around the house

Spring Planting

Saturday 03 May 2014

Another unbelievably sunny morning. Perfect for what we'd planned for the day: spring planting, which the weather and our schedule has put off for two weeks.

First task: purchases. We drove across town to our favorite nursery to pick up veggies and flowers, but the Boy decided that he must -- simply must -- run like a maniac.

"E, if you don't stay with me," I explained, wondering how much he understands. At what point can a child understand cause and effect? Certainly not his age, but we must begin at some point. "If you don't stay with me, we'll go to the car."

He ran off; we headed to the car.

The Boy spent the rest of the visit fussing in his car seat; I spent the rest of the visit listening to the Magliozzi brothers on Car Talk with accompanying screams, cries, and general tantrum-related noises from the back seat.

In the meantime, the Girl picked out flowers with K, always drawn to the most expensive flowers: six, seven bucks for one. In the end, K bought her one expensive flower -- a lovely blue and white blossom that is completely unknown to me and will be for all time, as inept with flowers as I am -- and several less expensive but equally lovely varieties.

The rest of the day was a furry of preparing the raised beds (which took most of the rest of the morning), and planting, planting, planting. Then came the grilling, grilling, grilling. AndÂ more time with the grandparents.

And finally, after the bathing, bathing, bathing, some relaxing for K and me.We finished up a Coen brothers' film (Inside Llewyn Davis -- how can a protagonist be so utterly unlikable?) and then just sat on the couch, TV off, the sounds of the evening pulling us to bed, though for me, not so directly.

A good day.

Lawn

Saturday 26 April 2014

I’ve always had a strained relationship with lawns. They’ve always seemed like something that’s better in theory than reality, because until recently, I’ve never really experienced a decent lawn. Growing up, we had a spotty front yard that invited weeds to fill in the blanks in the spring or simple bare earth. I’m not sure which was worse. Still, it made for a frustrating mowing experience: it’s hard to hold a straight line when the only thing sticking up are a few blades of grass and some dandelion stems. As such, I disliked mowing — the front yard at least. The backyard was decent. No, I just hated mowing: it was too hard to worry about straight lines (I am a bit OCD about that) and keep the power cord out of the way. Indeed: the first lawn mower that I used was our Sears electric mower, a fantastic idea that resulted in extension cords striped with black where I’d run over them. It’s not lie a gas mower running out of fuel, those sputtering, gasping final rotations of the blade that let you know you’d better hurry up if you’re to get to the end of the row before the thing dies. Running over the cord with an electric mower leads to instant silence, and since there was no way I could fix it myself at age twelve or so, it meant the end of mowing until dad returned.

That was a shame, for as I grew older, I came to appreciate the meditative quality of mowing and to enjoy the challenging of maintaining an always-straight line. By the time I was in high school, mowing the lawn was a positive joy, at least in the backyard, where the grass was dense and only thinned as it neared the back property line. Forcing the grass to submit to my will, I’d keep my eye on the front outer wheel, making sure it ran just to the side of the wild, unkempt grass. My best friend (also a fan of mowing) and I came to call such grass “conquerable.” He’d drop me off after school, sticking around for some basketball, then comment as he left: “That’s some really conquerable grass,” he say, almost enviously. I’d do the same when the situation was reversed. We couldn’t hack our way through Amazonian undergrowth, but we could reduce the height of grass by half in a split second.

Now, mowing my own grass in my own yard, grass that I’ve struggled with dethachers and aerators, grass that I’ve spent hours weeding, grass from which I’ve probably thousands of Sweetgum saplings from overly-neglected spiky seed balls, it’s positively Zen-like. The belt for my push-mower’s assistive drive has now broken for the second time, and the struggle only increases the reward. I mow a different pattern almost every time: left to right, front to back, diagonally this way, diagonally that. And no matter how tired I am when I make the final push, no matter how soaked my shirt and cap are, I’m always a little sad to be done.

Mulch, Sun, and a Couch

Saturday 12 April 2014

A bright blue sky this morning, with the small, new leaves providing contrast, made it a morning full of bleary-eyed promise. That makes it sound like I really didn’t know what we would be doing during the day, that it was just promising. I knew exactly what I would be doing; K knew precisely what she’d be doing. I had a pile of mulch, a never-ending gift, that I was determined to spread through the entire universe (so it seemed I’d have to do to get rid of ten yards of mulch — ten yards! What was I thinking?)

We got an early start: with the Boy waking at seven in the morning, we were eating breakfast by half-past, and I was out taking care of a couple of small projects before tackling the mulch.

Still, with the morning sun giving the kitchen a golden glow, it was hard not to get excited about the morning. Right — whom am I kidding? We could have all used more sleep, all but the Boy.

