A husband is often expected to be a handyman, in more ways than one.
A house comes with expectations, as well, inside and out.
Home maintenance is where they collide.
Tag: Home
BACK TO THE SCENE
The groundhog story continues. Not to be content with the early raids on our garden, the attacks on our beds resumed. Lush Brussels sprouts plants that had been three feet tall were now mere spikes, and in the latest round we lost some kale and squash plants. Neighbors are relating their own losses, including peppers.
I did notice a small entryway had been dug out under our firewood stacks and eventually saw a pointy nose and beady eyes regard me. Not once or even twice but enough to make me suspect the worst. So I moved the trap from the garden and placed it near the entrance.
To my relief, I did find that the trap my wife bought at a yard sale a few years ago does indeed work, and that cubes of cantaloupe prove irresistible to the critters, but even that is taking its own turns. The first time the device was triggered, a bit of Brussels sprouts stem included as bait kept the shutter from locking … allowing an escape. Would the villain learn to avoid my means of entrapment?
I reset the trap and by lunchtime returned to check it out. Although both shutters had been triggered, a ‘chuck was propped up OUTSIDE, one foot on the top as it peered in, likely wondering how to get back to the bait, as if adding insult to my intentions. It seemed I’d been conned again. But, just in case, I circled around and closer examination revealed another was couched inside. One down, at least one more to go.
The short version of what followed includes a trip to Maine, just over the river. Released from confinement, that one bolted through the forest … straight toward New Hampshire.
For my part, back home, hoping they’re slow learners driven more by their guts than their brains, I reset the trap in pursuit of the other. Two hours later, I was back in Maine and evicted that critter, which dashed straight into the river and started swimming toward New Hampshire before rounding back to shore. I was grateful it was still high tide but dismayed to see what confident swimmers they can be. So much for that barrier.
Back home again, seeing new diggings around the firewood, we face the reality of having at least one more living under that neatly stacked firewood. If this keeps up, I’ll have to buy another melon today. At least I’m grateful we didn’t try growing our own; they would have cleaned ’em out, meaning I’d still have to buy one to use as bait.
A PROSPEROUS TURN
Demand for wool in the first three decades of the 19th century shaped the boom years of agriculture in New Hampshire, at least until the invention of the cotton gin allowed for a cheaper clothing alternative – a condition that was accompanied by a changing American workplace and economy.
The brief but prosperous boom financed many of the Granite State’s landmark large farmhouses and barns as well as the nearly ubiquitous stone fences that are still visible, some in the most unexpected remote forests.
Pay attention while driving along country roads, and you’ll often notice stretches where each house seems to be an evolution among the others. I suspect that what happened was they were all built by one craftsman carpenter and his crew – perhaps itinerants who would stay for a season of erecting a house before returning home – who were invited back in another year to build another, each one to customized specifications. The chimneys, for instance, reveal a progression away from the massive central fireplace of the Colonial era to the use of multiple chimneys after the Revolutionary War – something that has me thinking of how much firewood these houses must have consumed through a winter.
It’s possible, of course, that the carpenters and masons and others came to live in the neighborhood as well. But one thing I feel certain: the resident commercial farmers, faced with the demands of their flocks and fields, did not have the time or perhaps even skills to build houses like these.
Here are some of the fine examples found in a village along a ridge in the town of Deerfield, a neighborhood known as South Deerfield. There are more, I should mention, than I could capture in this outing. Meanwhile, I’d like to know more about the site of the popular Mack Tavern, with its fiddler’s throne to protect the player from the wild dancers.
NATURALLY, SHE HAS REASON TO WEEP
You may remember my writing of the wildlife we have in our yard, even though we live in a city. Maybe I was even bragging, a tad.
Meanwhile, our garden was looking better than ever. Some of it was likely a consequence of all the seaweed we’re using for mulch, plus the compost. Some of it a matter that we got just about everything transplanted on time, and some a reflection that my being free from the office has allowed a little more help with the weeding and harvesting.
On top of everything, the weather has been uncommonly cooperative. There were no late frosts in May, though there were nights we had to bring plants under cover as they “hardened off” before transplanting. We largely avoided a wet June, which kept the garden slugs under control and meant the strawberries didn’t get waterlogged. (They’ve been very tasty. The berries, that is.) July has brought rainfall as needed and also stayed out of the tropical range of oppression.
And then, about a week ago, disaster struck. A groundhog (apparently dwelling under a shed three houses down the street).
We had some near misses in the past, but nothing like this. One year, in fact, a band of possums evicted the groundhogs from their burrow. My wife’s always like opossums.
