A few years ago I collected a second haul of mulch from the TreeCycle, and unlike the year before it was a bad mulch: huge chunks of wood and some whole branches and lots of needles. I piled it at one end of the vegetable garden and ignored it for four years, until today. Today I sifted lovely loam from huge chunks of wood, added the loam to the lasagne mulch still in progress, and cleared that end of the garden. Without a pile of something to deprive it of light and air, that ground will be overtaken by weeds, I know.
So I moved the leaf pile. This has been in kind of a corner of the backyard, blocking access to the so-called dog run between the garage and the fence. If we get a dog, its latrine will be in that area, and now the hypothetical dog can get there without clambering over a tarped pile of leaves. I spread a tarp under one side and raked part of the pile on that and hauled it aside and did the same with a second tarp. Now the main pile was small enough to haul.
Also I watered all the trees except the ash and partly remulched the front gardens. The north half isn't mature enough not to have mulch between plants; the south half is if I can keep up with the bindweed.
Plus I finally put the cover on the swamp cooler, excellent timing since it's unlikely to get cold again at all, let alone the uncovered cold of December.
A good day.
Honestly, we do have better reason to renovate the bathroom than only the leaking of the sink (whose fix requires a new faucet, not just a new washer) and the flickering of one fluorescent bulb. There's the absence of the storage and, most important, of a tub. I have found the single best reason, trumping even the tub, and I found it in an advertisement in 5280 for Carpet Exchange. The caption is "When it comes to an incredible selection of flooring materials, carpet is just the tip of the iceberg" and the illustration is a mosaic of marble and granite forming two penguins on an iceberg.
Flooring is the only aspect of Formigny's permanent decor that should be patterned, and we do want to replace the hideous linoeleum with tile. Instead of the train station-looking black and white ceramic hexagons we've been assuming, why not equally black and white but more interesting penguins? Mr. Killjoy was unmoved. He correctly pointed out that I do not actually want to tromp on penguins. This means he probably won't want magpies or badgers either. Foiled again.
Midweek, RDC suggested we have happy hour on Friday, and we did, just for the neighbors. RDC stocked the bar and could make martinis, margaritas, and manhattans, plus he bought little plastic mermaids to adorn the edges of the highball glasses. He claimed he could make any drink beginning with m or adorned by m, but I stumped him with milkshakes (my usual) or mojitos, which I was proud of myself for remembering. I had the dining and living rooms ready, but it was so lovely and warm we crowded onto the porch for a long time before reaching maximum density and processing into the back yard.
The drinking succeeded so well a lot more people stayed for eating than we expected. After the toddlers left (one had to be pried away from the buddy cage), we lit the fire pit and sat around it without s'mores, talking for a long while.
And so we didn't get up Saturday until 10 or out the door until 11. But then we worked.
We cleaned out the coal cellar, furnace room, and garage. Lots of boxes to be broken down for recycling. The extra cabinet doors we have (I don't remember why) are now in the garage rafters; lots of stuff that's accumulated inside the garage perimeter is gone; the floor endured its annual sweep. I must remember to call for a hazardous waste pickup: there are a dozen paint cans from as long as six years ago, plus the garage emitted up a vinyl treatment for the Terrapin, especially ridiculous since Cassidy had replaced the Terrapin the year before we bought the house.
The fill on the north side of the house is so clay-ey that nothing is growing under the eaves after two years where there's not groundcloth (the front half). The bishop's weed has spread abundantly along the length of the house from where I planted it down to the property line but ceasing its houseward growth abruptly under the eaves' dripline. (It is not a gossiping plant, apparently). So I exposed the same two feet against the house for the length of the back half in hopes it will remain equally weedless, and, for planting, exposed a swath of earth another five feet toward the back fence. I transplanted a bunch of bishop's weed from the back yard to that spot: tricky, because it's all one plant and hard to separate, and also I hope I didn't mess up the drainage slope. Then I transplanted some vinca from the south easement to the north (I have work up the story about Babushka's daughter).
