Time has been a bit weird this week. Or maybe this week has just been weird for some time. It's easy to get confused. Take the rain. Last weekend we had three days of it, totaling a good 5 inches. Be patient - it will make sense shortly. Two miles west along the highway there is a large field with a pond next to the road. It used to house bison, but people died, new generations wanted different things, and the bison got sold. The farm will be sold shortly as well. But the bison were our markers. It was where we were in relation to home. What they were doing, where in the field they were, how many light brown babies there were, all marked time. The pond in particular was a reliable calendar. It froze and thawed with the seasons, filled in the spring, held ducks, geese, the occasional heron or egret. The bison waded in to drink, to cool down in the heat of summer. Late in the summer most years, but earlier now with the drought, it would start drying up. Birds would leave. Bison would cluster around a water tank near the buildings. When it rained last weekend I watched for the pond to fill back up. Just even a teeny bit. The other rains we'd gotten were light enough to have no effect. But surely 5 inches...?
When I drove to the dealership Thursday to get my car fixed, I passed the pond. Still dry. On the way to pick it up yesterday, once Paul was home from work and gave me a lift, it was filled brim to brim. No mud, just green plants touched by the water. It had taken that long, exactly, for the rain to soak in and slowly flow down to fill the pond. Exactly. Very slow, until it actually happened overnight. But this time, there were no bison meandering down for a drink. No birds have come back, perhaps discouraged by too long without water to keep alive whatever they were feeding on there. Nothing to mark the time passing as in years past. By the time autumn brushes the field with gold I'll be long since south, in a place where the rare green is always green, having learned to survive without browning because it's always dry and plants still need their chlorophyll, so they guard it closely, never letting it drop so it has to be renewed.
By the way, the car is fixed and the bank account is a mere $453 and change lighter. The problem was exactly where I said it was, working exactly as I imagined, but the mechanism was a switch rather than a loose connection. It took an extra day to locate one in the metro area. I'm supposed to be impressed by the fact one was available, when I'm actually negatively impressed by their parts department not having one on hand and fixing it right away.
Do you recall I mentioned that I've "graduated" to working 2 hours in the yard? I went out a bit late this morning. Cooler air has come down for a brief visit, and it came without smoke or humidity. Last night I could see many of the stars again, and the dog had to go out early enough this morning that I could see the Milky Way in the sky. It's just a hint, still, a patch of light stripe. Nothing like what I saw in Arches, an official Dark Skies area. Still, it was the first time I've seen it, aside from Arches, in many years, a piece of my childhood when I grew up in rural northern Minnesota when winter night skies were dark enough both early and late enough that seeing it was possible on any cloudless cold night.
Anyway, because I was out so early with the dog, I took a nap after we came inside. It was 9:00 before I got dressed for the yard, often my heading back in time on those hot mornings. Today was cleaning up the mess I've made for the last couple weeks in the front yard. The southern side has a border of lilacs part way along, with wild roses filling in to the east from a single plant given to me by a neighbor 30 years ago, and way overgrown honeysuckle bushes to the west until they reach the back yard fence. The lilacs got a chainsaw haircut to a height of 6 feet just after we got here, and the honeysuckle is scheduled for the same in the fall. In the shade they provide, there is a very healthy border of green hostas, a smattering of daylilies so shaded they no longer bloom and barely survive. Spring's lack of foliage still allows sunshine for crocus, scillas and daffodils to bloom and store enough energy to give it a go again the following year. But everything had gotten so overgrown and untended that it's taken me two weeks to clear out everything unwanted. That list includes all the usual suspects for this yard except thistles (too shady), a whole lot of dead wood and a thick cover of rotting sugar maple leaves. That tree has thrived there. It's the only thing that doesn't need attention, and it doesn't get any, even tapping in spring.
