...And other animals

The wonderful English actress (Imelda Staunton) who did such an excellent job as the evil Dolores Umbridge in the film “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” was just as excellent as the delightful mother in “My Family and Other Animals” that was presented on Masterpiece Theater on PBS. I remember it well when Senator John McCain, during hearings on cutting funding proclaimed that we didn’t need PBS any more because comparable quality programming was available on A&E and Bravo. That may have been true then, but it isn’t now; that’s for sure (I say, that’s for sure). At this point, our family has invited only one animal to share the indoors with us, the Idiot Kitty. But there always seem to be some uninvited animals in the house. Yesterday morning when R was getting ready for church, he stuck his foot in the shoe he was going to wear and promptly pulled it out again. The shoe was full of sunflower seeds. In the week since last Sunday, some “thing” had been very busy at night while we are asleep blazing a trail from the bucket of sunflower seeds by the back door to the spot where the shoes are kept. Now, where is that Idiot Kitty when we need her?

Tubular

What is going on in our garage reminds me a lot of the situation that occurs when things are sunk the ocean, whether accidently or on purpose, such as off the coast of Florida: the object becomes new home for fish and other sea creatures and attracts them to the area. If you build it (or sink it), they will come. In our case, several guests have taken up housekeeping in the garage we built several years ago. Two varieties of bird have nested in the garage, the Phoebe and the Carolina wren. This year, in fact, the wrens built two nests. And there’s the bat. I guess it doesn’t actually live at the top of the stairwell leading from the garage to the second story, but he or she does spend several days a week hanging there – in fact, it is hanging there as I write this. I do wonder a lot about the bat. Why doesn’t it live with a colony with other bats in a cave somewhere? Where does the bat go when it isn’t hanging in our stairwell? And this summer, the organ pipe mud dauber wasps decided to set up housekeeping on the garage wall by the stairwell. Unlike some of the other varieties of wasp that live here, these are very calm and docile, not at all like the yellow jacket or the paper wasp, both of which are very aggressive -- get anywhere near a paper wasp nest and one is likely to get stung. The mud dauber wasps are not aggressive at all. This is fortunate, because we walk within a foot of their tubes very time we go up the stairs and that is why their tubes are still there and this picture was taken. They lay their egg in the tube and then stuff a paralyzed spider in their so the grub has something to eat (I do feel a little sorry for the spiders). When they get inside the tube the sound of their buzzing is amplified and very loud. A free concert.

One More Thing Has Passed Away

After 26+ years living here, we got our first electric bill yesterday. And that’s because on this first day of the month, unlike on the first day of the month since June 1, 1981, I did not have to go to the power pole to read the electric meter. I did not write the figures down in the payment book, subtract the last month’s reading, look up the amount owed on the little chart, and send off the payment. It is an unsettling feeling. I guess I should be glad that is one less thing to worry about, but it has been such a habit for all these years. I guess progress is good. The electric co-op thinks the new fancy electronic electric meters they installed will improve the process. It seems to me it is going to cost them a lot more money having to mail all the bills, but what do I know?

Teamwork

The Bible advises lazy people to check out the ant as an example of industriousness for good reason, because they certainly are. As we were walking back to the house from getting the mail the other day, I thought I saw a bumpy caterpillar making its way across the hot asphalt road. I am fond of bumpy caterpillars because they often turn into beautiful butterflies, and it occurred to me that the caterpillar was going to burn up before it made it across the road because it was so hot. I decided to help it along. Only as I got closer, I saw that it wasn’t a caterpillar at all. It was a very large white grub being hauled along by 5 red ants that were very tiny in comparison. None of the ants could have moved the grub by itself, but together they could maneuver the prize across what for them was a huge distance to share it with the rest of the colony. I did not offer to help the ants with their grub. After struggling with some higher math, my brilliant husband helped me figure out that just moving across the road for them would be the equivalent of us carrying something slightly more than a half mile, and I have no idea how far away from the road they were when they found the grub or how far on the other side their nest was. And not too long after that thought-provoking scene, I stood on the porch getting ready to hang clothes on the line and stuck my hand into the burlap bag where I keep my clothespins. In the past I’ve encountered a wren’s nest in the clothespin bag, but I was not prepared for what I did find: a huge colony of ants had decided to make their home amongst the clothespins. So along with the handful of clothespins came hundreds of ants and ant eggs and in seconds they were swarming up my arm. It was horrible. I decided to use the clothes dryer because I didn’t have time then to deal with them. But I did later.