Also I oiled the patio chairs; they drank it up. Also I washed and line-dried and ironed and re-hung the curtains. Also RDC plumbed the evaporative cooler and I uncovered it (and forgot how to move from roof to ladder: a few scary moments there). From the roof I saw that we are the first household of the half-dozen with such rooftop devices to do so. Also RDC made us new screens for the front and back door. Also he installed new lights over the workbench in the basement and in his new workshop (previously known as the garage). Also I amended one vegetable garden with peat moss and manure, emptying the garden box, barrowing a few cubic feet to some low spots in the yard, blending in the amendments, shoveling it all back in; that was today, and that was enough. After that I might have slept a bit with The Piano Tuner and a tucked buddy, and in the late afternoon we had a tremendous hail storm. Hail spring.
Background: Lots of bungalows were built with a pantry feature I've heard called a "California cooler." It's a closet on the exterior wall with two screened apertures at top and bottom, through the exterior wall to the outside, and the shelves ("Shelves in a closet! Happy thought!") are slatted for air circulation.
When I returned from grocery-shopping today, I called my parents to confirm their arrival time. I was on the phone with my notstepmother when I opened the pantry door and saw the nearly new tin of cocoa powder spilled on the floor. I had just made cookies the night before and figured I hadn't set the tin squarely on the shelf. A few minutes later, when my notstepmother had handed the phone off to my father, I wandered back into the kitchen and looked at the spill more closely: the plastic lid hadn't burst off on impact but had been chewed through. I got off the phone fast.
First, was the squirrel still in the house? The absence of little chocolate footprints leading away from the scene of the crime let me hope not. Plus, the door was closed, though not on the latch. The powder was all over the pantry floor, but not much on the kitchen floor. That was good.
I called Scarf and Drums, asking to borrow Mia, and when I got to their house, Drums came back with me, Mia, and a squirrel cage. Mia assessed the house and found it free of rodents, and then the three of us went outside where Drums and I measured the lower aperture. I set up the extension ladder while he and the dog went home to cut a square of wood cut exactly the right size, and he even screwed it into place with a drill.
So as squirrel attacks go, it wasn't bad. I should have realized a squirrel was burrowing into the house, because over the few weeks before, I had noticed a lot of dirt on the containers on the top shelf. I noticed that the canvas or whatever material someone had used to close the opening (once only screened) was bent or torn, but even that didn't activate the squirrel-light in my brain. If I hadn't been able to borrow a carpenter as well as a dog, I would have filled the tunnel with bricks (the exterior wall is two sailor-bricks wide, but the aperture isn't stretcher-brick wide) to protect the house (do squirrels eat cockatiels? threaten cockatiels? mock their manliness or in any way mar their happiness?) while I scurried off to buy my own bit of wood. Then I would have wondered if I might affix the wood to the wooden trim of the aperture without first painting it white (like the rest of the house's trim) and without the approval of the house foreman (despite his absence from the country). Plus I would have nailed it crooked rather than screwed in on straight.
As it was, I emptied the entire pantry of food and shelves, ditched all the open food--it had chewed into the cannister of oats as well--ran all the containers (the floor is Tupperware territory) through the dishwasher (cocoa powder and possible squirrel pee), and still made it to the party I was aiming for. The bottom aperture already has a wooden cover, and both need to be sealed on both inside and outside, and maybe with alumninum in addition to plywood.
And I shouldn't say "it." I am sure it was the little female who regularly perches on the dining room windowsill and peeps into the house in a brazenly cute way: first, because she's evidently fearless; and second, because the first food she attacked was not the oats in their more vulnerable cardboard canister but the redolently tempting tin of Ghirardelli cocoa powder with its plastic lid.
I emptied the newer raised bed of its soil and put it back in, amending as I went. It's the same "planter's mix" from Pioneer Sand and Gravel but it is so much more clay-y than the first bed's. It's hardpan, and I don't think two bales of peat moss and a couple of bags each of compost and aged manure are enough amendment. I do not relish repeating the task, soon or next year or ever, not unless I develop some core strength. My back is shredded, despite lifting with legs.