The roses were so overgrown that the new growth is too spindly to support itself once the weeds were removed. With major clearing and cutting back, I'm sure they will start thriving again. The cutting back revealed the heretofore successfully hidden utility boxes on the property line. All our power is buried, so this is the only access. It's a great way to prevent ice from bringing down the wires. And roses are a greatly thorny barrier to prevent any needed maintenance. The boxes couldn't be seen until the pruners did major damage to the old growth. We had gotten here just in time to see the huge mound of fragrant pink blooms this spring. You'd think they'd be full of rose hips by now, but either neglect or the drought left them without the resources this year. Proof that previous years had been kinder shows in the young plants sprouting out in the grass two to three feet away from their assigned growing spot, vulnerable to the mower... in the unlikely event that happens. Sunlight now invades the area for the first half of the day, so I have hope for new, healthier growth. Perhaps even a willingness for any needed utility maintenance personnel to actually approach those boxes again - without swearing!
The sugar maple shades the yard where I've been working these two weeks. Today was lovely, and I had a really big job to tackle. No illusions about finishing it. I felt sure that a mess that took two weeks to make would take quite a few days to clear. There's no chemicals to apply, no sorting between types of foliage to decided keep or kill. But there's lots of cutting of branches, stripping leaves off to go into the compost, small twigs up to 2" trunks to separate, section, and relocate depending on size and anticipated use, and trips with full wheelbarrow and overflowing tote into the back yard, the whole area to be topped off by a good raking for the pride of claiming a job finished. For this year.
We have baby pine/spruce/something? trees growing in the lawn in the space currently covered by all the detritus removed these two weeks. The needles are short so I've no confidence in identifying them. They get mowed rather than dug out, so each one little trunk multiplies into many and they grow out sideways. The rain has helped in loosening the ground enough that a well gloved hand - sometimes two - can pull them out along with an 8" tap root, occasionally a fist sized root ball of dirt as well. They are jarring to see in a mix of grass and broad leaved plants. The brain registers a wrongness before the eye can actually see it, so the job stops as I scan around to work out just what and where I saw something. I have to take careful note and go straight to pluck it, then scan again for the others because they are always in groups, never just one. I move my chair and two turn out to have been under it unnoticed when I first moved the chair to that spot. Or three. Four. Five. I'll go away a few feet and return to find ones I've missed.
What's really emotionally jarring is no matter how many I've picked, there is never that resin scent of pine, or spruce, that hint of Christmas that even though it fades too quickly is still trumpeting the holiday season when the holiday greenery is first brought in. But still, they have to be. There is nothing I know of that looks and feels like these that isn't some kind of conifer. Those blueish green things are needles. They just don't smell right. I do realize that reminders of December in August could be just another way of messing with time, but the absence is still wrong.
The lovely weather, the size of the task, and the variety of all that needed doing, combined to keep me going past my usual time. I'd start to feel a bit tired, a muscle would protest. I didn't overheat, sweat into my bandana, get thirsty. When a blister started in the thumb of my pruning hand, I shifted tactics to use it less and still make progress. Eventually I just decided I'd done enough for the day. I didn't need to push myself to make that blister pop. The big piles I started with could be consolidated with making what was left into a single one. Tomorrow should see the job done if I could just get Paul to used his guy-muscles for cutting the last few of the extra large branches into firewood lengths so I could sort and trim and relocate.
But as I started walking toward the house, I decided I really was kinda tired. Maybe I'd ask him to dump out the wheelbarrow and tote, relocating stuff where it needs to be in the back yard for me so I could get a good start on tomorrow's job without having to spend time on that bit too. Closer to the door that sounded like an even better idea, while I put the tools away for the day. Entering the house I had to get closer to the clock to see just what time it was: did I really work until 12:10? That would explain why I had no energy left. Not to mention the blister. Wait! Wrong hands. It's 2:00? Seriously, I was out there for five whole hours? Holy crap!
OK, I'm officially sitting down for the rest of the day, asking Paul for all that help I was thinking of, and after a bathroom break, going to finish the bag of gorp next to my chair rather than even microwaving anything for lunch! Holy Crap!!!!
Maybe I can talk somebody into bring me some ibuprofin for that arm that's starting to complain big time too.
No comments:
Post a Comment