From Bad to Worse (or What Was I Thinking?)

I consider myself fortunate that I do not suffer from the allergies that plague many people I know. I am not allergic to pollen, cats or dogs, food, perfume, certain laundry detergent, or fabrics (well, wool is sort itchy), and I am not even allergic to poison ivy. However, I do have one minor problem: except for my hands and face, my skin does develop an allergic reaction to the adhesives that are found in medical tape and bandaids. When I give blood they have to use “horse wrap” to keep the gauze in place, and I’ve had trouble with wound dressings after surgical procedures. Thus, I obviously was not thinking -- my mind must have been elsewhere -- as I stood there decorating myself with bits of duct tape and enlisting R’s help in covering the bites on my back that that I couldn’t reach. I have found out that hard way that there is one more thing to put on the list. Now, 24 hours later, I have large red welts to go along with the itchy bites. Lord, have mercy.

The “Tin Woman”

Well I am most miserable at the moment, having gotten into chiggers when I weeded the flower bed at the church Sunday night. I never actually saw the chiggers, but I am certainly suffering with them now. I have at least 30 bites scattered over my body, probably more. Most are on my back, some on my belly (even in my belly button) and around the waistband, arms, and shoulders. Last night I stuck bits of duct tape on all the most obvious ones to keep me from scratching at them. I look like I’m morphing into the Tin Woman. They are supposed to stop itching in a few days. I hope so.

How I spent my weekend....

Not sleeping much because the racoons were on the porch off the bedroom making noise, knocking plants over, breaking the foot off my angel statute, climbing up onto the roof and galloping around...

Once again replanting the pansies in the whiskey barrel because the racoons keep digging them up...

Rewashing all of the flatware and dishtowels in the kitchen drawers beause R found mouse turds in the bottom of the cofee carafe (which we keep in the bottom drawer of the cabinet).

Mopping the kitchen floor after one or the other of us spilled....
--a half-gallon of pickled cucumbers (the lid came off as I was picking up the container) (me)
--a can of beets (me)
--a container of barbeqcue sauce (him)
--a bag of frozen cranberries which rolled everywhere (me), and
--Salad dressing (this was the piece de resistance). R mixed up the dressing in which he combines a fat-free version with a low-cal version and a couple of other things to get a better-tasting low-calorie version and forgot to tighten the lid, and as he began shaking the bottle to mix it the lid flew off and Italian dressing went everywhere.

Vaccuming the floor twice to pick up shards of glass from a broken half-gallon jar and then later, a glass custard dish.

As this Monday morning dawns crsip and clear and beautiful, I suspect I have the cleanest floor in town, and I'm wondering how much fun I'm going to have TODAY...

Anger Management

I am not prone to anger, but when I do get angry, it tends to be an “outburst” – and even then it is usually low-key. I get it over it very quickly, and then I go on my merry way. Well, a few days ago I found myself in a situation where a very clever essay by Jamie Buckingham, “Things That Go Squish In the Night,” immediately came to mind. This piece is in his book The Last Word, a collection of columns he wrote for a newspaper and other publications.

He relates an incident where he shut off a valve that drained water from his heating system so he could divert it to a spigot and wash the car earlier in the day. Evening has come, it is getting late. He has told his daughter to hurry up and take her shower and has gone to bed. Just as he is falling asleep, he hears a sound and realizes he has failed to reopen the valve. Now water is now flooding the back yard instead of draining into the pond. It is pitch dark outside, he grabs his flashlight, sloshes through the water to the well house, shuts off the water, and then heads off through the backyard to the cement-lined hole where the diverter valve is located. He sticks his hand down there and touches something slimy, which he can’t see in the dark. He leaps up, forgetting that he is kneeling under a barbed wire fence.