I didn't quite finish the job. Some chunks of clay-cement I dumped along the fence under the downspout in stupid hopes of run-off or fill. The fact is that this dirt has no place on my property and the only place I can remove it to is the garbage. Unless I illegally heap it in the alley with a sign saying "free fill" and a deluded soul takes it. But by 5 o'clock I was done and didn't tackle that problem.
I did make dinner though. After AEK and I saw "Transamerica" a couple of months ago, she made a crab chowder whose recipe she got from Southwest magazine (the southwest being so well-known for its crab and its chowder). My notstepmother told me last week that I am a good cook, which amused me because she was not privy to the pre-arrival menu-planning, stressing, and preparation, and because I didn't make a single dinner over their three nights; plus, sometime later when she described her recipe for macaroni and cheese and without irony or embarrassment mentioned Spam as an ingredient, any praise I had felt was canceled. But I had never made this chowder before, only watched AEK make it, and even my heating marinara sauce and boiling pasta is liable to be criticized by the actual cook, so I was nervous. RDC admitted liking it! which made me happy, until a while later when he suspected the crab hadn't sat well with him (a hypothesis he tested again with the leftover crab as crab salad the next day). But he figured it was the crab's fault, not mine.
UConn's library, Homer, didn't fall over into the swamp, but its face did fall off. Precipitation leaked behind the brick facade, froze, and popped bricks right off. From 1987 to 1995 the building was swathed in plastic to protect passersby before eventual correction. Snopes says no architect ever did forget to account for books in the weight of a structure--though it does say that Homer's floors are sagging. As are Formigny's.
RDC observed, or at least suspects, that the house continues to settle: has the dining room floor sunk, or was there always that much space between the oak planking and the floor molding? does the porch roof continue to pull away from the house? Are those two bookcases with 42 feet of shelving altogether compressing the flooring? The answer to the last is yes. So this weekend I emptied them and brought the books downstairs, where they can weigh on the cement foundation as heavily as they like.
In August, I bought a larger bookcase for the nonfiction. The 36x36x12 bookcase that that displaced has been in a corner behind the closet door and held only Ann Lauterbach and D.H. Lawrence so far. One of the upstairs bookcases could fit there, 84x36x12, the only spot in the basement with high enough ceilings--my study is sunken but still has walled-in ducts in some bits. I removed one of the shelves from the standard-and-bracket ones we installed on the wall to the right of my desk and from beneath them removed the little chest of drawers and the little bookcase, so the shorter bookcase now fit in their spot; and I added its last shelf to another case (a step I avoided because it results in two short shelves).
Neither of us has used the NordicTrack or Total Gym in ages. The latter has been collapsed and away at least half of those ages, and the skier merely collects dust. RDC says he can't imagine our not belonging to a gym, and so they're both going to go live on the farm. The skier's absence frees the west back wall for two pieces of furniture from the sunroom, where RDC has begun to build the breakfast nook--the gateleg table and the cookbookcase.
The table in the den has been pieces of board left over from building the drawers in my closet (under the hanging shirts) supported on two crates. I removed one crate and one board and put the little chest of drawers in its place with the little bookcase on top.
So much for arrangement of furniture: now to arrange the books. Forty-two feet of shelving, but once all the books were downstairs, only about 35' of books, into 30 additional feet of cases.
The standard-and-bracket shelves by my desk had had a shelf each for writing books, favorite authors, favorites, and kids' books in pulp, and the little bookcase had had my reference books. I purged some reference books--I don't need the Merriam-Webster dictionaries of law and etymology at my fingertips--and some writing books--Annie Dillard and Sue Hubbell could join general fiction--and the favorite authors--Atwood and Byatt, except for Possession, also could join general fiction. Reference and writing merged, favorites (including Possession) remained, and bracket height dictated that pulp books remain as well.
