t just qualify as gourmet veggies -- I’m calling them “hand ripened”.

It’s not just the veggies, of course. I’m halfway through my summer fix-it projects (pump house roof is done, though I haven’t had the courage to look inside and see how it faired through yesterday’s rain), and the rain has dappled the wooden chairs left outside, the clothes on the line and the tools I carelessly lost in the waist-high weeds (which I won’t be able to weed-wack now until the rain stops). And the contractor I’ve hired to build me a new front porch has called in once for heat and now is telling me he’s not water-proof. (The good news on that is he is so much faster than I am, that even the two days he’s worked is more than the two weeks I’d put into the project).

Everyone swears this strange weather shouldn’t persist. So in the meantime, I’m investing in a lightening-rod hardhat, an insulated bathsuit and wellies, and going into high gear on the house painting job! More soon…

The Seeders of Lebanon

I am now four months into my planting season (how would I know in February that I was planting two months too early?? We had warmer temps back then than we do now!), and it has become obvious that my attempts to plant from seed have been, well -- a debacle. I think it was an tremendous amusement for the local birds, who have rubbed salt in my wounds by planting sunflower seeds that are doing better than anything I put in the ground. Anyway, this past weekend, I finally caved in and bought “cheaters”: three really fat and happy tomatoes, a 2-ft. pepper, an eggplant with 5-inch leaves, and a couple of struggling basil (apparently, it‘s a bad year everywhere for basil). I know it’s probably heartless to stick that 3-foot tomato next to the 4-inch jobbie that’s still struggling to get launched after our Ultimate Rollercoaster of Weather this spring. Likely create a huge inferiority complex -- do tomatoes get Short Guy Synrome? I’ll watch for attempts to jab me in the eye while I’m eating.The eggplant seedlings never made it out of the greenhouse/shed, so they won’t notice the Green Hulk who’s moved in.

What I want to know is how do these other gardeners - from Lebanon, the next town over - manage to get their plants so fat and happy? Some were commercial plants, and I guess those are treated like Olympic team members: all the food they can eat, the perfect conditions for working up big muscular physiques, and no extraneous duties. Oh, and probably steroids. But some were from the farmer’s market, where supposedly some of my townmen were supplementing their more exotic plant business (conducted nocturnally, on less populated streets) with some prosaic herbs (a way to justify the lights setup to the IRS, I suppose…or not. I hardly dare ask, because I am afraid to find out that an entire room of their house is given over to halogen lighting and hourly feedings…) As a typical suburban gardener, I used to follow the Memorial Day orgy of four-foot plant sales and instant vegetable gardens. But coming to my new place, I had dreams of becoming “more real” - actually being able to plant from seed and save seed for the next year. (At this point, the only way I’ll be able to save seed is to dig it back up and put it back in the envelope.) Not to mention, learn to identify the plant from the weed at seedling stage… I have figured out that if fifteen million of them come up, it’s a weed. A Storm Trooper Invasion of Weeds, to be exact. And all those bits of good advice about how to hoe up the weed seedlings so they don’t get a headstart on your plants -- do you know how many times I’ve replanted the damn radishes?? Granted, my non-standard (read: weird) layout means I can’t just roll a mini-tiller down my ruler-straight rows. I did attempt to follow the advice about mulching to save watering (although when you’re getting six inches of rain per week, it’s not that big a deal). Now I find the neighbor cats really like straw for kittylitter! I thought it would be too scratchy… live and learn…

Veggie Garden Update

I realize that the last post on my veggie garden was in the midst of a mid-April snowstorm, so I figured I'd quickly let you all know that it survived. Despite the snow and then, exactly a month later, four days of almost 100-deg. weather, then a precipitous drop to the low 60's where it's pretty much been since May - most of the plants grew, and I've been eating lettuce, broccoli, radishes and even my first peas! But of course the progess hasn't been easy. More on that later.

