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This afternoon I split up some logs from a tree we had chopped down this past summah into cord wood. (Regular port-swillers might be surprised to learn that I even know how, given the sort of esoteric blatherings in which I indulge here. Well, the truth is I learned an awful lot of basic guy skills in my yoot: I am (or used to be) a pretty good wing shot, I can field-dress a deer, I can handle a horse, build a rock wall and clear brush. And, more to the point, split and stack wood. Auto mechanics? Well, there you lose me.)
When I was a kid, I used to have to help the Old Gentleman with this task. I would hold an axe steady while he whacked it with the sledge. I still remember how much that used to make my hands sting. Like getting jammed with an inside fastball.
These days, I have found that those split-o-matic wedges work even better than an axe-head, although the sledge is, of course, still of the essence.
These are the trees (photographed during the halcyon days of summah) that line the street in front of the Port-Swiller residence. The two on the ends are silver maples, while the one in the middle is an oak. This pic was taken from the driveway. On the other side of it is another silver maple. Each of these trees is a good 45 to 50 feet tall.
Robbo and family have occupied their current residence for just over nine years now. We were very fortunate to be able to buy the house for a number of reasons, none of which are relevant here. However, another reason very relevant was the fact that we appeared on the scene at exactly the moment a prior sales contract had fallen through.
You see, the previous owners were a nice, easy-going pair of empty-nesters, selling off the old homestead to go live in a condo on a beach somewhere down south. They had contracted (so the story goes) with a young, childless couple, both lawyers and first-time house purchasers. I’ll call them Mr. & Ms. Litiganti.
From what the previous owner subsequently told me, the Litigantis were both neurotic, and Ms. Litiganti in particular was quite mad. She supposedly showed up with a list of demands for this or that alteration or repair, a list that kept growing like the heads of the Hydra as Mr. & Mrs. Previous Owner complied. What finally broke the camel’s back was her demand that the previous owners cut down all four of these trees (although they’re actually on County property). Ms. Litiganti’s reasoning was that the trees were an attractive nuisance, that some kid was going to climb one and break his damned neck, and that she would then be saddled with a lawsuit.
At that point, Mr. Prior Resident told Mr. & Ms. Litiganti to go to hell.
And the rest, as they say, is history.
Now. I’m not saying I agree with Ms. Litiganti’s concerns, and I appreciate greatly that this sylvan quartet can be said to be the reason why we were able to get the house, but I will say that each fall, after spending hours and hours rounding up all the leaves these trees drop and hauling them into the woods out back, that I find myself sympathetic to her desire to do away with them.
Oh, and although I cleaned up all the maple leaves today, I’ll be back out again in another few weeks because the oak, I find, drops its leaves much later than the maple. Ours still has about 65% of its leaves. From a botanical standpoint, this is quite interesting, but in terms of yard maintenance, it’s a royal pain in the neck.
Well, Robbo has finally started the Reconquista of the garden, doing some cutting and pulling this morning. I fear, though, that in the end it’s going to take me just as long to throw all the Buddleia out of my little plot as it did the Spaniards to throw out the Moops Moors.
On the kitchen front, we are now at the stage where we are I am painting and installing the covers on all the light switches and electrical outlets. It’s been quite some time now since I last did a paint job and I’d forgotten all about the heady rush of huffing all those fumes. Whoa.
After being “helped” by the gels to plant mums and pansies this afternoon, it just seemed right.
UPDATE: I should clarify that the eleven year old never made it outside at all, and that the nine year old was, indeed, helpful until she decided it would be more fun to start an earthworm collection. It’s the seven year old who is an entire Benny Hill chase in and of herself.
A cautionary tale for you green thumbs out there. Here is what happens when you say to yourself, “Oh, what could happen if I put one leetle butterfly bush in my garden?” -
Behold the awesome might of Buddleia Kong!
I still remember the morning four years ago when I gently planted a little two-inch seedling, the only survivor of a tray of them that I had started under the lights in the basement some weeks before. So frail, so delicate, so unlikely to last outside the miniature hot house that had been its only home.
Ha.
