Sometimes, rooting about in the crawl space, taking care of mold in anticipation of new insulation being put in, you find something you just wish you hadn’t found. Like a dead bird. Or something worse.
around the house
Saturday
Saturday is usually a day of hustle and bustle in our house, a day of constant movement and seemingly unending motion.
Yard work, repairs, cleaning, cooking, child care, soccer games, shopping -- it makes the day pass in a flash. And I never really notice just how busy we usually are until we aren't. With both kids a bit sick, today became a stay-at-home day.
And except for some cleaning and a bit of cooking, with some grading squeezed in here and there (40 out of 50 complete) and the Girl's Polish schooling, it was an uneventful day.
It's hardly something to complain about, though. Nothing on occasion is just fine.
After
It's been a project we've wanted to complete for a very long time. It's been something that's shifted up and down our priority list. But eventually, we reached a point that either we get the lower portion of the driveway redone or what was unpaved would end up down the hill after repeated rain.
The great thing about it is that it included a bonus: not only is it a great place to park a car now (obviously), but it's also a great place for everyone to roller skate, to ride a scooter, or to engage in a million other wheeled- and non-wheeled- activities.
Clearing Up the Trees
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.
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.