Warm weather means water.
seasons
Spring Saturday
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.
Blossoms and Satan
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…
Flowers for the Morning
“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.
Arrival
When everything, positively everything is blooming,
or about to bloom,
when spring is leafing out everywhere,
there’s only one thing to do: get out and enjoy it.
Autumn 2011
The sun rises these days with a brilliant luminescence behind our home. All our trees and those of our neighbors positively glow with the soft morning light.
Cool mornings slide into temperate afternoons, and we spend every moment possible outside, as soon, it will be impossible to sit on the front stoop, color, and press leaves.
The cat senses this, too. She constantly searches for a warm patch of sun or companionship. In the late afternoon, she can find both when she’s lucky.
The Girl, growing, with ever-expanding interests, begins to discover the pleasures of sitting calmly in the warm sun with a creative task to occupy one’s mind and hands.
In the back yard, the tired afternoon sun creates a softer, more mature glow in the autumn leaves.
And in the midst of all this settling down, this approaching hibernation that will eventually grow tiresome as we long for the blooms of spring, the camellia blooms.
Sunday Afternoon
“Tata, I want to help!” she calls as she hops down the deck stairs. With an armful of branches and twigs, I’m agreeable, but I smile, wondering how much help I’m actually going to get.
“Grab a couple branches,” I explain, “and follow me.”
We march to the street, L chattering all the way, explaining how she’s going to explain tomorrow how she helped her daddy.
Suddenly, behind me, I hear it: “Ouch!” She’s rubbing her eye; I’m wondering when she’s going to ask for a bandage. It’s been her obsession lately: no matter the wound, no matter the location, there must be First Aid.
“The stick went in my eye,” she says, with concerned voice. After so many months of learning her various voices, I know it’s nothing serious. It’s not quite play — something did happen — but perhaps her concern is exaggerated. She sees K and me hurt ourselves, and she models the reaction.
“Come on,” I say offhandedly. “You’ll be fine. Little things happen when you work as hard as you’re working now.
She plods along, amending the story she’s going to tell tomorrow, practicing the Tragedy of the Stick.
As we’re returning to the backyard, the late afternoon sun reflects off the golden autumn leaves, and it’s as if she’s walking into pure light or developing a halo. I walk about twenty paces behind, watching her hair bounce and sway as she dances into a golden November afternoon.
Endings and Beginnings
The summer’s end nears. Morning temperatures are back in the lower seventies, and we return to eating breakfast on the deck occasionally. Bagels for us all, but the Girl prefers to dip hers in maple syrup. In a sense, it’s hard to argue with that kind of logic.
Here in the south, the end of summer is about the only time we can go outside and play comfortably. In July, it’s still 90 degrees as the sun sets. We try to head out sometimes for a little outdoor time, but no one wants to melt.
Still, there are options. And does it ever bring back memories: a few minutes of running through misted water on a hot summer afternoon was my idea of paradise when I was a kid. A few overlapping garbage bags fastened to the ground with whatever one could find would sometimes serve as a slide, though never for too long. Since we don’t have a sprinkler (they’ve all broken), L has somewhat limited options. It’s more fun for me, though.
The last of the crape myrtle blossoms begin falling.
And in this end is my beginning: a new school year both sparkles and looms.
Garden
Summer means gardening for us. I wish I could say that without the knowing smile, for our “gardening” is still quite rudimentary. It’s about like saying I’m a cyclist because I manage to hop on a bike once or twice a month.
Our gardening consists of a few pepper plants, a watermelon vine or two,
perhaps a cantaloupe, and maybe a few spices, especially basil. Next to cilantro, basil has to be the best, freshest-smelling herb that exists. Apparently I’m not the only one who thinks so: K came in today with a caterpillar who’d devoured a basil plant.
“Why are you upset?” ask L.
“Because a beast was eating our basil!” K responded.
“What’s it for?” L inquired further.
“For cooking, not for caterpillars,” explained K.
“But you should share,” replied the sage.