The Cold Frame is Finished

This is the second part of the blog posted 2/29/08... how does Life sprint past soooo fast??

When I had recuperated from fetching the window out of the attic, I went looking for the other parts of the cold frame, which (according to the instructions) everyone surely has lying around the house. Luckily I had bought some boards for shelving, and since the shelving was still in the planning stage, I used good old ReAllocation Implementation Process - Owing From Future (RIPoFF) to steal the raw materials for the frame. Having read that a slanted frame does the best to catch the sunlight (and keep the rain from pooling on the window until it shatters the glass), I started to measure the various boards viz a viz the window. I think I’ve mentioned before how measurement-handicapped I am: not only am I a 1950’s victim of New Math (we didn’t learn arithmetic, we learned Venn Diagrams and Base 2 - computer language), but “relative size of things” is not a concept that I have mastered. I can’t pack a trunk. I can’t measure a cupful by eye. And I rarely leave enough room when parking to squeeze my body out of the truck!

Anyway, I had a 2x4, a 1x8, 1x12 and some assorted poles and planks… I measured the window, measured it again -- got a different number -- measured it a third time -- got a different different number… and gave up on numbers. I resorted to my old habit -- the visual measurement. I took the 1x8 plank and lined it up along the window and drew a line. I have no idea how long that was, but it came to the end of the window, which was the important point. I did the same for the wide board, and I also measured that board against the 1x8 to get the top of the angle that I needed to cut at a slant.

Now I know you’ll tell me, “It’s 8 inches, Cath!” but it never is -- that’s the point! Somehow the marks on the bloody ruler move around and it never does work out to the supposed measurement. My best guess is that my ruler is marked off with irrational numbers. The only thing that doesn’t seem to shift around for me is the physical object… so I drew a line on the 1x12 at the place where the 1x8 stopped and then measured the bottom angle against the 2x4. The only difficulty as I was doing this was trying to hold these various eight-foot boards against each other in a studio which is only 15 ft wide and is full of shelves holding ceramic artwork! So -- I’m trying to balance one board on my chair, while the other is leaning gingerly against the shelf of art supplies, and using my knee as the drawing surface, which tends to make the line a little wobbly… No matter, since there’s very little chance I can follow a straight line with the huge, double-handed circular saw (described in a previous entry) that I have to use. I figured if I cut it without also cutting through the cardboard box used as sawhorse, I’d be very grateful. (The 2x4 was actually scheduled to become a sawhorse, but RIPoFF got there first).

They always recommend that you measure all the pieces before cutting, in case something doesn’t add up. Since I wasn’t gonna do any adding, and because I was running out of places to put eight-foot boards, I shifted to cutting the primary planks. The sound of that circular saw always reminds me of an airplane engine, and the similarity doesn’t stop there… once I manage to chew through the board and release the power switch, I have to hold it at arm’s length (all 35 lbs of it) while the engine (ie: saw blade) comes to a complete stop. Since there were several small cuts, I ended up holding the snarling saw at arm’s length for at least a half hour total… while watching the sawdust swirling into every sculptural cranny and open box in the room. I made a vow to get enough boxes unpacked in the garage to be able to do this dirty work there next time… but meanwhile, I finally had the four pieces and it was ready to take outside. Oh, but no -- there had to be some kind of stake/support that the window sat on… I checked the picture again and saw the vertical pieces. I found a 2x2 and painstakingly measure them against the edges of the board, and cut two -- and somehow lost the marking of the other two. No matter - I decided the 2x4 was thick enough to serve. And I was getting tired of cutting -- I wanted to bang some boards! (I tend to approach construction projects with the attitude of a 5-year-old). So out I went, and lugged the boards, window, hammer and nails to the flat ground where I was gonna place the cold frame. This was the location of that ugly old shed with the truck-topper roof… I will document its demise in another entry.

