Leaves

This week we have been at war with the live oak leaves all over this place. We have been literally buried in leaves. As everyone in this part of Texas knows, our native live oak trees shed their old leaves in the Spring. Close on the heels of the beginning of the shed, comes the pollen strings. For people, like me, who have an allergy to live oak, these pollen strings are a thing to dread. The air turns yellow. The trees turn yellow. The pollen is sticky and falls on anything that's outside and has the misfortune to be located beneath a pollinating tree. Only one of our vehicles -- mine -- fits inside the garage, so during this period, my SO is constantly washing pollen off of his Suburban or his Silverado. The lawn furniture also gets one of its infrequent washing. The skylights on the roof become opaque with the stuff.

At the end of this period -- the yellow period -- comes the falling of the used up pollen strings. They fall and get stuck in spider webs. They fall all over plants located beneath the trees. They hang on the eaves of the house and on the power lines. They litter the ground and the flower beds. And they stain everything a shit-brittle brown. They ruin your clothes if one should happen into the washing machine. They are supposed to be good fertilizer, but I have only found them a nuisance. And if they aren't picked off of flowering plants they land on, they will cause a leaf blight or bring in insects that cause it.

All the while, the trees continue to shed leaves. Every time the wind blows, the ones already on the ground shift back and forth across the driveway and the yard. They blow from the roof of the house and into the hot tub. They fill up the bird baths and the flower beds. They harbor all sorts of creepy things, too, like copperhead snakes and scorpions. We have 84 of these trees, all of them large, a hundred years old or more, and so we are absolutely awash in dead brown leaves. These leaves are hard and brittle and to compost them, they must be ground with a shredder, which we do not own. Ah, leaf season, how I do loathe thee.

A couple of weeks ago my SO started calling around to see if he could locate somebody, anybody, to come remove all these leaves. But he ran into the same problems: 1) nobody wanted to quote a price without seeing the extent of the leaf cover, 2) none of the people he talked to had a place to haul them off to or else they were going to have to get back to us on that score. We soldiered on through the leaves in a kind of zombie-like inertia for a few more days, trying to ignore the leaves as much as possible, despite all the sneezing and the tracking of them into every doorway in this house -- there are five doorways in, which translates to a lot -- a REALLY lot -- of vacuuming.

I guess we both had the same thought at the same time, because without discussion we decided all at once to tackle the leaf problem by ourselves. We bought an extension ladder. We have been needing one anyway and kept putting it off. But the leaves piled on the roof posed the biggest hazard and to get up there, we needed a sturdy ladder. With the severe drought going on in our area, piles of dried leaves on a roof are simply a fire waiting to happen. We have a gasoline powered blower, so the ladder was the last thing we needed. My SO came home with one on Tuesday.

Thursday he got on the roof. The leaves up there created a slippery situation so he went forward barefooted, throwing down his shoes one at a time. The asphalt burned his tender feet, but he said he felt he had more traction that way. I climbed partway up the ladder and handed up the blower. But before that, I moved everything, pot plants, plant stands, water bowl for the dog, out of the way of the avalanche of leaves I knew was about to rain down. I also threw a tarp over the hot tub.  It was even worse than I thought it would be, the avalanche. Leaves were fully two feet deep around the house by the end of it. Along with the leaves came pollen and pollen strings that hung on the gutters, not to mention worm poop from the infestation that plagued us a few weeks ago. I had been wise enough to wear a dust mask but I was still covered in debris. From the ground, I used a broom to sweep down the muck that hung in the gutter covers. While my SO was up there, I fed up the car wash brush attached to the end of various hoses, and he washed the four large skylights, not beautifully, but at least we can once again see stars through them at night.

Friday we spent the day loading leaves into our little dump trailer that fits behind the riding lawn mower. We took piles and piles of them out to the North Forty and dumped them out in low spots where water stands on the rare occasions that it has rained since we moved here. In a few years they will mulch themselves into dirt. It has been agonizing work but we are finally done with it, and with these leaves. For another year anyway.

Last night we took wine in the hot tub to celebrate and to soothe our sore aching shoulders and our backs. Ahhhhh, the hot tub. Now there's a wonderful investment.

Onward ....

The Spider That Lives in the Mailbox

There's a spider living in the mailbox. It's been there for most of a year now. It's one of those black spiders with white fuzzy legs and a white spot on his back. I've always called them jumping spiders, but I don't know the correct name. We had them in the cabin on the coast when I was a child. If you try to swat at them they jump. Thus my name for them.

I like to think of the spider in the mailbox as a kind of sentry, guarding the mail. When you open the box, if it's close to the door, it'll spring to the back. Sometimes it's under the pile of mail, and it will jump crazily in the box, as if it has just been surprised from a dreamy sleep there beneath the letters, flyers and catalogs. It has a sort of cocoon-like web in the back end of the mailbox, so far back I couldn't reach the web without help from a stick or some other tool. But I see no reason to remove the web, or the spider. It doesn't bother anything. I don't see how it catches much in there, since the box is always closed, but maybe there's a way in and out that I don't know about. Maybe it just likes the darkness and warmth.

