Clarity

Just to be clear, it is important to keep a clear focus right now, to be outraged about the big things that are being covered up by the little things we are being invited to be outraged about instead.

Passion

I have spent three days clearing passion vine from the side flower bed. I have stopped invasive passion vine before, but it was the native variety in a sandy/shady bed. This time I am dealing with two hybrids in a sandy/clay bed with pretty good light. I know I will be pulling up sprouts and roots for several months. But I hope that this assault during dry weather in the early winter will discourage the roots that I didn't dig up.

In the spring I will get some native passion vine and plant it in a large clay pot next to a trellis. I've got to have some food in the garden for those fritillaries and longwings caterpillars.

I wish I could clear the invasive hybrid vines from our political scene, but that will take longer even than clearing the garden.

It's all over but the painting

The new pipes are laid and the water is flowing. The holes in the wall are patched. Time to paint. The kitten already has exhibited a fascination with plastic bags, so laying down plastic drop cloths is entertaining. If I could afford canvas clothes, I would. Then he could burrow under them to his heart's content.

Togetherness

Thursday and Friday last week, the four cats spent the day together in the master bedroom upstairs. They came out of it getting along a little better. On Friday, it was clear they had a play date in the closet. Laundry was pulled out of the closet and things were knocked off my crowded dresser. The stick was out of the track and the door ajar just a few inches, enough for a cat to get in.

The reason for the days of togetherness was contractors coming in and out of the house. It's better if the cats just hunker down in the upstairs bedroom. The contractors were a plumber, a leak detector, and a restoration expert with moisture detecting equipment. We have a massive failure of the water pipes that were laid into the foundation when the house was built. The pipe bringing water to the kitchen sink failed in Bob's office, the room where pipes in the walls and ceiling have failed before. This time it's under the floor. Monday afternoon I noticed a strange noise around the water heater. Tuesday afternoon it was louder and seemed to be coming up through the kitchen sink as well. Wednesday morning on the way to work I called the plumber. In the afternoon when I got home I called him again. He couldn't get to the house but he led me through a series of experiments and investigations and concluded that we have a foundation leak.

I turned off the water supply at the street and shut off the circuit breaker to the water heater. Thursday the plumber came by to take a look and the leak detector listened with special equipment until he found the leak. Friday the restoration expert confirmed that the leak didn't appear to have sent water up into the house but down into the ground. That guess seems confirmed by the saturated ground on the north side of the house.

We have been turning the water and the heater on only long enough to take showers and fill up buckets and pitchers. Yesterday I filled up both sides of the sink and washed the week's accumulated dishes and we started using paper plates. We are camping in the house.

The cats are coping pretty well with the paper plates, but it was comical the first time. Because the paper plates are lightweight, they scoot across the floor faster than the stoneware plates the cats are used to dining on. At dinner time Nick and Bonnie's plates went around each other like bumper cars, with the cats licking furiously at their food all the time. Daisy's plate went over the top of the carpeted cat barrel she eats on, like a tub over the edge of Niagara Falls. This morning Bob put their breakfast plates against the baseboard so they wouldn't have so much chasing to do.

The cats are probably facing at least one more week of togetherness in the upstairs bedroom, maybe more. Tomorrow, the plumber will give us an estimate on repiping through the walls, which all of the professionals agree is the best option. The pipes have reached the end of their lifespan, twenty-eight years. It would be nice if they could have made it another year or two, but they plumb gave out. We could tear up the floor and repair the broken pipe only to have it break again in another place five minutes later and tear the floor up again. The short term fix makes no sense from any angle.

Cat smarts

I did not witness this. My husband told me about it over breakfast. At bedtime, Bonnie was on the cat tower in its new popular location. My husband closed the curtains and Bonnie wanted them open. She couldn't find the opening in the folds to part them, so she jumped up on the curtain rod and separated them from the top, just a few inches so she could see out. Then she hopped back down and returned to her nap.

All of the cats know what door handles do and sink faucets too. Thankfully they haven't figured out how to turn any of them. I once knew a dog that could open the refrigerator. Mack knows how to bite an opening in a bag of treats, so now the treats live in Tupperware containers. We had to replace the bathroom trash cans with metal ones that have lids because Daisy liked to pull things out of the open ones. Our bedroom closet has sliding doors, and we have to keep a stick in the track to keep the cats out. Daisy knows how the remove the stick. Her favorite time to do it is while we are trying to fall asleep. Or in the middle of the night. On one occasion, she forced open the bedroom door by jiggling it from underneath until the latch popped out of the face plate. And when we adopted Bonnie, it was Daisy who muscled aside a gate with twelve pounds of lead weights holding it down, in order to get to Bonnie's bowl of kibble. Daisy weighs only eight pounds herself. So that was the end of Bonnie's safe room, which lasted all of half a day. So our house is only somewhat cat proof. They are clever and good observers and have lots of time to figure things out.