While kneeling to hammer the boards into a box, I discovered the local cats had gotten there first and were very appreciative of a new litter box. I raked the place clear and started again. I know there are clever braces and traditional methods for getting boards to line up square to each other -- but this is a 5-year-old working, so I held one board between my knees and tried to nail the other one to it… my knees don‘t grab that good. Next, I used a left-over log as a brace, but it was being braced in turn by the grass, which although strong enough to resist any attempts to dig it up, was not actually good for leaning things on. Eventually I stood one board up, resting the other on it and hammering downward… it was close enough for Republican economics. In similar makeshift fashion, I got a rough rectangle that -- mostly -- fit the window, and proudly placed my tender seedlings in their new cold frame.

And two days later, the weather had plummeted like the stock market, leaving swirls of frost on the cold frame window… but that’s another story…

I Hoe, I Hoe…. if only it would Grow

I’ve been away from blogging because this is the pre-garden season, the time when I insist on putting seeds in the cold, wet ground and fertilizing their corpses. We’ve had just enough sun down here to sprout my garden hopes, and the cold frame has been busy nurturing seedlings, or at least giving them odd salmon-colored soil mold. I’ve been outside at any flash of sun -- digging, turning the sod into vegetable beds, and planning where everything will eventually go. With an artist’s whimsy, I of course refused anything as easy and efficient as linear rows of the same crop -- I have my “talls” and my “shorts” placed around the circular garden to best show off the artistic (or at least strange) trellises that I’ve put together from the dead fir tree… the place is looking more and more like the set from The Ancient Mariner, or The Chalk Circle. I have hung colorful plastic spiral trinkets on the poles to scare off marauding birds… and watching one tiny hummingbird sitting on the top of the pole for 15 minutes showed me that even the baby birds aren’t scared! (I can see the workers in China, twisting taffy-strips of plastic and putting them in individual plastic wrappings, thinking, “What kind of mental deficient would pay money for melted, twisted plastic??”)

I have moved my compost heap and various logs, rocks and planks multiple times as I find yet another perennial poking through the soil. I love that, but I have deep frustration at not being able to figure out the borders of the old man’s garden beds! The house was vacant for two years, with no one caring for the yard, so the sod reminds me of Kansas prairie, and the perennials have “naturalized” (ie: taken over) parts of the yard far beyond their original turf. And I, with my greenhorn tendency to want to keep any plant alive (“No Seedling Left Behind”), am anguished at the number of baby weeds I have to cut down in the prime of their colonization, and then when I realize it was actually some kind of perennial bulb! -- I’m guilt-ridden and have to go inside and dig into the chocolate seeds, ah, chips. If only I had an old photo or someone around here to point out where to just leave the ground as-is, so that I don’t dig/kill something I might want! I’m amazed at the number of neighbors who say they knew him well for 10-15 years, but can’t tell me where his flowers came up! Sort of like friends of mine saying, “Cathy? a poet? I never knew…”

Anyway, this morning there is another frost, and I haven’t dared go out yet to see how the babies fared… I covered the cold frame with bubblewrap last night, anticipating the lower temps. The night before, I’d forgotten the bubblewrap, but the layer of ice protected them. I think. I realize this is why most folks just buy their garden plants about a foot tall and spade them into the garden on Memorial Day. Saves a lot of anguish. But that way, you’ve paid approximately $150 for about a dozen plants from which you will get two batches of salsa (tomatoes, peppers, onions) and a big bowl of nibbled salad greens.