Overnight, half of our Brussels sprouts and a half-dozen heads of lettuce were obliterated. The rest were wiped out a day or two later, despite our efforts to fight back. Without the possums coming to our rescue, my wife’s taking this personally. For that matter, so am I. What about all that teaching about peaceful coexistence, anyway? What if the other side just doesn’t care?
Living in the city, we can’t resort to the usual line of defense, either, the one many vegetarians no doubt practice. No, a .22 is not an option here. You can run down the list of other weapons and strike them off one by one. Children and pets, after all, live in the neighborhood.
So here we are, mopping up and hoping the cantaloupe slices in the Hav A Heart trap do the job. And wiping our tears.
GARDEN LIGHTS
the Tiki torches, hints of pathways in five directions
from the Smoking Garden
* * *
twilight
with charcoal, glowing and ready
poem copyright 2014 by Jnana Hodson
THIS OLD HOUSE DISILLUSIONMENT
One of the downsides of owning an old house is an awareness of just how expensive any repair is. (And it’s always more than you’ve planned.) Add to that just how many repairs are needed. (Remember, most of them are for things you don’t even see.) And that’s before we get to any upgrades.
The awareness has also afflicted many of my dream-house observations, especially when I’m nearing the ocean. Where I would have admired a stone retaining wall under construction or a long pier from a private boathouse or deck to the mooring, what I now see is dollar signs. Often, more than I would have made in a year. It’s crushing.
It can make you wonder what people do for that kind of income. Or what kind of wealth they were born into. Or how long it will last.
One thing I know is that fishermen used to live in some of these coastal communities. But not anymore. Not by a long shot. Some of them live closer to me.
IVAR’S PAINT QUIP
I wish he hadn’t said it. My former landlord in the Yakima Valley, visiting us here in New England, remarked on how many of the houses he saw that were in need of new paint. That was before he saw ours, too.
Now, in this seemingly picturesque location, everywhere I turn, I see houses with peeling paint. Or worse.
I wish he hadn’t said it.
At least he said nothing about roofing.
FUN-DRAISING
Looked up as I drove by a big green lawn the other day and saw it was dotted with pink. A bright pink unlike any flowers we grow in these parts.
Then I smiled, realized the house had just been flocked – there was even a note stuck on a stick.
In a flash, even at a distance (this was the kind of place that has a small pond between the house and the highway), I sensed the two dozen flamingos were all uniform, likely brand-new, unlike the motley band we “quarantined” for our own use all too many years ago now. Why, ours even multiplied in the course of their service – some of the dads were making new ones from plywood, rather than plastic.
Flocked, you ask? Oh, I was sure I’d told that story, somewhere.
A FEW THOUGHTS WHILE SIFTING COMPOST
Come springtime every year, there’d be a predicable domestic spat. I’d say the compost was ready. She’d look at it and retort, “No, it’s not: you can still see bits and tell what it’s made of.” (Actually, two shes – mother and daughter.) “Then you’ll have to wait another year for it to finish to your specifications,” I’d shoot back, only to be told we couldn’t wait that long. And so on.
Part of this seemed to question my very manhood. I was, after all, the one doing all the work, from collecting the bags of leaves around the neighborhood and dumping the kitchen garbage in the covered bins to changing the rabbit cages, in large part for their precious, nitrogen-intense pellets.
Well, most of the work. The red wigglers would also do a large share.
Still, I suspected that if we waited as long as they wanted, all of our organic matter would evaporate.
At last, I had a flash of genius. I’d slowly sift the pile, trowel by trowel, and whatever came through the screen turned out beautiful. They approved and used buckets of it on the square-foot garden beds as fast as I could provide them. The part that didn’t fit through the screen was also beautiful, along the lines of woodland detritus with flecks of brown eggs. I put that aside to decay further, perhaps to be spread as mulch in July or August.
The motion of sifting itself can become a kind of Zen practice as you admire the material before you and the thoughts flitting through your awareness.
This movement’s like panning for gold, as I found washing my dishes in the glacier-fed river below Mount Shuksan. Back and forth, back and forth, with all that matter getting smaller and sparkling more in each round of swirling.
All the peach stones are tokens from our cheap peach bonanza after Hurricane Irene ruffled nearby orchards.
The squirrels plant a lot of our wild black walnuts.
Listen to all the cardinals and mourning doves.
Plastic, in flecks, is inescapable.
How loud, those geese overhead! Me, I’d be more stealthy.
We eat a lot of eggs.
FORSYTHIAS
Spring yellow, for Easter. I cut branches of forsythia, bring them indoors, find an appropriate vase with water, if Easter’s falling early. And then they open, with a profusion of yellow. Sunshine.
Some, soon adorned with suspended eggs.
