The morning fog burned off by eight today, leaving the sky cloudless, clear- as clear as my mission. I had established my presence Thursday evening when, clippers in hand, I skirmished with the forsythia stalks that had invaded neutral airspace. It was a cut and run affair, not a pitched battle. I was between meetings, and only had time for a quick strike.
Today would be different. Today would be shock and awe.
Okay, not level 10 shock and awe. I am not yet chainsaw proficient: but I am getting to be bad-ass with a hand saw and clippers. So let's call it surprise and astonishment. Frankly, it is a more responsible approach to landscape peacekeeping. No gas-guzzling, no noise. Welcome to the 21st century, bitches.
It took a couple of hours of non-stop assault until I got to the border in dispute. On the slog in, I reinforced the boundary between the forsythia bush and the barn, don't need a future confrontation on that front. The delay wouldn't derail the campaign.
When I got to the primary front, even on first assessment things were pretty bad; the rhododendron had stood its ground, keeping formation tight, but the forsythia had established renegade settlements well beyond its territory, dropping in shooters from above.
That shit will not stand.
I don't care if its the bloody diamond jubilee for Elizabeth, and that forsythia was "discovered" during the reign of Queen Victoria. I won't be blinded by nostalgia for imperialism. Stay the fuck where you were planted, forsythia.
Now the rhododendron isn't an innocent here- it too has been building up arms and expanding its territory, in recent history it quietly annexed 1/3 of the bluestone walk, cutting off formal communication channels between the drive and the porch. There's still debate about what the proper course of action will be; appeasement and a rerouting of the walkway, or a more militant approach involving recovery.
Today's work was ultimately successful, though the carnage was... well, it's a free press. You can see the images for yourself. We got rid of the rotten branches, the extremists bent on expansion. We cleaned up and made light what was dark and choking. Am I sorry for the casualties? Yes. But will I also go to bed tonight knowing I made the front yard a more fair, free, and civilized space? Hell yes.
Saturday, June 9, 2012
Friday, May 18, 2012
Burnt Out Ends of Smoky Days
Only the end of the school year could possibly push me to title a post with a shard of lyric from Cats. And yet, here we are. In the stale cold smell of morning.
Forgive, I made the mistake of showing Schindler's List to a group of outgoing seniors yesterday, it never having occurred to me that they couldn't/wouldn't engage in a black and white film where people had accents. Hard to believe the film is almost 20 years old, hard to believe that they could watch it and feel nothing. I remember being wrecked. My friends remember being wrecked. But yesterday? No dice. Senioritis trumps all.
Given how long I have been measuring out the time until the end of the year, I suppose I can't blame them- it was a beautiful day, they are just counting down the hours til they graduate. So it goes. But it left me feeling old, disconnected, and depressed.
On the brighter side of yesterday, I saw a crow pick up a shiny bit of litter from the parking lot and fly away with it, which was interesting. I ran sound for a dance recital rehearsal- which was another "time is seriously passing" experience, since it was a recital for my former dance instructor's school. So familiar, but with a whole new generation of kids. Dance lessons were my first foray into the performing arts, and when the teacher left the island- to pursue further dance education and life in general- the performing arts on the island, such as they were, seemed to dry up completely... Paving my road off the island to pursue further education and life in general.
So I never got my five year trophy, nor did I ever graduate to ballet en pointe. But hey, Sue is back, I am back... and if Zelda Fitzgerald can get a late start picking up ballet, why not me?
It is funny, watching the young dancers- I well recall we all had our motives, as I imagine they all do. Some were in it for the pretty costumes, or the social aspect- taking dance was a cool thing. Some were in it to move, and a few graduated to being moved by movement, as it were. The end result of the recital is fun to watch- a melange of aptitude on stage, an object lesson in coordination through the developmental phases, and proof that full body musicality is not well developed in our corner of the population. But when you see a kid connect the moves to the music, because they are just inhabiting the music... it is awesome. It is also kind of entertaining to watch how the kids watch and copy the one kid in the class who really has the routine down. The moves just flow across space from one student to another, slightly off-time. Dancing by osmosis.
Forgive, I made the mistake of showing Schindler's List to a group of outgoing seniors yesterday, it never having occurred to me that they couldn't/wouldn't engage in a black and white film where people had accents. Hard to believe the film is almost 20 years old, hard to believe that they could watch it and feel nothing. I remember being wrecked. My friends remember being wrecked. But yesterday? No dice. Senioritis trumps all.
Given how long I have been measuring out the time until the end of the year, I suppose I can't blame them- it was a beautiful day, they are just counting down the hours til they graduate. So it goes. But it left me feeling old, disconnected, and depressed.
On the brighter side of yesterday, I saw a crow pick up a shiny bit of litter from the parking lot and fly away with it, which was interesting. I ran sound for a dance recital rehearsal- which was another "time is seriously passing" experience, since it was a recital for my former dance instructor's school. So familiar, but with a whole new generation of kids. Dance lessons were my first foray into the performing arts, and when the teacher left the island- to pursue further dance education and life in general- the performing arts on the island, such as they were, seemed to dry up completely... Paving my road off the island to pursue further education and life in general.
