that after spending the last three mornings/early afternoons spreading a liberal coat of water sealant on our deck that I could get by with a post-wash, pre-treatment picture from 2008, when I last did such a thorough job.
After all, I’m just trying to post this thing so I can get back to my cigar and YouTube snooker…
It’s easy to weed when you have a semi-set schedule, when there’s not a little squirmy body waiting for regular feeding, when evenings seem to drift by. But we have a wonderful squirmy baby, and evenings don’t drift by, and we have no schedule of our own. As such, weeding happens at six in the morning…
Why talk about the weather unless you’re in an uncomfortable situation? Perhaps when the weather is exceptional? Perhaps a week with almost daily rain in the heat of a South Carolina July?
Still, it’s not so much the rain, or even the storm, that’s worthy of comment: it’s the still-green grass in the front yard midway through July that’s striking.
A few years ago, we had our first problem with yellow jackets. I took the problem very seriously. Well, somewhat seriously.
In short, I was terrified. I didn’t want to get stung, and I had this vision of them swarming out of their hole to attack, hence the layers and layers and layers.
Recently, a new batch took up residence in our front yard. I took things a little less seriously than I did in 2007. I threw an old window screen over the hole at dusk and went at them through the screen. Still, I was cautious, wearing jeans, long sleeves, and boots.
And so yesterday, I chanced upon our third nest of visitors. I’d inadvertently run over the nest a couple of times with the mower, so we were well on our way to making friends already.
This morning, I gave them a housewarming present: three gallons of boiling water.
A few more gallons in the early evening and I think they’ve got the point.
If only I could leave pheromone signs up: “You’re welcome to hang out here, but build your nest in a far corner of the backyard, well away from anywhere my children would be likely to play.”
This year I’m leaving them alone. We’ll see what happens.
The Girl was born in December: to go outside was a major project requiring actual planning and considerable logistics in the form of layers of protection. The Boy, on the other hand, is a spring baby.
This means that he and the berries are ripening together.
Saturdays have set-in-stone morning rituals: a talk with Babcia and Dziadek in Poland; coffee (for we’ve given it up during the week); ballet lessons. Once it’s all done, we have time to play.
And time to work.
We have several bird pairs nesting in our Leyland Cypresses that block off our deck from the sides. One builder seems more industrious than the other, though. I watch this fellow make at least half a dozen trips in the space of five minutes.
But I have my own work to do: a backyard that’s been neglected since the end of last summer, with enough twigs and branches to make five piles throughout the yard. Plus there’s more tomatoes to plant, stakes to arrange, hedges to trim, grass to mow.
Most of it gets done, but by dusk, I’m ready to put the tools back, lean the wheelbarrow against the house, and call it a day.
The first video that was entirely the Girl’s idea.
Wants and needs are easily confused. Birds, for example, need water like all creatures. They don’t need berries, but their sweet flavor and high water content makes berries particularly attractive. Our recently-installed netting, however, frustrates our flying friends from fulfilling both wants and needs (though it does little for alliterative flourishes).
Flowers need attention, as do little girls (and, I would imagine, little boys, though we won’t be collecting anecdotal evidence for a few more weeks yet). And the best attention is often so seemingly slight: a pat, a hug, a kind word.
Spring is a time of expectation and rebirth. Or simply birth. With four weeks remaining until the Boy’s due date, it’s time to complete the final preparations: clothes need washing, cribs need assembling,
and final days as an only child need enjoying. We’re all bursting at the prospect of a new member of the family, but I suspect that it won’t take long for the Girl to start remembering how peaceful a Saturday afternoon could be when she was flying solo.
But there will be things only she can help with for several more years: her place as the special helper is secure for the foreseeable future.
So is mine.
Growing one’s own herbs — if only we had the time to use them…
It’s not something we experience daily: we’re often on our way or long gone when the sun shines through the kitchen/dining room window like this. That makes weekend light unique: we know it’s a day off when we tumble downstairs to see something like this.
We invite it in, making sure all the blinds are open and even turning off a few lights to enjoy the warmth of early morning spring light.
We aren’t the only ones glad to see the spring light.
The raspberry and blackberry canes are bursting with excitement, literally.
And so while some spring guests are welcome, others aren’t: last year, birds ate every single berry long before they were even ripe. This year, we’ve put up netting — a polite “Keep Out” that has me curious about its ultimate effectiveness.