Whereas I, who raise my plants from seed, pay that same $150 for hundreds of individual seeds with the potential for two acres of plants, which I sow in successive bi-monthly plantings because they keep rotting in the ground or being eaten by birds, and end up with enough for three batches of salsa and possibly enough salad to last one decent party. But during that time, I get all the joys of watching tiny seedlings poke up through the damp soil, unfurl their two cotyledon leaves like twin flags, turn these tiny, tender leaves toward the thin March sun, contract damp-off, and keel over…. at least once a week. They say Nature is a Mother, and they’re not wrong. Meanwhile the weed seeds are sprouting even in places that don’t have apparent soil. They have turned the backyard into Weed Central, rather like a hoard of New Yorkers descending on Paris, (or the reverse, in these Euro-centric times) and anywhere I have turned the soil, there is a sprinkling of cotyledons strewn like a star field on the dark earth. No damp-off there, no sir! I read (in one of the many gardening bibles I’ve bought) that weeds developed tough survival strategies like a million seeds and becoming bitter so animals and birds won’t eat them -- somehow also reminds me of New Yorkers (of which I was one, once) at Coney Island . I barely turn the soil, then my back, and they have raced for a prime spot on the “beach” and are spreading their root “blankets” to make sure their extended family has room to picnic. I don’t have time to hoe them all down (and they know it!) while still trying to get all the beds turned in time for the real garden season, which starts about the date of the last average frost (which here is mid-May, apparently).

As I said, I try to catch any moments of sun… because the usual weather is rain that would worry Noah. There was a teaser week of beautiful blue skies, and then a month of downpour followed by sprinkles followed by downpour. I am deeply grateful to be 40 feet above the river that runs along the other side of my neighbor’s yard. As it is, the clay hardpan under the loam has finally backed up, and large puddles have appeared in my driveway and along the road. Raised beds might be the only option in Spring around here… that, and moss. When the sun peeks out, I race outside and try to weed or plant (ie: drown) a few more seeds. Like a dog thinking it’s going for walkies, I race around eagerly, only to be startled by the rain coming down to look over my shoulder.

And so I am pressed to blog before dawn, so that I can catch any clear day -- like today -- and pretend to impose my will and design on a garden so used to raising itself that I can almost feel the adolescent resentment when I show up with my hoe. “You’re not my gardener!” I can hear it think… but I will forge ahead. Excuse me - there’s the sun!

All in A Day’s….

Spring is lurking in the woodpile, and so it behooves me to get a cold frame knocked together, to protect the tender seedlings as they grow. I have a shed that I “converted” to a greenhouse -- meaning I cut out a 4 foot square of the opaque plastic wall and “installed” (duct taped) a clear plastic square in the opening -- but the shed gets too chilly at night, and from my reading of the various master gardeners, a cold frame is what will snug up those tender seedlings, so that the slugs and grubs have some fresh greens.

I assume there are places where this kind of thing is straightforward; where one has a spare glass window leaning against the garage wall, along with some 10” wide shelving board and a bunch of nails, and just bangs the thing together on the spacious workbench. But I live in that other place -- the Oz of Projects, where unexpected houses (or at least large objects off the top shelf) keep falling on my half-done projects, and where the Powers That Be tell me to “Go Away” (usually in a puff of noxious smoke as another power tool dies)… so I wasn’t exactly expecting this to be simple. But I wouldn’t have settled in the country if I wasn’t a hearty homesteading type, right?

For some reason, the guy before me decided to store all the old windows up in the attic (perhaps dreaming of a dormer greenhouse??). The main attic hatch is in the ceiling of the narrow back hallway, and a ladder the only way up. The wooden cover was at least hinged on one side, which made lifting it somewhat easier, but since I couldn’t reach it until I was on the ladder, and it had to be lifted up in order to rest the ladder… I had the first conundrum. I can only speculate that the guy had a stepladder -- and I only have the 24’ aluminum extension kind… It was like maneuvering a giraffe into a closet. I had been up in the attic once, to attempt to store my Xmas stuff and to see what condition it was in… and almost didn’t get out, because the ladder slid away along the hall when I tried to get back down. This time I decided I’d position it cross-wise to the hall, such that there was no place to slide.