So I never got my five year trophy, nor did I ever graduate to ballet en pointe. But hey, Sue is back, I am back... and if Zelda Fitzgerald can get a late start picking up ballet, why not me?
It is funny, watching the young dancers- I well recall we all had our motives, as I imagine they all do. Some were in it for the pretty costumes, or the social aspect- taking dance was a cool thing. Some were in it to move, and a few graduated to being moved by movement, as it were. The end result of the recital is fun to watch- a melange of aptitude on stage, an object lesson in coordination through the developmental phases, and proof that full body musicality is not well developed in our corner of the population. But when you see a kid connect the moves to the music, because they are just inhabiting the music... it is awesome. It is also kind of entertaining to watch how the kids watch and copy the one kid in the class who really has the routine down. The moves just flow across space from one student to another, slightly off-time. Dancing by osmosis.
Sunday, April 29, 2012
Nail Beds and Rock Gardens
Typically, Mainers talk about how we don't have a real spring. We have mud season. When I went to school in the Midwest, one of the greatest shocks was what "spring" looked and felt like- days get balmier, greener- trees and flowers bloomed with abandon. Before the month of June. I had read about that sort of spring in storybooks, but did not know it actually existed. Come to think of it, that was the same way I felt about Iowa, until I started living there.
This year the season has been different. Around about the time we had two back-to-back 80 degree days in early March, and almost no snow in the months before, most of us started to wonder about the prospects of our mud this year. For a good crop of mud, you need a couple of things: a lot of water deposits, and soil. We've got the soil. Not so much with the water, and the overcast skies that keep it from evaporating.
Due to the dry and warm conditions, people who like digging in dirt (rather than mud) were able to get a jump start. This is why, for the past month or so, I have been dutifully changing into play clothes from my work cloths, and kneeling at the alter of cultivation. The house is on five acres, and while it has mature perennials putting a good (if overgrown) face on it to the road, the backside is... quite exposed.
To begin with, I dug up a few very narrow strips of sod on the terrace, so I could get my sweet peas in, well in advance of the projected last frost. A few weeks later, armed with knowledge of the ground, I busted sod for a proper bed, and amended the soil for slightly pickier plants. At the same time, I was able to harvest a bumper crop of fasteners. Screws, nails- if you use it to drive two building materials together, I was reaping it. This is the glory of bedding plants close to the house, you garner all the materials deemed not worth cleaning up after the last roofing/siding project. When I went back to plant the first succession of glads and seed the zinnia, I was surprised to find that some more nails had sprouted to the surface- proving they too were enjoying this warm weather. Weren't we all?
Another side effect of the early warm weather was that Dave caught a chronic case of "When Will The Guy Come To Rototill-itis." He had long since planted the stakes in the ground in anticipation that they would yield a plot of upturned earth. Day after day... "I'm seriously starting to get pissed off..." "I don't know if he's going to come..." "I'm going to have to call..." I have seen high school girls staring telepathically at their phone exhibit more patience.
And then one day, at the exact moment the pork shoulder was coming out of the smoker, and the broccoli had steamed to the perfection- the Man in the Kubota pulled in. Dave came in with the hunk of meat on a baking sheet and a Xmas morning gleam in his eye, announcing this development.
In that moment I resigned myself to overcooked broccoli, and went outside.
So we watched for the next twenty minutes to half an hour as the machine swept over the virgin plot. I had spent the day digging a new bed along the south face of the barn, so I could keenly appreciate the machine's efficiency in busting sod- though the spade and I get the win for precision. We also unearthed a G.I. Joe head, so bonus points there.
Since that day, Dave has retrieved our fencing from his old shop, and while it still lacks a gate, we have secured the rest of the perimeter. In that time, I unearthed my beloved graph paper, and finally created a conversion factor for my foot and the foot comprised of 12 inches. THE GLORY OF ARITHMETIC AND GEOMETRY!!!! What can be more pleasing than putting pencil to graph paper, and realizing your shod foot is approx. .75ft? Since that evening, I drafted a diagram of beds and rows, simply aching to impose Cartesian order on the plane of our garden plot.
Which is why today I am aching from that imposition. It turns out, creating geometric order from newly broken ground is slightly more work than imagining it. And hoes, rakes, and spades are substantially heavier than pencils. Soil exponentially heavier than paper. Especially soil with plenty of Densely Clustered Mineral Content (DCMC). We had been referring to such aberrations as rocks, but the man who did our rototilling pointed out that "real rocks are the ones that go all the way down."