You got that?
Ha, HA!
But Kong was not content to rule in solitude. Oh, no. Last year it started to produce Konglings in profusion. How it managed this I still don’t know, given that it was the only butterfly bush anywhere in the area, so far as I could see. Nonetheless, there it is. And here is what happens if you say, “Oh, what could happen if I just let one or two of the offspring grow up as well?” -
There are at least five of these Titan children firmly anchored about the garden now. Fool that I was, as they started shooting up earlier this year I thought that by a rigid schedule of pruning I could keep them in control. Well, so much for that. Rigid schedules of pruning do not comport well with my general schedule of spring and summah activities, and certainly not well enough to keep up with this gang, who, Kruschev-like, have been busy burying every other plant since.
Sure, I could go and hog them back to the quicks now, but a fat lot of good that would do.
However, if nothing else, the jungle-like state of things has convinced me to do what I had been mulling for some time already, namely, digging the whole thing up and starting over again. Not only am I going to root everything up, I’m also going to put in raised beds, complete with two feet of fresh, new, rich soil, embedded drip hoses and a stapled anti-rabbit fence all the way round that will stop the little bastards in their tracks. Yes, it’s going to be a back-breaking project, but I feel it is worth it. Think of it as the Green Thumb’s Burden.
Oh, I should mention that I am still very fond of butterfly bush, but from now on it won’t get anywhere near my garden. However, as you can see, the eco-crowd need not despair, as I have found that it does perfectly well in whiskey barrel seclusion as well.
ON PICKING BERRIES
I spent some time a-berrying,
This pleasant July morn,
And found myself compary-ing
My run-ins with the thorn.
The blueberry ’tis a gentle bush,
Its branches smooth and spineless.
And if you need give them a push,
You’ll get your berries painless.
The raspberry, now, ’tis a bit more tough,
Its prickles middling bitchy.
Reach on in for fruit enough,
You’ll wind up tol’rable itchy.
The blackberry, tho’s, a vicious cuss,
All hooks and barbs right wicked.
And after all that bloody fuss,
You’ll wonder WHO got pickéd!
But snag or scrape or stinging scratch,
I really can’t complain-o.
For when I start to eat my catch,
B’Jove, it’s worth the pain-o!
Not Keats, perhaps, but it sums up my thoughts pretty nicely if I do say so myself.
Never stroll down to your garden without a rock in your hand.
(I did so this evening, only to discover a rabbit sitting in the middle of the beds, and me with nothing but a wine glass to throw at him. Well, I love my flowers, but not that much…..)
It pains me to write this post.
No, really. You see, I’ve been hauling field-stones around all day and my arms and hands are aching something fierce.
Before this morning’s project began, it must have been at least 12 years since I last built a fieldstone wall of any kind. I’d forgotten how much I enjoy this kind of work and the immense satisfaction I get in watching the endless individual decisions about how to pick and choose interlocking stones gradually produce a neat, solid whole.
Oh, would you like to see? It may not look like that big a project, but for one guy with only his kid’s radio-flyer wagon with which to haul the stones around (what with the tires on the wheelbarrow being flat), it was plenty exercise for the day.
This was the first part of our cleaning-up-the-ditch-by-the-street project. (There’s a fourth maple on the other side of the driveway on which I was standing when I took this picture that I also encircled.) Technically, the land actually belongs to the great Commonwealth of Virginny, but good luck getting them to come out and spruce it up.
Nice and neat, as I say. We likes nice and neat.
As I mentioned, it’s been a good twelve years since I last worked with fieldstone. This was at the first house we owned, a little blue clapboard out in Reston. Being, well, twelve years younger and without kids, I was seized with the ambition to do something about the lack of landscaping on the little 1/8th of an acre plot by ringing the house with flower beds. Because the house sat on the side of a little swell, the beds on two sides required the construction of a wall a good three feet deep in order that the tops of the beds were uniformely straight all the way around.