This worked, in a way… but with a 2 ft. wide hallway, the first couple steps up were taken on tiptoe (an interesting feeling on a ladder rung!) because that’s the only way I’d fit between ladder and wall. Once I got halfway up, I had a bit more room to maneuver, and was able to push the solid wood hatch (the man was preparing for a bomb attack, I swear!!) up to a resting position. If I were getting some lightweight Xmas balls down, life would have been easy. But single-pane (non safety-glass) windows with solid wood trim have properties of being both heavy and fragile… But pioneers had encountered much worse, I told myself! I could manage this! I eased the window as close to the opening as I dared, and eased myself over the edge, finding the top rung with one foot. I descended one-handed down an almost-vertical ladder, 4ft.-square heavy glass window in the other, congratulating myself on not breaking any glass. Suddenly, my butt encountered the glass of the framed print I had forgotten to take off the wall… with just enough pressure that I could picture an entirely different pane of glass slicing up my butt!

Writer that I am, the words “Pain of Glass” wedged itself in my mind as I tried to ease the window down to the floor without bending too much at the waist, or extending my butt backwards or sideways so that the ladder didn’t shift (believe me, this is ballast that could scuttle a ship!)… there was No Place to Go But Down, I told myself… the wood frame touched the floor, then I aimed the top edge toward the wall -- it touched lightly enough, but then slid down so that it lay across the floor -- where I had to step off. I came down the last couple rungs on tiptoe, praying my ankles wouldn’t give out, stepped sideways over the window, pulling some upper ligament as I tried to maintain a balance of weight on the ladder, and managed to get to flat ground with no glass broken… and that was the first piece of the cold frame! I went and sat down for a half hour, nursing the pulled ligament and my trembling legs (I hadn’t realized that climbing a ladder several times in slow motion is the Nautilus equivalent of that machine with the cushioned ankle pads -- and my full 170 pounds of little black iron bars attached!)

more tomorrow….

Master Gardeners -- Don't Look!

Part three:
Came out today to find that birds had picked up my garden’s moss pathway and tossed it hither and yon… apparently they thought my plan was to provide them with a soft green 7-11 for their fast breakfast. With the new digging, the garden looked a little battle-weary, but now it really looks like chaos! Or maybe just a preview of the tossed salads I’ll be getting out of it….

The veggie garden does look fairly unusual (the same way that New York City is “a little crowded”) but I have my pile of excuses ready: to my gardening friends, I can say I’m using materials at hand; to my new age friends, I’m working with nature energies; to other poets, I’m getting a poem from the experience; to my spiritual friends, I’m making a meditation path; to my artist friends I invoke the name of Andrew Goldsworthy; and to any kids who come by (if they even need to ask - most don’t), I just say I’m having fun. And I am -- as long as the bottle of ibuprofen holds out.

In deference to my back, I have been doing the spading/digging in small batches ( a few clods at a time), alternating with activities that let me stand up (or fall over, depending how late in the day it is…). And in deference to my artist sensibility (now that is an oxymoron -- never met a sensible artist, don’t believe I ever will…), I have arranged the veggies around the circles so that there’s a variety of heights, colors, etc. Oh, I can’t wait until Summer -- I’m sure once everything is blooming, I’ll be telling my friends, "I didn’t do this -- the birds must have dropped seeds at random!” But meanwhile, I’m digging what seems like arbitrary areas of the garden to plant the early veggies… my neighbor seems to think I’m digging for treasure… he offered to lend me his metal detector.

But I’ve got a master plan: a scale drawing with plantings drawn in different colors for the months. And I’ve got a sketch of how I think it will look mid-summer… and I’ve got images downloaded from nursery catalogs that I can Photoshop into my photos for family, just in case…

This past week, I’ve even moved into actual planting, which -- considering it’s still February -- shows a lot of hope on my part, I think you’ll agree… and the garden gives me ample opportunity to recycle that fir tree: I’ve been using the straightest tree limbs as long poles to allow the early peas to climb, with cotton trellis net that I found under the old shed, a bit torn, but still good for draping. Which is why the garden now looks like a shipwreck mysteriously transported an hour from the coast. Even the straightest limbs have an organic “curl” to them, making the pea tripods like upended ships' prows sticking out of my new beds… in a moment of whimsy (maybe sniffing too much Miracle Gro), I’ve even hung a couple of tiny bells on the tops of the poles on that lightweight crochet ribbon that creates garments that look like they started out at GoodWill… from the look of the moss paths, I don’t think I’m scaring off any birds, but they sound nice when I stumble and lurch into the poles…