Apparently, Mark the postman has also decided not to bother the spider. I know he's bound to see it in there. It's not a tiny spider but is about the size of a nickel. And sometimes, when you open the box, it's right at the very front of the box, as if waiting for the door to open. It almost acts as if it wants to leap out  but it never does, not even when I pull out the mail. The next time Mark brings a package to the house door I think I'll ask him about the spider. I suspect he's made the same decision I have about leaving the spider be -- although, being a rural mail carrier, a spider is probably the least thing Mark has seen living in a mailbox.

It has been an especially buggy spring. I know I've complained about it in an earlier post so I won't do that again. However, the situation has been much improved since I sprayed the entire yard. It took four bottles of Spectracide. I like the kind that has the hose-end connection, makes it easier -- no mixing or temperamental sprayer to bother with. You just screw on the bottle and you're ready to spray. As I sprayed I saw a gazillion tiny grasshoppers leaping. I'm glad I got them before they grew and ate up the plants in the garden. I tried to avoid any butterflies, but I'm sure a couple got in the way of the spray. Can't be selective. I worked early while it was still cool, over a period of three mornings. It takes a while to spray an acre and a half, which is as far as the garden hoses will reach. The front two acres I left to harbor as many bugs, butterflies, grasshoppers as it wants. The Front Forty. The North Forty. The Pasture. We call that part of this place by all of those names.

As I sprayed, I never saw any bees but I'm certain we have them here. I guess we're lucky. They say the bees are disappearing, and I know that's true. When my ex and I had our nursery, in the mid-1980s, bees were everywhere. Millions of them. A nursery is by its nature a wet place. The watering systems are the blood and life-force of a nursery, and because of this, a gravel base is a must in a nursery, otherwise you would be slogging through mud all day long as you work. This base of wet gravel was apparently heaven for a honey bee. They would hover by the thousands, buzzing over the wet, gathering the moisture to help make their nectar. Once I walked through a particularly puddley, gravelly spot in my flip flops and flipped a hovering bee between my foot and the sole of my flops. I killed the little fellow, but not before he stung the fire out of the soft skin between my toes. It taught me to be more careful walking through the bees' heaven. I also found a better pair of shoes to wear as I worked. Our nearest neighbor, the beekeeper, always kept us in the honey he said by rights was half ours anyway.

Yesterday, I had lunch with Daddy. Afterwards, we walked through his vegetable garden. He showed me how he pollinates his cucumbers, since he has no bees to do the work. He plucked an almost wilted flower, and touched the center of the flower to each of the other flowers on his three vines. Since Daddy works in raised planters, all at chest level, I could plainly see each of the tiny cucumbers behind some of the dead flowers. When I got home I was fully prepared to likewise pollinate my cuke blooms. But lo and behold, there were already teeny little cucumbers behind the wilted flowers on my vines. This is the reason I believe in the bees. I admit that I haven't seen many this year. One year, when it was as dry as it has been this year, we had hundreds of bees in and around the hot tub. There have been no hot-tubbin' bees this year, but they have been at work when I wasn't looking, pollinating my cucumber blooms. Thank you very much, bees.

Onward ....

The Soul of a Garden

"... the fields of the farm were the body, the house the head and the gardens the soul, and she would go out each morning after chores and breakfast, before dishes and day work, and walk through the rows with a cup of steaming coffee held with both hands and talk to the garden -- not wasted talk, not silly talk, but talk as she would speak to another person." --- Gary Paulsen, from  CLABBERED DIRT, SWEET GRASS


I believe I would have made a good farm woman. I love to grow things. I don't mind the work, don't even consider it work. I love to cook, especially love to cook things I've grown in my garden. I like a clean house, and enjoy tending to my two silly animals. I like a routine. I think I would have made a good farm woman, but I think I would have probably balked at the lack of money that went with it, even though I do know how to pinch a penny, I'm not especially fond of it. So for this "city girl," it's fun to make a garden. It's a hobby, but my table doesn't depend on it.

My paternal grandmother was said to have been a good farm woman. In fact, family legend is that she was the true farmer and my grandfather just went along with it for lack of a better idea. He was a blacksmith at a time in history when blacksmithing was a dying art. He fell for my granny and because she came from farming stock, he farmed along with her. There are stories of her tending the animals, driving the harvest wagon, killing the chickens, milking the cow, saving the seed from year to year. On the other hand, my grandfather would take to his bed whenever there was a crop failure, and stay there until he was coaxed back out into the fields by my granny.

I didn't know this set of grandparents. Grandpa died before my parents were even married. Granny died when I was 18 months old, but I have letters she wrote, and know enough from these letters to realize that she was from another time if not another place. Born in the late 1880s, she was tough and hardworking, but also gregarious and funny. Her letters are pure joy to read, even now, and I can imagine that they were looked forward to by their recipients.