The trouble is, we don’t have enough basil to share. We don’t have enough watermelon to share, nor cantaloupe. Our peppers are sparse too, but that’s really for a different reason.
The tomatoes. The only thing we have enough to share is taking over our small raised beds. One vine alone requires six to eight stakes: each fork in the vine turns enormous and fruit-laden.
We head out daily to pick the tomatoes. We’re growing three varieties, including sweet, bright cherry tomatoes. Most of these rarely make it to the house:
we munch on them so while we’re picking the rest of the tomatoes that hardly any are left when we make it back to the kitchen.
All the same, two days can produce enough tomatoes to overwhelm quickly.
This is what K tried to explain to L this evening: “We do share. We give tomatoes to Nana and Papa, to A and P, to the chipmunks and squirrels…”
And still we end up with so many every couple of days. Then again, who can complain about this? Quarter a fresh tomato and sprinkle salt and pepper: a perfect summer snack.
Transport
A trip to the park is nothing new. When it’s warm, with everything blooming, it’s hard to stay indoors.
The Girl gets to climb, run, slide, swing, and fall.
Get to relax a little bit.
The difference today was the transportation:
In the Snow
It promised to be a lovely morning: after a day of snow, the forecast was for cloudless skies Saturday morning. I opened my eyes and realized I had to get outside with camera and tripod as fast as possible.
But it was hardly any fun alone. Since we finally had snow, K and I were both eager to get the Girl out into it.
Once outside, L was keen on imitating K and me: in short, she began cleaning. First, seeing us knocking the snow off the car with a broom, she needed to help. But weightier obligations awaited her in the back.
The deck.
When we had a snow an ice day, L enjoyed knocking the ice off the banisters and deck chairs, and she was eager to get to work. In the course of a few minutes, she’d just about knocked off all the ice.
Yesterday, she applied her expertise to snow. She banged it a few times as experience had taught with the ice, then knocked it off.
If only we could keep this urge to clean in imitation going for another fifteen years or so.
As it was, the cleaning bug lasted only a few more minutes. She knocked some snow off trees and shrubs, then headed to the front.
The great sadness was that the snow was too dry to make even a small snowball, let alone a snowman.
Still, snow angels seemed doable.
“Watch and learn,” I told the Girl, then gingerly lowered myself onto the ground. I’d forgotten how quickly the snow invades shoes, sneaks up jackets and settles into just about every article of clothing.
L took a more direct route, and with a flop was wallowing in the snow.
She didn’t mind the snow working its way down her boots, up her jacket, around her neck: by the time we forced her back inside, she was covered with it.
Real Snow
Not ice. Not sleet. Snow — actual snow — began falling just as school let out this afternoon and continued until well into the evening.
Such a rare occurrence in South Carolina that it became the evening entertainment. Some quiet music (Madeleine Peyroux), red wine, and a view of the snow falling.
Certainly all my students are disappointed that all this happened on a Friday, and a Friday before a free Monday (Presidents’ Day) to boot. No chance of a snow day.
It’s a fairly dry snow, piling up lightly and promising a fun morning with the Girl tomorrow.
Ice
We’ve lived here long enough to learn through firsthand experience that the Greenville area doesn’t get snow; it gets ice. Still, the ground becomes white, and it’s inviting to a little girl.
The driveway became a skating rink. Or, more accurately, a slipping-and-sliding rink.
But L’s great dream was to make a snowball and throw it. She made a valiant effort, scraping the ice from the ground, forming it into a little ball
and giving it a toss.
Retrieving Apples
A trip to the orchard is supposed to involve stretching to pick the perfect apple that is just out of reach. It’s supposed to mean a delicate tug and twist to remove an apple without causing others to fall to the ground. It’s supposed to be about branches bending under the weight of apples. Last year it was about all those things. This year, it was a question of picking them off the ground.
It’s a little disheartening to be scavenging apples rather than picking them, but Pink Ladies — sweet with a tart edge and a crunch that is audible — are not apples one leaves to rot on the ground.
So we picked them,
hauled them in baskets
as well as wagons,
and brushed them off and ate them.