And speaking of birds, I already know that they seem to adore digging up peas just as they are sprouting -- the damn nearsighted robins think they’re worms! So when I ran out of the cotton net, I drove to the fabric store for something else - preferably cheap. What I found in the back was the ballerina tulle, used to raise those adorable little skirts with the stiff netting underskirts. It was only 99 cents/yard -- cheaper than the floating row cover that the garden stores love to sell… And it came in wild and crazy colors! I had a sudden vision of my garden covered in lovely circles and squares of aqua, lemon, rose, plum -- how could I resist? I got the aqua and bright yellow to start… as the saleslady was cutting, I mentioned it was for my garden. She didn’t even blink; she nodded and said, “Yup. We sell a lot of this stuff for the garden. In fact, once the raspberries and blueberries and cherries are started, we run out.” Wow - have I ever moved to the right town! Creative people everywhere, draping their trees in red, blue, orange -- I am now really looking forward to fruit season!

Next Winter’s Cord

A small aside: the tree-wound goop turned out to be a kind of tar slurry; it came in a can with its own screwcap applicator, like a large can of paper cement, and about as tricky but much blacker. The directions said to avoid contact with clothes or the skin, and to wash with soap and water to remove. I have washed at least ten times with soap and water, and it is about as washable as any tar is. I should have suspected when I read the bottom line on the can: “Not responsible for any results, even if used according to directions.” Remember when items actually were guaranteed to do what you paid them to do, and when the instructions actually were meant to be helpful as opposed to avoiding a lawsuit? But I digress…

I’m still “processing” my supply of next year’s wood (via the felled tree) -- most of the log slices are under tarps, about two thirds of the limbs are piled in the corner of the yard -- providing a nice impromptu fence to keep out neighbor dogs and their “contributions” -- and the sawdust and mossy twigs provide an impressive barrier to any rototilling, as I try to create the new vegetable garden. Three fourths of the yard had to be “cleared” of tree in order to put this garden in, but it’s almost done now. The clearing, not the garden.

I have never been one to start projects at the basic level. Even as a child, I would turn to the back of the book and start with the “advanced” projects, figuring I’d pick up the basics along the way… my success rate was probably over 50%, depending on your definition of “success”. I rarely ended up with projects that looked like the picture, but that was true even when I did start with the basics. Anyway, this is also true of the garden -- not content to have a large vegetable garden, I have upped the ante by making it a circular garden, or -- to be technical -- a four-circuit labyrinth. I have always wanted a labyrinth in my yard, since I started walking them. And since I hadn’t had a yard of my own since I’d started walking them, this was my first chance. And I didn’t hesitate. I found one small enough for the yard, yet big enough to garden in -- 36 feet across, giving me narrow walkways but decent-sized beds. But no rototiller-straight lines… luckily I’d bought a farm-grade spade. Now if only I’d developed farm-grade glutes!

Over the past week, I have been “sketching” the pattern on the ground, using a center pole, a long string and the sawdust that was so handily lying around. As I am a little old to be able to walk around in circles, bent double, for hours, I have to take breaks, doing other tasks that allow me to stand upright (such as dragging the limbs to the “barricades”, as I have taken to calling them). And then I have been taking breaks from the breaks, as my back has informed that it will break if I do not. After enough of the circular pattern was sketched, I have been laying out the walkways using the moss that was also lying around in great quantities, from the felled tree. The moss felt like I was removing pelts from very narrow sheep or something - soft, wet and kind of held together like snake-skin or pelts. As I bent over the logs gathered this green fluff, I wondered if I were being frugal, or crazy. Then I priced little “plugs” of groundcover moss from the nursery, and decided it was frugal even if it was crazy!