Some of RDC's particularly favorite fiction--DeLillo, Hemingway, Kerouac, Tim O'Brien, Pynchon, Gary Snyder--had been upstairs but the bulk was cultural, literary, and information theory. Fiction would be easier to categorize than nonfiction, as well as beginning at the far left of the available shelf space. It all had to come down, case by case, beginning with A for Atwood. I emptied the first case, Edwin Abbott to F. Scott Fitzgerald, and filled it again, Abbott to Don DeLillo. I emptied the second, Penelope Fitzgerald to Wally Lamb, and filled it again, Dickens to Ken Kesey. From there to the end of the alphabet was faster because I didn't have to empty before filling. Fiction now ends on the second shelf of the second case, with the fixed third shelf of impractical height holding a Riverside Chaucer and one Riverside Shakespeare and one Pelican, and Shakespearean and Chaucerian criticism. The third case is all fixed shelves, but only the top one is a silly height, at slightly less than trade. It had held my Penguin medieval and Renaissance collection, but now the pulp-sized Penguin is on the pulp-sized shelf and the trade-size is at the end of general fiction (I'll work the latter into general fiction but I forgot during the main project) but now it holds whatever nonfiction is short enough to fit. I dislike arranging books by height, but so it goes. Other than first three feet of short books to hand, I kept some groupings--women's studies, history, cultural studies--but otherwise arranged the non-facetious non-fiction alphabetically by author or editor. Not by LOC, because RDC prefers to go by author and because I am not going so far as to label the books. Yet. Facetious non-fiction--Cynthia Heimel, Uppity Women of Medieval Times, Al Franken--and a slew of Norton anthologies end the hoard.
Cullings: Tom Sawyer and Life on the Mississippi in pulp, since we have them in a Twain collection, vast but more readable than pulp. A duplicate collected Yates. One Riverside Chaucer. Ellen Tebbits, even though it was a gift, because it is not a Beverly Clearly I grew up with. James Howe's The Watcher. Yellowed pulp versions of texts that are readily available online, like Malthus and Veblen. Pulp Dreiser, since neither of us will ever read him again for pleasure and Sister Carrie, though not An American Tragedy, is available through Project Gutenberg. Learn Downhill Skiing in a Weekend.
Next, the cookbookcase will leave its temporary quarters in the bedroom for the den. Because we digitized the music collection, the CDs don't need to be easily accessible. Cramming rather than shelving them will free up space for how-to books in the television shrine, and eventually the sunroom will take back the cookbooks--another whole new bookcase! And then I will have to go on methadone. Or we'll have to decide that we don't need two different editions of the two-volume Norton collection of American literature, or perhaps not the one-volume version at all.
Instead of swimming another 1000 meters, I lay in the shallow water of the wide steps into the lap pool with my new book (The Quincunx) on the deck and read a chapter.
Lord, what a heavenly day. No hotter than 80 after a smidge of rain Friday night.
Home again, I attacked the baobab trees in the backyard--the cherry sprouts and insidious sumac--that had threatened to split my small planet asunder in the week of my absence. I discovered that two of the pumpkin hills I planted did sprout and removed their competition (cherry sprouts and bindweed), and I rubbed the needles off the branches of the Yule tree to add to the compost. (I donated only the trunk and major limbs to TreeCycle.)
Then I ate raspberries straight off the cane. Also I read on the porch swing for a spell.
A surviving sunflower. The other weekend I brushed a guinea pig-sized pile of fur off Mia and stuck clumps of it in the cleavages of leaves to stalk of this surviving sunflower. The other one--only two of these seeds sprouted--squirrels toppled when they decapitated its newborn flower, this despite my carefully choosing non-seeding varieties. I guess the flowers still taste good, or--here's a thought--maybe the squirrels are just malevolent vermin.
A few weeks ago I trundled the wheelbarrow out front to bring 80 pounds of birdseed and six breadbox-sized bags of coffee grounds from Starbucks to the back. I didn't notice until I tried to wheel it away that the tire was flat, and a wheelbarrow tire has no tube, and when you mash a flat tire against its axle, it comes off its axel. And though bike tools will enable you to shove the tire back over its rim even without spokes to lock the thingies against, a bike pump is not sufficient to the task.
RDC was at a point between coats of paint on the breakfast nook and took it to a gas station, bless him. I'd still be out there with the pump. Also he aligned some bolts better and oiled it, necessary maintenance it would never occur to me to do.