I also quickly found that the plot did not adhere to the theoretical standards of what it means to be a rectangle. And, if I wanted to be exacting, I should have been more precise with my conversion factor, perhaps extending it to the the hundred-thousandths place. Or perhaps used an actual tape measure. In the end, I fell back on my theater training and improvised. The result of yesterday's labor is that one quadrant of the garden is properly bedded, and the other three quadrants discernible as quadrants. I can even still move without undue pain. At one point I noted that one of the stringy bits connecting my chest to my arm through my armpit had gone a bit funny, but no matter, as it seems to have remained attached. I switched my hoe-handedness and moved on.
It is spring: the sacrificial field grass burnt to soot has given way to rippling waves of green. The cherry is in bloom, the apple blossoms on their way. By summer, an aerial view of our vegetable garden will look like a drawing done by an advanced kindergartner. Life is good.
Update 9/11/13:
Thanks, Google Earth.
This year the season has been different. Around about the time we had two back-to-back 80 degree days in early March, and almost no snow in the months before, most of us started to wonder about the prospects of our mud this year. For a good crop of mud, you need a couple of things: a lot of water deposits, and soil. We've got the soil. Not so much with the water, and the overcast skies that keep it from evaporating.
Due to the dry and warm conditions, people who like digging in dirt (rather than mud) were able to get a jump start. This is why, for the past month or so, I have been dutifully changing into play clothes from my work cloths, and kneeling at the alter of cultivation. The house is on five acres, and while it has mature perennials putting a good (if overgrown) face on it to the road, the backside is... quite exposed.
To begin with, I dug up a few very narrow strips of sod on the terrace, so I could get my sweet peas in, well in advance of the projected last frost. A few weeks later, armed with knowledge of the ground, I busted sod for a proper bed, and amended the soil for slightly pickier plants. At the same time, I was able to harvest a bumper crop of fasteners. Screws, nails- if you use it to drive two building materials together, I was reaping it. This is the glory of bedding plants close to the house, you garner all the materials deemed not worth cleaning up after the last roofing/siding project. When I went back to plant the first succession of glads and seed the zinnia, I was surprised to find that some more nails had sprouted to the surface- proving they too were enjoying this warm weather. Weren't we all?
Another side effect of the early warm weather was that Dave caught a chronic case of "When Will The Guy Come To Rototill-itis." He had long since planted the stakes in the ground in anticipation that they would yield a plot of upturned earth. Day after day... "I'm seriously starting to get pissed off..." "I don't know if he's going to come..." "I'm going to have to call..." I have seen high school girls staring telepathically at their phone exhibit more patience.
And then one day, at the exact moment the pork shoulder was coming out of the smoker, and the broccoli had steamed to the perfection- the Man in the Kubota pulled in. Dave came in with the hunk of meat on a baking sheet and a Xmas morning gleam in his eye, announcing this development.
In that moment I resigned myself to overcooked broccoli, and went outside.
So we watched for the next twenty minutes to half an hour as the machine swept over the virgin plot. I had spent the day digging a new bed along the south face of the barn, so I could keenly appreciate the machine's efficiency in busting sod- though the spade and I get the win for precision. We also unearthed a G.I. Joe head, so bonus points there.
Since that day, Dave has retrieved our fencing from his old shop, and while it still lacks a gate, we have secured the rest of the perimeter. In that time, I unearthed my beloved graph paper, and finally created a conversion factor for my foot and the foot comprised of 12 inches. THE GLORY OF ARITHMETIC AND GEOMETRY!!!! What can be more pleasing than putting pencil to graph paper, and realizing your shod foot is approx. .75ft? Since that evening, I drafted a diagram of beds and rows, simply aching to impose Cartesian order on the plane of our garden plot.
Which is why today I am aching from that imposition. It turns out, creating geometric order from newly broken ground is slightly more work than imagining it. And hoes, rakes, and spades are substantially heavier than pencils. Soil exponentially heavier than paper. Especially soil with plenty of Densely Clustered Mineral Content (DCMC). We had been referring to such aberrations as rocks, but the man who did our rototilling pointed out that "real rocks are the ones that go all the way down."
I also quickly found that the plot did not adhere to the theoretical standards of what it means to be a rectangle. And, if I wanted to be exacting, I should have been more precise with my conversion factor, perhaps extending it to the the hundred-thousandths place. Or perhaps used an actual tape measure. In the end, I fell back on my theater training and improvised. The result of yesterday's labor is that one quadrant of the garden is properly bedded, and the other three quadrants discernible as quadrants. I can even still move without undue pain. At one point I noted that one of the stringy bits connecting my chest to my arm through my armpit had gone a bit funny, but no matter, as it seems to have remained attached. I switched my hoe-handedness and moved on.
It is spring: the sacrificial field grass burnt to soot has given way to rippling waves of green. The cherry is in bloom, the apple blossoms on their way. By summer, an aerial view of our vegetable garden will look like a drawing done by an advanced kindergartner. Life is good.
Update 9/11/13:
Thanks, Google Earth.
 |
| The garden last year. I <3 Big Brother for allowing me to follow up on predictions. |
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