Still, that blue sky, that warmth. I am lucky: all of my work in K’s and my division of labor is outside work. K stays inside, cleaning, cooking, helping L with her Polish lessons. So I really couldn’t complain this morning: blue sky, good coffee, work outside. Besides,Â my exhaustion was all my fault, staying up too late yet again on Friday night.

In the afternoon, Nana and Papa came over to help out. Papa sat with the Boy on the couch for who knows now long, playing cars, sometimes struggling to decipher the words that K, L, and I so easily understand.

We’ll make a video of it at some point, then find ourselves surprised in a couple of years when, watching old videos, we can’t understand him ourselves.

Mulch

Thursday 10 April 2014

The Boy has learned a new word: mulch.

It’s the endless pile. I’ve been working on it for two evenings, and I don’t feel I’ve made a dent in it. Jesus had the fishes and loaves; I have a pile of mulch.

Saturday Lessons in the Yard

Saturday 05 April 2014

Being a parent means learning to let your kids learn. It's an age-old adage, but some days illustrate it more clearly than others. Or perhaps some days I'm just more aware of it happening around me.

Eight o'clock. The Girl decided she wanted finally to have her yard sale. She'd made the sign long ago, and every weekend, she'd been asking when she could have the sale. This morning, she decided she could wait no longer.

No advertisements on light poles on nearby streets. No cash to make change. Just a girl out in her front yard with some random items for sale: some toys she no longer played with, some books she no longer read, E's old stroller, the bike she's decided is too heavy and we've decided is too difficult for her to ride.

In the end, she sold one thing for one dollar. K and I of course foresaw all of this, but there was no convincing her, and we realized there was really no need even to try: this was a lesson best learned through experience.

More lessons: all one needs to have a rollicking good time for most of the afternoon is an empty cardboard box large enough to fit a seven-year-old and some paints for decoration. One of the neighborhood kids seems more in tune to screens than his own imagination. I found myself wondering what he would have done if he were visiting when W and L pulled out the box and began working. Perhaps he would have found it boring. Perhaps he would have jumped in and tried. The advantage of spending all your time in front of a computer game is that you can do it alone; the advantages of playing in a cardboard box -- more significant. Some of my own students' lack of imagination is simply stunning, so I was pleased to see so much joy coming from something so simple. Pleased, but not too surprised.

Yet another lesson: building a draining system for the newly installed blueberries was surprisingly quick and surprisingly easy. For once a project took me less time than I was expecting.

The Boy learned a thing or two as well. His obsession with trains has been waning, replaced by an obsession with Bob the Builder. Every single time he sees a dump truck or any other piece of heavy equipment, he begins his mantra, based on the Bob the Builder theme song. "Bob the Builder -- can we fix it? Bob the Builder -- yes we can!" For the Boy, though, it's somewhat truncated. "Bob the Builder" becomes "Bob-beaw" while "Yes we can" has mutated to "S-N!"

So as I finished up a little mini-project -- so small it was barely worthy of being called a project except for the fact that I had to head to the lumber store this morning -- I thought I might make him a little training ground. With some effort, managed to squeeze the trigger, so to speak; with a bit more effort, he managed to hold the drill; managing both at the same time was a bit much for a twenty-three-month-old.

And after lost interest in the screws but before he lost interest in the drill, he relearned another lesson. A fall was probably inevitable, and his tears were more from the frustration of falling than anything else. I knelt down to talk to him -- the typical dad "shake it off, big man" type thing -- and I realized I was still holding the camera. Click. (Well, not so much a click with a digital camera, and with shutterless digital cameras now emerging it will soon be silent, but I can't think of a proper onomatopoeic word to describe the sound of the D300's shutter sliding open and snapping shut.)

"Why would I take a picture of my son in tears?" I thought. And tonight, going through the pictures, I learned the next lesson of the day: it's a fragment of our daily reality, the tears of a toddler. Something I'll forget as it morphs into the tantrums that will continue from now until age thirty. Or forty-one in my case.

The final lesson of the day: K and I can get so much more done when Nana and Papa spend the afternoon with us, helping out with the kids, helping out with this or that aspect of planting Asiatic jasmine or sealing a poor construction. The list of accomplishments today is impressive, but more significant, the learning.

Hammock

Monday 31 March 2014

We got a hammock the other day. Not really sure why. L wanted it; K thought it was a fun idea. So now we have one.

Which thrills L to no end. The Boy is less sure of it, but he might warm up to it.

The Girl’s hair definitely gives it a thumbs up, to mix metaphors.