I trimmed the vinca, which grew out over the sidewalk during the summer, so that in case it snows ever this winter, it won't become an ice nest, and barrowed it to the leaf pile. Plus I barrowed the huge pots on the porch columns back to the compost bins. After that the wheelbarrow could rest. I harvested the last of the chili peppers and a spaghetti squash, two cucumbers, a zucchini, and a mound of carrots.
RDC chastised me Saturday morning for fingerprinting chocolate on the pantry door, and I, the not-colorblind one, cleaned off the streak of basil, glad that glossy latex paint does not stain as readily as do fingernails and wooden spoons and the plastic bits of the food processor, and gladder that with RDC away all last week, I was able to harvest and process the basil without him to freak at the kitchen in the meantime. I had the damn Birnham wood in there with me, and did I think to hose it all over before I brought it inside? I did not. But the kitchen smelled great and I froze pesto in convenient ice cube-sized portions.
The next huge thing will be rendering all the carrots into soup.
Anyway, the garden's mostly out. I left the tomato plants for now, in hopes the squirrels do not eat all the green tomatoes currently on the vine--in vain hopes, since I found at least four victims strewn hither and yon. The other victim was my pumpkin. I am considering bringing it to a Halloween party later this month, because I find squirrels pretty scary at this point. But I figure the shorties will not find rotting pumpkin other than smelly and I agree with them enough that it just belongs in the compost.
Today I changed the windows, or most of them. Early, since it's not Standard Time yet, but we've wanted the heat on a few times and all next weekend I'm in class to get certified to scuba dive and the weekend after that, the usual weekend, will be too late. Only two sides of the house, the long sides, but the living room I can do from the porch and the back has only four that I need the ladder for. It was more important to swim.
This morning was sunnier and warmer than it is now at 3:30. Waiting for the firewood, I started cleaning out the gutters and RDC riveted a fallen drainpipe back into place. The wood guy pitched logs from his truckbed into the backyard, which meant no hurry to stack the wood, unlike last time when the deliverer tipped it into the alley. I left RDC to that and continued with the gutters.
I had neglected the gutters for so long--four years? maybe longer--that leaves had decayed into dirt. Also, the bit below the chimney was full of mortar dust and other detritus from the tuckpointing, which was in 2003, I think. Plus I think I had never before touched the garage's at all, and those were packed solid. It was at this point that the metaphor of impaction made its unwelcome appearance in my mind. When I shoved the hose down a bent drainpipe and watched from the roof as a clog of leaves and rot churned from the spout, I was extremely glad that this was the last gutter enema.
While on the roof with the hose, I drained the swamp cooler and rinsed out of it a season's worth of muck (air pollution, strands from the filters, melted mineral block, minor ecosystems). RDC tossed its oiled canvas cover up to me and I snugged it up tight for winter. I wonder if I can find one of those covers with a magneted perimeter to fit over the vent in the hallway. Plus I want to round up the neighbors for a bee to take out the window unit. It's not so very very heavy but it's a cube three feet on a side and awkward and directly above the gas and water intakes.
So we're winterized: wood stacked, birdseed stocked, furnace filter replaced, storms up, winter curtains and wardrobe up, hoses disconnected and coiled, and even Blake is mostly over his fall moult and should have lots of new down to keep him cozy. Right now he's shredding pages from magazines, so even though there's no snow we have a dusting of white flake to beckon in the season.
I've been dealing with fiddly little projects that I've put off a long time, and this is just talking to myself.
I'd been meaning to tidy up the furnace room when RDC said he wanted to get a tarp to lay on the decaying floor to protect all our gear from the From Beneath You It Devours. That struck me as too much like the former owner's bathmat that failed to serve as a doormat between the gritty furnace room and the finished basement. I suggested the leftover matting from recovering the porch floor. It is porous and therefore only a stopgap but supposedly we are going to get the basement done Real Soon Now. So I emptied the furnace room of gear--biking, kayaking, hiking, fly-fishing, diving, backpacking, snowshoeing, picnicking, and car-camping supplies for two--plus the large preservation box for my wedding dress, three copyboxes of whatever, a box of summer curtains, and a shopvac, tumbled the carpeting out of the garage rafters and spread it on the floor, and put everything back. I need to pound a lot of nails into the walls; suspending sleeping bags and packs has got to be better for them than heaping them in a corner.
