Babcia made a list — a “To Do” list.
First item down.
Sort of.
There is no other way to get rid of branches and such is to burn them. There’s no “leave them at the edge of your property and the city will pick them up” option.
around the house
Linden Tree
The Linden tree in Babcia’s yard is in full bloom now. The number and richness of the blossoms is astounding. Equally incredible is the constant and unmistakeable sound of bees buzzing around the blossoms.
| Under der linden an der heide, dâ unser zweier bette was, dâ muget ir vinden schône beide gebrochen bluomen unde gras. vor dem walde in einem tal, tandaradei, schône sanc diu nahtegal. | Under the linden tree on the open field, where we two had our bed, you still can see lovely both broken flowers and grass. On the edge of the woods in a vale, tandaradei, sweetly sang the nightingale. |
Or in another cultural context: “Dragostea din tei” (“Love from the Lindens” according to Wikipedia) which became the famous “Numa Numa” video.
Longed-For Morning
Rains, clouds, floods, puddles, mud, grey, damp, smeared, uninspired, uninspiring — after days and seeming days of this, to have a morning that looks like this is better than the cup of coffee in my hand.
Surveying the Damage
We head down to our once-lake-front and take a look at what thousands of gallons of water flowing over a small area in a few minutes can do.
Mud, sand, limbs, leaves, cans — this is what it looks like after a flood.
Plants destroyed, swings caked in muck, belongings strewn through neighbors’ yards. I can only imagine what a real flood would be like.
We go out into the neighborhood, checking on what gifts others received, eventually heading over a couple of streets to a house we’d looked at when we were house hunting. It had been love at first sight. The yard was magnificent; the kitchen/dining area was open yet homey, almost cozy, with a fireplace in the corner. The full basement was finished on one half that opened out to a fenced dog run. Yet a friend advised against it: too much cracking in the foundation walls. “It won’t be a problem now,” he said, “but in a few years, it will cost some significant money to fix.”
We were heartbroken.
As we walk through the neighborhood, I remember that on the other side of the dog run was a small creek — a draining stream just like the one that runs behind our house, and so we head over to see. I couldn’t remember how much elevation there was between the drain and the house.
Not enough.
Talking to neighbors across the street who were out in the yard, we learned that the owners had well over a foot of water in their basement, and that the water had risen to just below the bottom of the window on the outside. I suddenly became very thankful for the two or three inches we found welling up through the slab in our basement.
Flood
It started around five. I called K to see if she’d need to stay late at work and asked her if it was raining.
“It’s coming down pretty hard here,” I explained.
And down it came, through dinner, through clean up time, into play time. E and I were by the window when I realized how significant the rainfall really was.
Sheets of rain; gusts of wind. I had these terrible images of one of the enormous trees in the backyard falling onto the house. What would we do? How could I protect my children, my wife?
And still it came down.
Looking into the backyard, I saw we had a lake. And it was growing. Within a few minutes, I realized why: the stream was no longer a stream. And within a few more minutes, we were all standing in the carport in shock.
But it was nothing compared to what I saw when I got to the neighbor’s yard. Looking into her neighbor’s yard, I saw something that literally made be question my grasp on reality. Water flowing out of the house. Pouring. Torrents running out of the house.
The poor folks were getting it from three directions.
Seeing the owner in the garage, I walked in and asked him if he needed help. I could only imagine what might be going on inside the house, and I thought if I could help him move anything at all to higher ground it would be more useful than standing around with a video camera in my hand.
Fortunately, at that point, nothing had gotten into the house. It was just flowing through his garage, he explained. He’d lived in the neighborhood for close to forty years, he explained, and he’d never seen anything remotely close to this.
I promised to return later to see if the situation had worsened and if he needed help.
It turned out, though, that we had our own issues to deal with.
“Where did the water come from?” K asked. Walls? Floor? Who knows. When this much rain falls in such a short time, the answer is probably, “All of the above.”
I vacuumed for at least half an hour before I really felt I was making no progress at all.
“Surely I’m just imagining this,” I muttered to myself. “Surely I’m making progress. I’ve emptied this thing at least ten or twelve times, and it supposedly holds sixteen gallons. That’s a lot of water for it to show no change,” I continued, still rambling to myself. (The more confused I am, the more likely I am to begin talking aloud to myself. Perhaps I’m not the only one?)