Every now and then, we stopped for a group picture, which reminded me of the greatest features of digital photography: easy sharing. No more line of cameras at the photographer’s feet. No more “One more! Just one more!”
No more last minute re-groupings as someone realizes that he wants a group picture, too.
And that certainly was a possibility, given the number of photographers in the group.
Swimming III
We took L for her first swimming lessons when she was six months old. She loved it. Then through some kind of osmosis, she began taking on the fear of the kids around her, I think, and by the end of the series of lessons, she wasn’t wild about swimming.
Last summer, she still clung to her anxieties: we really didn’t go often as a result.
This summer, it’s a different girl with us in the pool.
This makes for different parents in the water, as well.
It has, in short, become a family affair. L floats; L slashes; L jumps — and we have to be there for it all. And that’s not just the parental pride; it’s L’s request.
“Hey guys!” she likes to call out, “Watch me!”
The clearest indicator of how her attitude toward the water has changed is her willingness to jump excitement about jumping.
Again, and again, and again, only occasionally losing her nerve.
Nothing deters her, not even a face full of water. Not even a face entirely under water.
All of this is both gratifying (it’s great to see her overcoming her fear) and terrifying (it’s sometimes heart-stopping to watch her overcoming her fear). During a visit last week, she was being silly at the water’s edge and fell in. I was ten to fifteen feet away, so I swam there in a matter of moments. But those moments seemed eternal as she bobbed about in the water, unable to get her head out of the water, clearly terrified.
Another object lesson in the obvious: parenting isn’t about holding tight, but it is about being close by when those tight embraces are necessary.
Spring Evening
The trees in the backyard are slowly filling out; the sun came out today after two days’ rain. The only option was to get out in the warmth.
Swinging is always the start. Swinging sets the stage for everything else. It often bookends activities in the summer: it’s that popular with the Girl.
Afterward a walk — such a change from last spring’s walks.
Baby came with us; turtle had to stay in the mailbox.
Lonely, I’m sure.
Eviction Notice
He flew in with a beak filled with building materials, landing on our back deck banister. L saw him first.
“Tata! Look! A bird!”
We’ll have to begin playing “I spy” soon.
The bird sat for a while on the railing, then flew into one of the juniper trees in our backyard. The ones which I’ll drastically cut back at some point this spring, thus disturbing the bird, possibly spoiling a nest (though I’ll do my best not to).
If only I could have reasoned with him: demolition work ahead. Best build elsewhere.
Spring
In South Carolina, spring comes when the calendar says it does: late March. The tops of trees, where the light is most direct, already have buds beginning to open.
The tulip poplars have buds all over.
In the brush beneath the trees, there is just enough light for some blossoms.
All this inspires me finish up with the leaves that have been blanketing the ground for four months now.
A new mulching mower makes relatively quick work of the leaves (except for those in the rocky, uneven areas that remained undisturbed this time around), turning them into a powder that will improve the soil for the spring of 2011, when we think we might get around to doing something with the backyard. This spring we’re concentrating on getting veggies growing; next spring will be the front yard’s turn.
Leaves
We have quite a few trees in the backyard, including a yellow poplar — also known as a tulip poplar, which is reflected in its Latin name — that’s probably over 200 years old. There’s another one close to it, but it’s not nearly as big.
This was one of the things I truly longed for in Poland. The leaves of the few deciduous in Poland, in my experience, simply turned brown and fell off.
We didn’t make it to the mountains of North Carolina this year, so a bit of yellow in our backyard will have to do.
Of course nothing can compare to autumn in New England. Reds and oranges that almost make the eyes ache.
Still, it’s nice to have a touch of color yellow in one’s immediate vicinity.
Autumn on the Parkway
Yesterday, K and I took the Hoary Ones out onto the Blue Ridge Parkway.
Last year we did the same, but the autumnal colors were dim, to say the least — a dry summer and a drier early autumn meant that the leaves just turned dark and fell off.
This year, there was some color. Nothing like what’s possible in New England, but colorful all the same.
More pictures available at our Flickr account.