My neighbor has walked by several times and tried to be helpful by telling me what an idiot I was not to just burn all the “scrap”. That was the advice of the woodchopper, too. I told them both that I intend to burn them -- but where it will do some good, in my woodstove next year! I suppose if you live in the country with trees all around, you might get spoiled and consider a large backyard “campfire” to be easier than sawing up small limbs… but then, we city folk use and toss plastic bags like they grow on trees -- at least tree limbs really do! I don’t think my neighbor has seen the circular garden yet -- I await his comments… or guffaws.

Log Blogging

The Before:
A new adventure: one of the tall firs must come down. I noticed it first a few days ago, in the wind… it was lashing around like a shoelace, and I saw how very tilted it was from the base. It had the same shape as the scoliosed spine in my chiropractor’s office. It was about fifty feet tall, and well beyond my capabilities, so I called the tree guy in the local classified ads. If he’d been advertising around this small town for years and no one was so irate at his performance as to take out a complaining ad next to his, I figured he’d do fine. I knew it was much better do this before I dug the garden than after, since the only path to fell it was directly across the yard. The guy came over yesterday, paced out the ground and studied the tree, averred how he could take it down easily across the yard, tho it might knock down the little shed -- I told him that would be a bonus. This is the “shed” made of 2x4s and plastic with a truck topper roof. To call it ugly is to insult the word “ugly”. And it’s not even very useful, since the door hangs catty-whompus and the rain gets in.

Anyway, he named a price -- very low, from what I’d heard in other areas (cash, of course!) and said he’d be over the next day. Today. About forty minutes ago, if I’d heard what he’d said correctly, but I have to remember this is country time… they don’t run by the minute hand… nevertheless, if he’s not here by 10am, I’ll call. I had to make a special trip to the bank to get all this cash, and I’ve put aside everything else I’d planned to do today, so at least within an hour of the arrangement? I got extra batteries for the camera, and have taken the “before” shots already -- I’m hoping he doesn’t think I’m checking on him; I just want to record the event… with the memory I have been exhibiting lately, I’ll be saying, “How did that stump get here?” by next month.

I have not witnessed a tree removal from start to finish, though I often see the results lying on the ground… I have asked him to cut it up for firewood as part of the process, and that will give me some of next year’s wood - another bonus. This is not a huge tree, tho it’s tall… don’t know if he’ll try to cut limbs off first, or just take it down and then work on it… an oak that I’m already fond of is partly in the way, and that concerns me, and depending on how tall the thing is, the apple tree could get hit, too. As I said, if the shed comes down, it’s a bonus, since I’d decided that it had to be replaced by some cold frames anyway…


The After:
When an hour had passed, I did all the things you do to “call” a handyman: put on a pot of soup, start a really good mystery, pick up the phone to call long distance. Finally, taking down curtains and turning on the iron did it… and I made sure to forget to turn it off, so that the guy didn’t need to “go back for tools” for a couple hours… the risk of fire was worth it…

Now that the process is done, I can recollect the events and put them in order -- they seemed to be happening all at once on different dimensions, either very quantum or my middle-age mind can’t follow as fast as it used to. First, he came in, apologizing for being later because he’d not gotten much sleep the night before. That should have given me pause. But I assured him it was fine, and I surreptitiously turned on the camera as he gassed up the chain saw and started yanking its chain. Sounding like a recalcitrant lawn mower, it almost ended the day before we began it. But he got it started, took a wedge out of the tree, set the saw down and walked back to double-check something, then went back to the tree, and in about three minutes, the fir comes roaring down into the backyard! Whomping full across the yard, it narrowly missed the fence and the shed -- but I quickly noticed that part of the oak is also down, and there are a couple apple limbs missing… at least most of the trees are still standing. The guy didn’t miss a beat - he walked over, started trimming the branches away the same way a fisherman filets a fish - huge curved green boughs lined like ribs on both sides of the long trunk. Then he sliced into the trunk like it was a carrot, cutting sections about 12 inches, and within 30 minutes of walking on to the property, he shut off the saw, and that was that! I had photo’d some of the proceedings, just for the album of events. I thanked him, gave him the wad of cash, and stared at the giant “carrot” that covered my yard.