I forget how long it took me to finish, but I may say that I was pretty pleased with the results. So, I soon discovered, were half of the neighborhood. The female half, that is, who relayed no end of compliments through Mrs. Robbo. However, I quickly discovered that the male half was not happy at all, at all. This was because their wives started bombarding them with questions along the lines of, “Why can’t you do something like Robbo did?”
In fact, I had completely failed to remember that my project was a direct violation of Section 23(b) of the Man Code, which clearly prohibits the handing of such ammunition to a neighbor’s wife. Just goes to show what happens when you don’t keep up with the regs. Sorry, guys.
Well, we didn’t stay in the old house all that long what with gels starting to come along, and I more or less forgot all about it.
So about five years ago I first offered my services to Uncle Sam. (Stay with me here.) As part of the security clearance process, Uncle sends investigators out to interview friends, neighbors, business colleagues and the like to find out if the applicant has any strange habits, shady secrets or obvious treasonous intent. The fellah who ran my case was a retired FBI agent doing a little freelance work. Having done his preliminary survey, he came down to my office one day to interview me. Most of it was pretty perfunctory, given that I’ve lived a pretty dull and respectable life so far, and had no record of any sort to explain.
Suddenly, though, after finishing what I thought were all his questions, he suddenly fixed me in the eye and said, “I understand that you enjoy building walls.”
I gaped at him for a second, dumbfounded. Then I realized he must have been talking with one of my old neighbors who had told him about my landscaping. I burst out laughing at that and considered making some kind of crack about how I enjoyed getting stoned. My guardian angel interposed at that point, however, suggesting that a G-Man might not think it was s’damn funny, so instead I shrugged and said, “Well, it keeps me off the streets, I guess.”
Tomorrow will mark my first foray into the garden all spring and, from the glimpses I’ve had over the fence so far…..I’m scared! At least with all the rain we’ve had lately it should be relatively easy to yank up weeds, but my Lord what a lot of them there are going to be!
Regular port-swillers will recall that earlier this spring I had been mulling digging the whole damn thing up and starting afresh. Well, the privy purse doesn’t run to that kind of expenditure these days so I never really put any serious thought into it. However, with the blinding clarity of vision that is occassionally bestowed on the feeble-minded, I suddenly realized that I didn’t have to do the whole thing at once – that just going out and digging up one four or five foot square patch at a time would, in the end, get me to where I wanted to go. I intend to put this theory into practice tomorrow.
And speaking of such things, the nine year old came to me yesterday with yet another project lifted with girlish enthusiasm out of the Dangerous Book for Boys: She wants us to catch, kill and skin a rabbit.
“Why on earth?” I asked.
“Because rabbit fur is soooooo soft,” she replied. “Besides, you hate the rabbits.”
“True. True.”
“So will you kill one?”
“Well, I need a gun for that…”
“Don’t you have one?”
“Not here. Nonny has our old pellet gun up at her place. I can get it when we visit this summer.”
“Well, don’t forget!”
I won’t, either. I saw one of the little bastards hopping about in front of the gate just last night.
The nine year old gel recently has spent a great deal of time flipping through our copy of The Dangerous Book for Boys. Based on her readings, she suddenly has become obsessed with the idea of building a treehouse, going so far as to pursuade Mrs. R to purchase her a small tool box, a hammer, some nails and a long 2×4 from which to cut the ladder going up to her proposed construction site.
When all this was brought to my attention, I confess that my initial reaction was what one might call anticipatory fatigue. It isn’t that I’m especially lazy or that I would want to discourage the gel’s enthusiasm. Rayther, it’s that I know exactly how much effort will be required to do the job right. I also know that the lion’s share of that effort is going to fall on my shoulders. What I don’t know is where in Heaven’s name I can find both the time and the energy for it.
Oh, well. Nothing for it but to buck up, I suppose.
Last night, though, the brighter side occurred to me. As I lay in bed roughing out a preliminary idea of the project, I thought, “Okay, what tools am I going to need for this? At the least, it’ll take a table saw and a power drill and I don’t have either one. Hey! I guess I have no choice but to go buy a table saw and a power drill! Sweet!”
If this project does get off the ground (ha, ha), I will be sure to keep you posted about it.
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