Beware the Ides of August

I spoke too soon, and too confidently, two days ago. On the day before the Ides of August, I spent the morning in the garden. A bad guy patrol for invasive and weeds, mowing the grass, raking the driveway, and pruning two tea olives in front of the house.

On the 15th, Monday, the first day back for students in our county, I was sitting on the sun porch celebrating the successful completion of the first day of teaching for the year, and then I looked up in the back yard. I did not like what I saw. I got out the binoculars. No doubting it. Skunk vine over ten feet up a pine tree. Native clematis, smilax, grapevine, too, but also unmistakably mixed in was skunk vine, blooming.

When I got home today it started to rain and it was too dark to see in the woods back there, so my plan to at least cut the vines and clean up the roots later will have to wait another day.

Ides of August

Summer break is ending. The yard looks a lot better than it did eight weeks ago, and I have greeted the yard waste workers several times with cold bottles of Gatorade. The big push for pruning branches and hand-pulling weeds and vines is done. I still have one patch of English ivy in the front, but the skunk vine is now under control all over the yard. I have been pulling up seedlings in the woods and remaining roots wherever new leaves appear. But there are no vines growing up into the trees, no flowers waiting to drop seeds onto the ground, and very few roots running across the ground looking for another tree to climb. I will always have to patrol vigilantly. The roots sometimes lie dormant for months before sprouting.

There is only one big problem area left. Around the base of two pine trees growing side by side, wild grapevines have coiled and thrived, growing more than thirty feet up the pine tree. The vines are as much a three inches in diameter at the base. The problem is that skunk vine has set down significant four-pronged roots under and among the grapevine coils. Thick layers of pine needles have fallen all around this dragon-like tangle of vines and it is hard to penetrate under the massive grapevine coils. I pulled as much as I could but I couldn't get every root, and so tendrils are coming out with the two weeks of rain we have had. As a stop gap, I can keep them from making it up the tree, but I still have to get those roots out from under there. How to do that? There are two equally time-consuming options. I can try to remove the pine needles and lift the grape vines and pull the knuckles of skunk vine root buried under the tangle. I didn't have much luck with that approach before. I can cut through the coils of grape vine, clear out the pine needles, and have a clearer shot at the skunk vine roots. I can try the first method and hope it works before I resort to the most drastic option.

If I have to cut the grapevine, I know it will grow back quickly. There are sprouts all through the woods and today I noticed some grapes had fallen to the ground.

Sunny spot

I should move the cat towers around more often. The new real estate prompts a flurry of activity: scampering, scratching, rolling, and chasing each other off. Most importantly, napping on the tower in the main bedroom is now happening on a regular basis. For years I have had the tower in the corner next to my side of the bed. The cats would get on it occasionally, but my goal of getting them to sleep on the tower instead of the bed was not achieved. Location, Bob said, it's in a corner, not in front of a window. Well, it was next to a window, but it wasn't the right window.  So I moved it to the big front window, where there is a good view of the front yard and the street and into the branches of the live oak tree. Now it is a premium (purrrremium) spot during the day. Nicky napped on the tower yesterday and right now Bonnie is there. Daisy is on the back of an armchair in a sunny window downstairs in the front room. Mack likes the small cat tower half way down the stairs. Nick likes the porch. They all shift around from time to time, and it seems the new location in the bedroom is a big success.

Yesterday was the longest day of the year. We are having a bit of cooler weather this week. Summer is when I have time to get a lot done in the garden. I have been leaving huge amounts of pruned branches, weeds, and vines at the curb for yard waste pickup. The compost pile can't handle it all. The men who pick up at the curb have been very good to me, taking everything I put out. I limit the amount of stacks and put everything else in containers, especially things with thorns and unruly vines. The branches in the stacks are all neatly trimmed to four feet or less.

Last weekend there was a big storm, and there was so much brush out on the curb all around the neighborhood that they didn't even get to my street for collection until the next day. Some people just got a little note, with the guidelines for curb pickup, if they had thrown their branches into a huge long messy pile. I was discussing this with someone who also does a lot of yard work, and he agreed it is important to package the brush neatly for the convenience of the men who collect it. He said he practically gets out the tape measure. If I am in the yard I wave and say "Thank you!" He said he takes cold bottles of Gatorade to them. Now that's a gesture of gratitude that means something to person working in the heat. Next time I was at the store, I purchased the drinks. So yesterday I was unloading the groceries from the car when the yard waste truck came down our street. I ran into the house, grabbed the Gatorade, and walked to the end of the driveway. I waited while they finished with the brush piles across the street, then gave them the drinks. The driver was nonchalant, looking a little surprised as he accepted the bottle and thanked me quietly. The man riding on the back of the truck gave a big grin and a big loud thank you. I'll try to do it again soon. There is so much to do, trimming up the lower branches of the bushes that have suddenly gotten really big, and pulling the last of the English ivy and other mess out of the front flowerbed.