Now, I had told him I’d take care of the tree if he’d just chop it -- I plan to use all the pieces I can… but this idea of Nature’s abundance didn’t really hit home until now. I had a vast abundance of moss-covered, wrist-thick limbs to dry for kindling, and over a dozen slices of log about a foot or so in diameter to split and stack for next year’s winter fires. It was at this point that my back decided to tell me it was 52, even if I wasn’t…

Not quite sure where to begin, I decided to get the logs under a tarp near the other firewood, and started rolling the slices to that spot… only the first third were roll-able; after that, I discovered that most of them had “hidden limbs” that were now six inches or more into the soil. Wrestling with one of them, I wondered if splitting them where they were might save me a hernia. Or, heck, even hiring some high school kid who’d split firewood all his life to do it… tho with the cost of Ipods these days, I’d bet his price wouldn’t be low. In the end, I grabbed the handsaw and lopped off the bits that put the brakes on, and got a few more to the tarp area. Of course, when I went for the tarp, it wasn’t in the garage, and that was when I remembered it was on the roof of the shed, keeping off the rain. Right. Another trip to the hardware store… but I had to go anyway, because I didn’t have the goop they use to dress the tree wounds sustained by the oak and apple. More later.

Short Takes from a Short-Circuited Brain

Because my brain is short-circuiting, due to all the calories going to long-overused muscles, this entry is in the nature of snippets…

I have stepped back in time, in a wonderful way -- the local library is still using the card-punching process; I haven’t seen that since I was a page at the Westfield NJ library in the 70’s! My job was to pre-datestamp the cards to slip into the books: the cards had large numbers 1-4, which if I remember meant the number of weeks they were checked out for… no receipts, no online tallies… I’m going from a system where they send automatic email warning me when the books and DVDs will be due, to a place that I have to look at each individual book! And they don’t even trust me with the card! Apparently they just keep my number, and I give them my name every time I walk up… that’s a small clientele!

I have so far been unable to unscrew the tub drain that has a chip in it, so I finally got desperate and used some of my modelling clay to fill the gap… should hold until I get the contractor in (he came the first week, but since he has other pending clients, it‘s scheduled for after Christmas)… I went ahead and got the exterminators to spray -- if the repair work continues to slip as it has, the toxins will be pretty much soaked in by the time he gets under the house…

I can barely move to type, having just ripped up three wall to wall carpets and their underlayment in the space of about 5 hours… this from a woman who would often have to fold her laundry in shifts because she couldn’t keep her arms up long enough! Not only torn them up, but got two of them into the bed of my truck and over to the dump -- if I wake up tomorrow and find I can’t push myself to a sitting position, I’ll know why. That, and my hands feel like they are so dry they are sucking moisture out of the air…I could probably dry dishes with my bare hands at this point.

I also shovelled out the gutters; apparently the last time was about 1960... if I was counting the tree rings correctly. I’m not sure if it was fertile soil, but there were actually a couple worms up there -- the vermiculture version of Penthouse dining… and that’s got to be gourmet stuff if they devoted a decade or so to climb the gutterpipes… they got impatient with trickle-down theory, too, I guess…I took the toilet brush up onto the roof to brush off the moss -- I’m not saying the moss balls were oversize, but they put up such a defense that it felt like the Attack of the Green Tribbles.

I toasted my first night here with wine -- boxed wine, of course; it’s only fitting.
Now I have to go blow up my bed again so I can keep far enough away from the dust to be able to breathe through the night. A bien tot!