matching tracksuits

Summer means gardening for us. I wish I could say that without the knowing smile, for our “gardening” is still quite rudimentary. It’s about like saying I’m a cyclist because I manage to hop on a bike once or twice a month.

Our gardening consists of a few pepper plants, a watermelon vine or two,

perhaps a cantaloupe, and maybe a few spices, especially basil. Next to cilantro, basil has to be the best, freshest-smelling herb that exists. Apparently I’m not the only one who thinks so: K came in today with a caterpillar who’d devoured a basil plant.

“Why are you upset?” ask L.

“Because a beast was eating our basil!” K responded.

“What’s it for?” L inquired further.

“For cooking, not for caterpillars,” explained K.

“But you should share,” replied the sage.

The trouble is, we don’t have enough basil to share. We don’t have enough watermelon to share, nor cantaloupe. Our peppers are sparse too, but that’s really for a different reason.

The tomatoes. The only thing we have enough to share is taking over our small raised beds. One vine alone requires six to eight stakes: each fork in the vine turns enormous and fruit-laden.

We head out daily to pick the tomatoes. We’re growing three varieties, including sweet, bright cherry tomatoes. Most of these rarely make it to the house:

we munch on them so while we’re picking the rest of the tomatoes that hardly any are left when we make it back to the kitchen.

All the same, two days can produce enough tomatoes to overwhelm quickly.

This is what K tried to explain to L this evening: “We do share. We give tomatoes to Nana and Papa, to A and P, to the chipmunks and squirrels…”

And still we end up with so many every couple of days. Then again, who can complain about this? Quarter a fresh tomato and sprinkle salt and pepper: a perfect summer snack.

In the process of saving a Leyland cypress from being utterly destroyed by a vast infestation if bagworm moths, I’ve been removing and killing hundreds (possibly closer to a thousand by now) of bag-encased larvae. Violence in the effort to save a tree.

I discovered a new risk today.

As I was working to trim the tree and remove the bagworm larvae, I heard the constant call off a bird. It was a distressing call, and I realized I must be near the nest. I moved my ladder a few feet to the east, climbed up, glanced down, and was started with what I saw.

I only made a slight motion, and the three chicks suddenly raised up about four inches, mouths open, willing to ingest whatever was placed there.

My old addiction
Makes me crave only what is best
Like these just this morning song birds
Craving upward from the nest
These tiny birds outside my window
Take my hand to be their mom
These open mouths
Would trust and swallow
Anything that came along

Reminded me of David Wilcox’s imagination.

It’s not just the risk of willingly accepting anything as food that makes a small bird’s life precarious. As they raised their almost featherless bodies from the nest, they swayed, nearly blind, their heads too heavy for their underdeveloped necks. It seemed miraculous that they didn’t fall out of their nests.

For over two hours, I was working not more than three feet from a nest chicks so young they were barely beginning to get feathers. Had I situated my ladder eighteen inches to the left, I probably would have destroyed the nest.

It’s almost worth of FailBlog: I cut down a tree in the backyard. Those two clauses would be enough to make many worry. “Did it fall on your house?” “Did it damage your neighbor’s property?” I miscalculated, but nothing so awful.

The tree — diseased and dying — was a mite, just a tiny bit too tall. A few inches. Of what significance would a few inches be in our almost infinite galaxy? For the want of a nail and all that…

When the tree fell (after much tugging and physical cajoling, for I didn’t want it to fall on our neighbor’s fence), the top portion caught a branch of a neighboring tree.

And there it remained.

Today, I took care of the problem, but not without some trepidation. As it stood — or rather, half-stood — I didn’t know which way it would finally fall. Cutting from the bottom seemed most logical: eventually, gravity would serve  to create a fulcrum out of the weakened part of the tree, pulling it in on itself.

It worked. But not after I literally cut through the entire tree, a nerve-wrenching experience. I could see the tree lurching this way or that, cracking me in the thigh, breaking a leg, an arm, a whole bag of bones. I cut through to the mid-point, then made paranoid careful cuts: squeeze the chainsaw’s trigger, a little cutting, then a retreat.

In the end, I won: no broken bones, and the wood is now is now curing. And I’m finally coming down from my chainsaw-testosterone high.

We still have pictures a hang, a television to buy, and a few final touches, but the living room, by and large, is done.

0.8, f/4.5, 60 mm, flash on slow sync