Before family arrive on Saturday I have to do annoying cleaning like vacuuming the dead bugs out of the ceiling light fixtures and hanging the couch on the clothesline to give it a good thrashing. And oiling the wood furniture. And tidying my study so it converts to a guest room.
Cleaning my study means putting souvenirs in my scrapbook and sorting correspondence, which is not going to happen in time. It means clearing out the closet as much as possible. Or not: I could shove the contents of the laundry closet--suitcases, wetsuits, snowsuits, and waders--into the furnace room so guests could use that closet. Yes, that's better, because the study closet rail is only 20" long and four feet from the door--it's mounted perpendicular in a long narrow closet whose door is at the other end--and I'd have to clear only the one closet instead of both. But clearing the closet has meant I've already boxed and sorted many of the Yule presents I've accumulated throughout the year.
Clearing my desk is another issue. Garden plans, materials for letter campaigns, photographs, clippings for my sister, print articles not yet available online homeless because I officially don't keep non-personal paper, and stockings in various stages of completion. One thing I could take care of was a tangle of tarnished silver jewelry, so I polished that. That's not really cleaning up, but I don't want to box up unfinished projects.
Finally I finished emptying my study. It's still full of bookcases, futon, and desk, but everything that can be elsewhere or away is. I admired the effect (all books on shelves instead of on other books and with spines aligned, an empty desk and clear floor) for a minute before unfolding the futon to shrink the room again. We're still using crates for books in one corner of the den, and I asked RDC if he remembered the shelves I asked for.
Theoretically I could make my own shelves, but a saw belongs to that category of Hot or Sharp Tools that I avoid. He has the measurements but hasn't taken the slip of paper along on supply runs. I said shelves would make a nice Yule present.
"So you're really asking for shelves and this isn't a disguised request for diamonds," he said.
"C'mon, last year you gave me a stump. I like wood." Last year he brought from Australia a hollowed emu egg etched with a cockatoo (not an emu), and it lived on its side for months until, at a woodshop, he found an interesting gnarl of manzanita and shaped and finished it as a egg-stand.
Adding three shelves to the two bookcases that can fit them is not going to be enough, especially since I have no plans to stop bogarting the bookage. Books' dense weight threatens the main floor, which is why we removed the two cases from RDC's study this spring.
Everyone else and I in the neighborhood raked our yards today. Mine is an easy one in fall, since I leave most of the leaves in the gardens as protection for the plants against cold and sun for the winter. But I groomed the front a bit and raked the side yard under the nectarine and pear trees. Most of last year's leaf pile has rotted into satisfying dirt, so I removed the groundcloth from the area whose grass and bindweed I'm trying to smother, rake the leaf mold over that, and dragged the tarp full of this year's leaves over it. I took out the tomato plants and cages and the bean trellises, covered the gardens with groundcloth, tossed a length over the woodpile, and omitted to sweep the walk or vacuum the porch since AEK called about our Tattered Cover date.
She wanted to go while the sun was out, and I, not done, suggested our being together as some safety against human dangers, but she countered that safety in numbers is no protection against sunless cold. Besides, this way I could stop. So I hosed off and off we trotted.
I gave my mother-in-law All Families Are Psychotic almost three years ago and she has been asking since for similar books. I finally found one in Mark Haddon's A Spot of Bother. I found that but not Paula Fox's The Slave Dancer, which is next up for reading to RDC--King of the Wind is pretty young. AEK will travel to family for Thanksgiving and chose some picture books for the younger nephew and chapter books for the older--Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle and, on my suggestion, Bunnicula, though tragically not Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. I also suggested Because of Winn-Dixie; if a seven-year-old can manage Mrs. Frisby he can manage Winn-Dixie as well. But she had already bought enough.