Our lone rose is blooming.
And with our holly cut back, it’s easy to see why the sweet gum that continually plagued me was so difficult impossible to kill, other than it being a sweet gum tree.
It wraps itself around all that’s good and perverts it to its own nefarious ends. Sounds familiar…
“I promised her!” K mouths to me as L thumps up the stairs to brush her teeth, disheartened by my casual dismissal of her idea to go down to the blooming azalea and pick some flowers to take to school. “You can just get some from our neighbors’ azalea in their front yard,” I said just moments earlier. They’re out of town, but I knew they wouldn’t mind: they’re like long-lost family to the Girl.
“I’m not tromping down through the cold, wet leaves and grass to pick blooms for her when she can walk fifty feet…”
A few minutes later, I’m pulling small clumps of blooms from the bush, excited about the foggy early morning that promises a sunny mid-morning.
An hour later, the prophecy is fulfilled.
Our two hostas (Fortunei Albopicta) winter under decaying leaves and an ever-dwindling smattering of decorative rocks. After the new leaves of most all trees have fully unfurled and the crape myrtles have begun budding, the hostas finally begin to emerge from winter dormancy.
It’s almost magical to watch such perennials resurrect themselves every spring. Little buds emerge from even the dampest, thickest blanket of last autumn’s leaves — the strength to push stones and leaves away is a testament to life’s tendency to conquer death.
Then again, maybe it just likes to hide.
After all, who doesn’t like hiding?
The first day of spring break 2012 proper, and it starts like any spring day should: sun, warmth, clear light. Freshly emerged leaves offset the patch of Azalea blue (or is that purple? I’ve never checked, i.e., asked K) in the back corner. It would be great to be out in the warmth, to do some work on our small raised-bed garden, to work up the first sweat of the year. The grass needs mowing; autumn’s leaves need raking; the raspberries need netting shortly — yet none of these are options.
With a major paper due in a week, I’m sequestered, reading through articles, planning an attack, drowning in coffee and tea.
I spend the day filling a folder with articles from JSTOR, Gale, and seemingly countless other online resources that make it possible to research most anything from home. Then I write, write, write.
“In calling these stories ‘parabolic,’ we encounter an critical etymological parallel with geometry.”
Did I really just write that?
Still, I take my own advice, the mantra to my students that I seem to chant daily: “It’s a first draft. Don’t worry about making everything perfect — or even close to it — in a first draft.”
Evening approaches and with it, new tasks. I help the Girl get ready for bed; I trim tenderloin and prepare the brine for smoking later this week. K reads the Girl stories and prepares a salad for tomorrow’s lunch. Having to go to work tomorrow, she trundles off to bed; I sit down once more at the computer.
Others I’m sure are enjoying a first evening at the beach or the sounds of crickets at a mountain retreat. Me, I’m just ready to turn out the lights and head to bed.
Buds out of the focal plane will soon become the center of all attention — especially birds.
Saturday has a morning ritual that never changes. It begins with some Skyping to Babcia and Dziadek in Poland. The Girl carries on two-thirds in English, a bit in Polish, and the rest in squeals and laughs. Ballet follows, with me heading to a nearby McDonald’s for a coffee and some paper grading. Returning home, it’s time for polski cwiczenia, Polish practice. Saturday after Saturday it’s the same, in ordinary time, Advent, Lent, or Easter.
A five-foot visitor in our backyard, though, is hardly an every-Saturday occurrence. If it were, I think we might be seeing less of Nana (and, by proxy, Papa).
A black rat snake Pantherophis obsoletus, this fellow came slithering along our side yard, and I noticed him just as he was winding his way among the Leyland cypresses that shield our deck from neighboring yards.
K was simultaneously fascinated and repulsed, wondering aloud whether I should kill it.
“Of course not!” I declared. “This guy eats rats, mice, chipmunks, squirrels, and a host of other things I’d gladly do without.” But as a compromise, I took a pitchfork and scooted him down to the edge of our property where he promptly wound his way into an extremely large azalea, curling around the branches until it was four or so feet in the air.
Returning to the upper part of our yard, I discovered some moss that appears to have sprouts. First a snake, then odd moss — who knew what else might come our way.
Yes, a very tenuous Lenten connection. Still, one can’t say I didn’t try.
With time, one’s definition of beauty evolves to include that which was once not beautiful, like compost.