I decided to take a quick break and see if the water rose any. That would confirm my obvious suspicion that water was still flooding into the house.
By this time, though, the rain had almost stopped and the water was lower, almost returning to the confines of the small creek.
What remained was a fetid mess.
An expensive fetid mess: the house, about a half a mile away from our humble home, with a backyard so gloriously landscaped I thought it was a park, no longer had a beautiful garden. In its stead was a lake.
It was no Katrina. Flash flooding at the most. Still, enough of a view of what water can do to put famous floods into a more meaningful perspective.
Late Spring Growth
The garden is growing: snap peas are taking off and the tomatoes are fruiting abundantly thanks, I think, to a new pruning method recommended to me by the manager of a local university’s organic garden. The grass seed I sprinkled almost haphazardly in the flat space among the trees at the base of our lot have sprouted finally. (The delay was due, in large measure, to simple neglect: it was an experiment. What happens if you just spread the seed and leave it alone? I guess we have our answer now.)
But that growth outside the house seems insignificant compared to what’s developing inside: the Boy is a walker now, able to walk twenty or more steps before collapsing to his hands and knees for something more sure and more familiar.
Today a walker; tomorrow, a runner.
It all happens too quickly.
Mix and Match
A busy day, with mowing, smoking, staking, moving, shaking — a busy June beginning in preparation for a long-delayed first-birthday party for the Boy. It coincides with Dzien Dziecka, a holiday missing from the American calendar, so we’ll be having a laughter-filled party (We have Mother’s and Father’s Day? Why do we leave the children out?)
But there was no time for pictures today. And so we have the mix-and-match: pictures from yesterday (L’s kindergarten awards day) and a few words about today.
Neighbors’ Neighbors
Our neighbors, it turns out, still have the same neighbors that foraged in our trash a few years ago and seemed able to get into our compost no matter now cleverly I thought I’d secured it. They were a bit shy at first. Indeed, they were so shy to begin with that I didn’t even realize they were “they.”
But with enough patience, sitting facing the neighbors’ tree while the boy played,
they began coming down the tree. At first, I only saw the parent and one baby. It wasn’t until I looked closely at the pictures this evening that I realized how much we have in common: a couple of kids, an old house, and rings around our eyes.
They shyness continued, with one peaking out for a last glimpse of that strange creature with the odd black appendage that it keeps pointing toward us.
By then, K and L had returned from the pre-recital ballet pictures and the four of us headed out for a walk, dropping the girl off at her friend’s house up the street.
Such an odd little neighborhood. Most houses date from the late sixties, giving them either look of a tired maturity or experienced elegance, depending on the time the owners put into the upkeep. But sprinkled in and about them are newer houses, some obviously less than ten or fifteen years old.
And then there are the mysteries, like the neighbors who obviously spent several thousand dollars cutting down more than ten large trees in their yard while their house has signs of neglect creeping around the doors and windows.
“If I had a few grand to spend on the house,” I laughed, “the last thing I’d spend it on would be the removal of trees.” Of course the large oak with the hollow, rotten core would have been a different story. Still, first on my list of priorities is our tired, tired kitchen, in need of a complete overhaul. A finished laundry room would be a pleasant addition, as would a remodeled guest bath. Cutting down a few trees in the backyard — what’s the point?
But about this time,  the Boy began reminding us how late it had grown, so we returned to our house with the temporarily fabulous front lawn, the ever-tired kitchen, the unfinished laundry, and the beds.
All Day
Saturday morning, blue sky, cup of coffee, 10-20mm wide-angle lens on the back deck. A day like this calls for outside work: the three unfinished Leyland cypresses do too.
Then again, the Boy looks spectacular, and I consider taking him out to hit the links, only to remember that I don’t play golf.
Nor do I play tennis. My tennis racket has been pressed into carpenter-bee-launching duty and the only tennis balls I have are on the bottoms of the legs of the thirty-odd desks in my classroom.
Such a beautiful day, though. It calls for time outside. It calls for walks. It calls for coffee on the back porch.
What such a start doesn’t call for is time spent waiting for someone to rotate my tires only to leave just as they pull my little Jetta into to garage, but that’s just what happens. And that’s okay. Not at first, but eventually — wasted time is lost time, and it irritates me.