Morning, Evening

Saturday 29 March 2014

Sun comes up, it's Saturday morning, and the gray sky suggests that we won't be doing much more than sitting at home -- as if gray skies mean such a thing. Just because we're rained in doesn't mean that we can't find work to do. Two kids, a house, one parent a teacher -- there's always something to do, something to fix, something to begin, something to complete.

I make the coffee and think of a song, an album I hadn't listened to in ages. Cowboy Junkies. Somehow the perfect group for this morning. Calm, somewhat monotonous, almost boring in the perfect way something could be boring.

The kids and I get ready to go out shopping -- a quick trip that serves two purposes. We get the things we need, like sundried tomatoes for the coming week's salads, and we leave K alone in the house to clean.

"I like it. It's calming, almost a meditation."

Must be a Polish thing.

We arrive home, entertain the kids, force some Polish down L's gullet -- those Polish lessons are getting harder and harder, K swears -- and eat some lunch, and then the sun comes out. Followed by me. I have ten cubic yards of dirt to compact at the end of the driveway to prepare our latest blueberry patch. And a yard to mow. And a million other things that I can't quite get to. The Girl goes to a friend's house to play, then brings him back to play some more. K brings the fed and napped Boy outside while she cleans the van we'll soon be selling -- hopefully -- and suddenly it's evening. I stand at the grill, turn the chicken, turn the corn, and watch the sun on buds in the tree tops turn golden as Nana and Papa entertain the kids and vice versa.

Eight fifteen. "What do you say I go upstairs and draw the bath?" I whisper in K's ear as she finishes up dinner dishes.

"Sounds good."

And tonight, all dive in.

All. Including our brave, curious, playful kitten.

Much to everyone's delight.

Soon enough, kids are out, and I'm making the Boy's bottle, then playing guitar for him as he drifts off to sleep. I sit on the bed, then lie on the bed, suddenly to be awakened.

"Who fell asleep first?" K laughs.

Hard to tell.

"Movie?"

"Are you kidding?"

Not really, but I know that there's not much point even starting it. She'll fall asleep within the first half hour, and by then, I might be interested enough not to want to stop.

"You're probably right," I say.

"Coming to bed?"

"No, I've got one more thing to do."

Weeds or Flowers?

Friday 21 March 2014

“Oh, look!” Babcia exclaimed, “they’re x’s!” I can’t recall the Polish name she called the little weeds growing in our front yard, and I don’t have a clue what they’re called in English. I call them weeds. She calls them flowers.

They have blossoms, so they’re flowers; they’re unwanted, so they’re weeds.

Which means just about anything could be a weed for someone.

Spring Saturday

Saturday 15 March 2014

About the only time I was indoors all day was for this shot, taken as I was finishing up my coffee and heading out to

finish the backyard leaf clean up, including
- the mulching of multiple wheelbarrow-loads of leaves;
- the hauling of countless loads of branches and twigs to the roadside; and,
- the removal sand from the backyard deposited by last spring’s flood;
prepare the raspberry patch including
- the removing of leaves and debris; and
- the depositing of a twelve-inch layer of mulched leaves (see above) on the raspberry patch;
clean the front flower bed, including
- the removing of numerous leaves; and,
- the cutting back of last year’s jasmine;
apply various concoctions to the yard including
- the applying fertilizer to isolated patches of the yard I missed two weeks ago; and,
- the applying preemergent weed killer to the rest of the lawn;
sow grass seed in the entire backyard;
remove countless Sweet Gum seed balls from the front yard;
spray insecticide around the outer edges of the house;
and finally, fall into a heap to watch Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil with my equally exhausted K, who
- cleaned the house;
- cared for the kids;
- went shopping;
- planted strawberries; and
- prepared supper.

In short, a perfect spring Saturday.

Best on the Block

Monday 17 February 2014

Nothing about the house makes sense, but it’s obvious it was once the best house on the block. Or at least it wanted to be. In the days before McMansions, this must have been something of an intermediate step. But a strange one.

The addition at the back of the house is almost as big as the house itself, but there seems to be little living space in it: the top floor is one enormous room with a wall of glass that overlooks the swimming pool; the first floor is a series of garages.

But what’s more impressive than the garages is the brick wall and cement pads around the entire property. A double-course wall complete with lights, it must have cost well over several thousand dollars when it was made decades ago. And there is no backyard: it’s all been cemented — another several-thousand-dollar project.

It just doesn’t add up: You’d expect to peek over a wall like this and see some great mansion, something Chateau-like. Instead, it’s just a typical suburban brick home from the seventies, a home with a large addition but no central air as evidenced by the multiple window-unit air conditioners.

According to the realtor sign that has been in the front yard for years, it’s now under contract. K and I walked during the snow break last week, discussing much of the ideas above.