She loved her family, her home, the land, the crops, the animals, and her garden. She speaks often in these letters of things that were growing in her kitchen garden. She made plans for what she would use the various food crops for, soups and stews, salad and baked goods. She never seemed to consider that the things she planted might not grow, and she never spoke of anything that didn't make well. Mother used to say Granny could poke a stick in the ground and it would make a tree. She had planted all the shrubbery that grew around the house where we lived until I was 13 years old. I didn't know the names of the shrubs then the way I do now, but I was told that Granny brought them from her house, grown in tin cans from cuttings she had taken. She planted them, still in the tins with the bottoms cut out, between the windows and beside the doors.

There were a couple of watermelon pink crepe myrtle, and at least one rose of sharon, a pyracantha bush by the front door that bloomed sweet in summer but attracted so many bees we had to use the back door until the blooming quit. And there was a huge bougainvillea in the side yard, with dark pink blossoms all spring, summer and fall. The side yard was off limits to us barefoot kids because of that bougainvillea and the long thorns it dropped in the grass. I don't know if Granny was also responsible for the mimosa tree in the back yard, or the huge china berries we climbed when Mama and Daddy weren't looking, but those too are old-fashioned trees that nobody messes with much these days. Most of these bushes and trees are still growing there. I saw them a few months back when I took my grandson by the old place to look at the footprints I left in the concrete driveway back in the 1950s when it was fresh-poured, tiny footprints -- I think I was five years old.

My garden is growing. Some things are doing better than others. The white squash seed from last year have been a failure, but the new seed Daddy bought at Tractor Supply are flourishing. The cucumbers are in full bloom and I'm watching for the first fruit. The beefy tomato plants are ahead of the others, and I will stake them this morning. I watered late yesterday to soften the ground for the stakes. As an experiment, I planted six tomatoes in containers, just to see if this controlled environment will yield more than the ones in the garden. The plants in the containers look better; they're twice the size of the ones planted in the ground, but we shall see if they produce better. They may be all flash and no substance. Peppers are still in the greenhouse. Until these cool mornings quit, they won't be of a size to transplant. I have three kinds of peppers, and the green bell seem to be the slowest. I don't talk to my garden plants, but maybe I should try it. It certainly couldn't hurt. I think I'll start today and report back later if a garden truly does have a soul.

Onward ....

Attack of the Green Dangle Worms

We're under attack here by wiggly green worms. They're literally everywhere. It started late last week, and has gotten worse by the day. Overnight, hundreds of thousands of them seem to have appeared. They hang by silk threads from the oak trees and wiggle down to the ground where they turn into God knows what! When we come inside we have to pick them off of each other, and somehow or another, they still manage to get all over the house anyway. Worm poop covers the driveway, and more noticeably, the hot tub lid. In order to sit outside right now, you'd need a hermetically sealed suit, boots, and a diving helmet. An unfortunate development, since we're having some of the best weather we'll have in Texas all year. 

Yesterday, I called the county extension agent to find out what in hell these worms are. He said they're oak leaf rollers, that they're here every year, but that for some reason this year they've had an abundant hatch. Great! We've got 80-plus oak trees, so no wonder we're overrun with the devils. I thought the really cold weather we had this winter was supposed to kill off insects! Anyway, they're supposed to be gone in about a month, so says the extension agent, and there's not much we can do but wait it out. I hope I can stand it for another three weeks!

Had lunch with one of my best friends yesterday. We always have a million things to catch up on, and ended up chattering back and forth for over two hours. I took her one of the tomato plants -- should've have taken her at least two. She was delighted to get it, but I'm still overloaded with plants. I think every seed made two this year. We had the family reunion last Saturday and I took about 30 plants with us. Got rid of every single one of them, but I still have dozens more. I need to go out and take a serious inventory -- if I can put up with the damned worms long enough. Thankfully, the garden does not sit beneath an oak tree, so -- fingers crossed -- so far no dangling worm damage there. They have eaten up one of the rose bushes in a big pot by the front door. 

I find myself reading three books at once -- again. I had vowed to stop doing that, since it makes it hard to finish one all the way through. Never used to have trouble finishing books. Now, I find so often that they just don't hold my interest enough and I go off in search of the illusive page-turner. I just remembered, I'm listening to a book on CD in the car, too, so I guess that's four books at once to keep sorted out in this pea-brain of mine. 

I have BRILLIANT: The Evolution of Artificial Light by Jane Brox on my Kindle. It's absolutely fascinating as a historical work, and at times, I can't put it down, but once I do finally "put it down," I don't pick it back up again for days. In my car stereo is A SEPARATE COUNTRY: A Story of Redemption in the Aftermath of the Civil War by Robert Hicks. I started listening to this book on the way back from New Mexico late last month. On a long trip (this one is 850 miles one-way) an audio book can be just the ticket. It can also put you to sleep. This book has been guilty of both. At the Coast, I started ELIZABETH I by Anne Somerset. It's not only an exhaustive biography of the queen, warts and all, but it's also exhausting at times for the reader. Finally, a great little hardcover book, CLABBERED DIRT, SWEET GRASS by Gary Paulsen, sits on my nightstand. I've read several of Paulsen's book and always find his work engaging and excellent.

Nothing with my own writing, but I'll save that for another day.

Onward ....