Still, the trees are patient.
By the time I get back to the deck again to take the “after” shot, it’s past nine. Dark, quiet, still. The kids are in bed; the day is over — only one thing remaining: document the day.
And then I discover 147Trance’s YouTube channel, and before I know it, it’s past midnight. Technically, I skipped a day. Well, somewhere it’s still the twenty-fifth…
[He] Climbs a Tree and Scrapes [His] Knee
My shorts have tears, and my knees aren’t the only thing scraped. It’s always the same story when I take on the Leyland Cypress trees that provide lovely and complete privacy at our balcony. Privacy that comes with a cost, for just trimming three trees is more than an afternoon affair.
Every few years, though, I decide that enough is enough, that it’s time to teach these trees a lesson they’ll never forget. To strip them almost bald. To take a couple of feet off the side and four off the top.
And that’s no easy task, because these things have trunks that are inches — multiple inches — in diameter. And I’m standing on a ladder that’s balanced on some limbs that I’ve crushed into semi-submission, standing on this ladder and jerking my arm back and forth and back and forth. The whole tree sways; the whole ladder sways. Back and forth and back and forth. I think about a chain saw. I think again. Back and forth.
Finally, I’m through. I take the freshly removed log, steady myself, and toss it over the side. I hear the crunch of busted plastic. “Hum, there was that white plastic deck chair somewhere near the tree,” I think. “Near the tree, but not that near.
But it wasn’t the deck chair. It was the spool I use to store the ridiculously long drop cord I have to use for such adventures. There is a tolerance of perhaps two inches — it fit perfectly.
How many times would I have had to chuck a log from a ladder blindly over a tree to hit that again?
Taming
When the morning starts like this, I know I’ll be spending the day outside working in the yard. This in turn means that K will be inside, cleaning, doing laundry, caring for the Little Man. Our own little division of labor.
First up: the row of bushes — no idea what species — that runs between our driveway and our neighbors’. Mr. C has told me, “Cut those things back as much as you want.” They’re planted on his property, but they spill onto ours: I treat them as mutual property. But I take him at his word and usually do both sides myself.
This year, things are especially bad. The briers and honeysuckle at the end of the driveway have taken over. You can’t even see the two trees at the base of the driveway unless you look up. Then again, they’re Liquidambar styraciflua, Sweet Gums (or as I prefer to call them, Satanically Evil Indestructible Overly-Fertile trees), so who really wants to see them?
I get out the trimmer and decide, in the words of Marsellus Wallace, to get medieval on it.
It’s all futile, I know: I’ve already spent an entire day cleaning out the briers, digging up roots, pulling down the vines. That was some five years ago, though, and I must admit to my surprise at how long it took things to return to their previous condition.
I suppose in another five years I’ll do it again. The bushes, though, only have a year of respite.
May Afternoon Walk
The Boy, the Girl, and I went out for a walk this afternoon, to see what we could see.
We saw all our lovely neighbors:
- the ones with the sweet but somewhat kitschy flower bed in their front yard, the bed that includes an old screen door leaning against a tree with “Welcome” painted on it;
- the ones that are installing a new driveway on the far side of their house, providing their domicile with twin entrances;
- the ones who work hard to keep the subdivision name sign clean and the planter in front of it planted;
- the ones who seem to have enough people for four houses living under one roof;
- the ones with the lovely ivy growing up their house;
- the ones who have the cute variety of flowers growing along the driveway.
And the ones, busted just today, who were cooking meth in their garage.
These fine folks were taking up the slack caused when our other neighbors (and I use this term loosely, for they all live several, several houses from us, but in the same neighborhood) got slack and were busted just before Thanksgiving 2010.
Caught
The Boy is sick — trapped in the house, in short. Two ears, both infected. Talk of tubes. Worries about effects. We’re all caught, I guess. Home from the doctor this morning, though, there was only one thing catching E: sleep.
After a fitful night, I was surprised at how long he lasted before the fists began digging in the eyes, before the fussing began, before the first yawn. When he’s sick and fussy, the first morning nap is always a blessing: some coffee, a bit of news on the internet, a chance to catch a moment of calm. But the calm never lasts: I look around and see what a mess a little boy can make in only a couple of hours, and I begin cleaning.