Shopping trip-up

I made an additional quick trip to the grocery yesterday. I paid for my purchases and headed for the door. As I went to put the shopping basket back with the others, I noticed a nut bar still in it. That's odd, I thought, and I put it in my bag with the others. Heading out the door, I realized, wait a minute, if it's in the basket it didn't get rung up, and if it didn't get rung up, I just shoplifted it from the store, and I'm not comfortable with that, and they probably have security cameras. I could get arrested for stealing a nut bar.

I turned around and went back into the store and gave the nut bar to one of the store's assistant managers who was standing right inside the door, near the customer service desk. He happened to be a young man who had cheated on a vocabulary quiz in ninth grade and cried when I conferenced with him in private about the incident. We have greeted each other civilly several times in the store during the past few years. "This got left in my shopping basket, so it can go back on the shelf," I said. He smiled and gave a big nod and said, "I'll take care of it."

The arch trellis

I have written before about the arch trellis in the back yard behind the bird feeders. Last November, I dug up the Mermaid rose that had been growing beautifully on it for years. It just got too big, and the huge thorns were a problem. I moved two clematis roots from other parts of the yard, one on each side of the trellis. They grew well, happy to have more sunlight, and made it to the top of the trellis by midsummer. While the top of the arch was bare, the red tailed hawks and Coopers hawks perched there frequently. About a month ago, my husband said he would really like to have the Alachua red climber rose in a place where we could enjoy it. So I got two more red climbers from the nursery and we dug up the clematis, with some regret. The clematis had grown well and looked pretty until it got a bit scraggly. However, I admit the rose will bloom most of the year and be green through the winter, and it has very small thorns. So, back to having a rose on the trellis.

I considered moving the clematis roots to another part of the yard with other trellises, but it was just going to be too big a job. So I chopped them up (back by the compost heap, where the rest of the garden couldn't see what I was doing) and put them out on the curb with the rest of the yard waste for collection. They smelled of cinnamon at the heart of the root ball. I still have the two original clematis roots that came from my mother's garden, growing on another arch trellis in the front yard.

The main job this summer is finishing the clearing of the front flower bed by the driveway. The last patch has English ivy, smilax, Virginia creeper, and skunk vine. Then there is the invasive passion vine to deal with, and the continuing battle with invasive vines and ardisia in the woods. Things are a lot better back there, but there is still work to do.

A sight for sore eyes

Mack has all the classic traits of a Maine Coon tabby kitten. He is affectionate, loves to snuggle, plays vigorously with his toys, talks, purrs, and desperately wants to go outside when the big cats go out the door. Someday we will let him, but for now he has brief outings with a halter and leash. Somehow he got away from someone during the university's spring break, and they did not check the lost pet websites for him. He is too wonderful to be lost again, so we are very careful with him.

My damaged eye is finally healing. Still dealing with extreme eye dryness, but it is no longer painful.

One-eyed English Teacher

I have been reading with one eye for about six weeks. I gashed my cornea with a dried branch of salvia in the garden on April 8. A week ago I had a procedure to correct scar tissue that was blurring my vision. The results of that procedure are yet to be determined.

Compelled to carry some sort of lesson away from this experience, I have figured out several things.

First, it is amazing how frequently gardening endangers my eyes. There are branches sticking out everywhere, and regular eyeglasses are not protection. Now I wear safety glasses over my prescription glasses if I am putting my face near sticks.

Second, as a result of the necessity to slow down and be less active, I have finally found time to read H is for Hawk, which has been waiting patiently for months on my bedside table. I knew I didn't have time to read it when I put it there. I just wanted to admire the cover last thing before going to sleep and first thing at waking. I am about two thirds of the way through the book and relishing every word.  It is the right book at the right time. If I am moved to tears by a particularly poignant moment in the narrative, no one is the wiser because my eyes are already red and weeping.

Third, it only takes a second of inattention for damage to drive its wedge.

Fourth, people have been generous with sympathy, which is doubly impressive since I did this to myself. The cats have also been a comfort, especially Nurse Daisy. Now we are back up to capacity with four--Nick, Daisy, Bonnie, and the kitten Mack. Mack's healing powers come from his incredible cuteness, which seems boundless. And my husband has been beyond supportive, driving me to the doctor every day during his week of vacation. Now that's a good man.