“The result was disastrous. When I became a Christian, I lost most of my old vocabulary. This robs me of the necessary safety valve to handle such emergencies. So, instead of cursing, I threw my flashlight, which landed in the pond, leaving me in total darkness. Ripping myself away from the barbed wire, I staggered backwards away from the fence. I stepped in doggie-do. Hopping around in the tall grass, I ran a thorny briar between my big toe and the toe right next door... That which I lost I suddenly found–and a torrent of expletives issued forth...”

Jamie Buckingham is now late, having died in 1992, so I guess we will have to wait until eternity to enjoy any more of his witty writing. At any rate, what happened to me wasn’t quite as dramatic, but the effect was much the same.

Earlier in the spring, R fixed up a half whiskey barrel planter for me at the side of the porch so I could plant a clematis and have it climb the trellis on the porch. The local greenhouse where I would have found a clematis shut down, and not being able to find one at Wally World, I planted pansies, violas, and johnny jump-ups around the rim and left a spot for the clematis, should one turn up. The flowers survived the hard freeze we had in April and were thriving and just beautiful.

Two weeks ago, I found a beautiful burgundy passionflower fine at a street fair and planted that in the spot where the clematis would have gone. And I was happy. I have never been very successful at growing flowers.

Then a few days ago, I returned from aerobics and started up the back steps, and glanced down to look at my beautiful pansies and saw that they were no longer beautiful. Some “thing” had gotten in the barrel and tore it up. All the plants on one side had been pulled up, and the plants on the other had been covered in dirt.

I was enraged. To echo Buckingham, “that which I lost I suddenly found.” We too are out in the country so nobody was around to hear me, except R. Fortuntely, what ever got in their simply uprooted the plants and did not destroyed them, so I quickly replanted them all, uncovered the ones that were covered up, and gave them a good watering. And they seem to have bounced back.

Buckingham closes his essay with the thought “...God is more interested in what we become along the way than whether we arrive. I am not sure what I became. But one thing is certain, I have not yet arrived.”

Me either.

I feel the earth move under my feet...

Well no, not exactly (I mean, I no longer live in California where this sort of thing happens a lot), but this film of the rotating earth is very cool. I skimmed through a very bizarre book once written by a group who believe that the earth stands still (based on a few passages from the Bible) and the entire universe (not just the sun the solar system) revolves around us.

Actually, my world was shaken just a bit on Friday--in a good way--when our son and his fiance came to the house with a Mother's Day card and a cactus. I was shocked almost speechless: this is one of the first times I can remember that he has responded to Mother's Day since he left home. This is probably because of the influence of his fiance, who is a mother herself.

I regret that I couldn't be there for my own mother's celebration. She is worthy of every accolade, whether trite or profound, that people have penned over the years in honor of their mothers. All one would have to do is examine the response of her four children in honor of her to understand what she means to all of us -- and not just remembering her on this one partiuclar day, but day-by-day.

Lookin’ out my back door...

Such a lovely sight to see her looking back at us framed by the brush, and then to see her moving gracefully through the clearing to grab a bite to eat before moving off into the overgrowth. Perhaps as summer drifts into fall there will be a spotted fawn by her side. They will come expecting to eat apples from the old apple tree but, alas, there probably won’t be any this year. The hard freeze we had this spring has likely destroyed most of the fruit crop in the area. Deer have a habit of helping themselves to the plants people have set out in their gardens and flower beds (I recall my aunt compaining about the deer eating her rosebushes). We don’t have too much growing here aside from native plants to interest the deer so they don’t bother us too much. I remember hearing about one local gardener who became so irate at the deer eating his strawberries that he went on a shooting rampage and got into trouble with conservation. As much as we enjoy eating vension, they are in no danger from us shooting them from our back porch, except perhaps with a camera.