Soon, I’m interrupted: a terrible squawking and fluttering just outside the kitchen door tells me that we have our first victim of the season in our raspberry bush netting. No matter how carefully I hang the netting, with such deliberate overlaps that I then secure with various extemporaneous methods, it never fails: the birds somehow get in and then, unable to get back out, just about destroy the netting in their panic.
Last year, I tried various methods, including going into the netting myself with a tennis racket and herding the bird down to a corner where I can then pick it up and carry it out. (I quit doing that soon after an unexpected turn from a bird resulting in a fluttering pile of feathers beneath the berry vines. I suppose I didn’t think things through all that carefully with that method.)
Eventually, this one finds its way out.
Not unlike the Boy’s dreams: he is desperate to head out after so much time inside. At dinner, he sees his jacket I left hanging on the back of a chair when we returned from the doctor’s office. He grabs it, smiles at us, and begins waving bye-bye.
Rainy Sunday
All day. All day. All day. All day.
Developing Spring
“Daddy! Daddy!” come the cries of excitement from the front of the house. “Daddy, you have to see this!”
The zinnias are sprouting. “Unless they’re weeds,” she says stoically as we head back to the front yard.
“It’s entirely possible,” I mumble to myself. But they’re coming up just in the center of the pot, almost certainly zinnias. How would I know? I couldn’t recognize them in full bloom let alone when they’re just sprouting.
More squeals from the backyard moments later: “You have to see this!” The snap dragons’ blooms are opening.
“Are they everything you expected?” I ask as I head up the stairs to inspect them.
“Well, no,” she says with her sly grin. “I was hoping they would snap!”
Spring Morning Sky
Gathering Clouds
We’ve had a mysterious leak in our basement every time we’ve had significant rainfall. It can be a torrential downpour or a simple three-day gentle drenching: the results are the same. Well, that makes it sound like it’s happened several times. It’s only happened twice. We think it’s coming from the deck flashing: I suspect it’s like so many other things in the house: poorly installed.
With forecasters saying a huge — absolutely mind-blowingly large — storm is on the way, duct tape appears and we compromise on a quick fix. Or rather a quick temporary fix.
The storm clouds build, darken, and spit a little rain, but nothing terribly significant. Perhaps it was all in vain?
I hope not — a good shower to wash the pollen from everything would be just about perfect.
Cinderella Around the House
I got my book to clean. I got the laundry and put it in the washing machine. It got me stressed out because it was hard. I did a lot of work to do it.
I cleaned the toilet after I read the page in my book. It told me to get the cleaner, and I got the brush and cleaned the toilet.
I read the page of my book and it said to scrub the mirror, scrub the floors, and mop the floor.
While I was cleaning, my stepmother was resting, playing a game of chess on the computer, and taking a nap. She was eating and telling me chore after chore.
Sweet and Sour
Summer is sweet and sour. It is vines of filled with tomatoes turning a gentle orange before shifting to deep, sweet red. We pick them and smell the perfume that lingers on our hands. Romas provide consistency; Better Boys provide juice.
Then there’s the sour: weeds. They grow in the now-composted mulch that’s supposed to be keeping them out.
But there’s the sweetest of all: a boy who will wait patiently while mom tugs at the weeds.
From Dawn to Dusk
Breakfast should have been a hint of the day to come. While at Aldi yesterday, we found a real deal on small fillets, so we had steak (one fillet shared between the two of us) and eggs for breakfast.
The Girl entertained the Boy while we finished up breakfast, and I joked, “This is the kind of breakfast that sticks with you until dinner.”
Little did we know how busy we would be
- Applying another coat of Thompson’s on the deck (it didn’t make sense to leave a touch in one can) while K took care of the kids and did laundry;
- Mowing in 95 degree pure sun as K took care of the kids and cooked barszcz;
- Cleaning the house while K took care of the kids and did more laundry (The Boy goes through so much laundry that it’s a miracle there’s still water left in the county);
- Taking the Girl for a promised swim as K took care of the Boy;
It looks like such a short, innocuous list, but between steps three and four, K and I fell asleep while the Girl watched an episode of Martha Speaks and the Boy took a post-meal snooze.
And nature provided the first test of four mornings’ of waterproofing
