around the house

Neighbors’ Neighbors

Tuesday 28 May 2013

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 ofÂ prioritiesÂ 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, Â 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 25 May 2013

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

Saturday 18 May 2013

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

Saturday 11 May 2013

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

Wednesday 08 May 2013

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

Tuesday 07 May 2013

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

Sunday 28 April 2013

All day. All day. All day. All day.

Developing Spring

Thursday 25 April 2013

“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

Saturday 13 April 2013

Gathering Clouds

Thursday 11 April 2013

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.