Archive | October 2022

Armchair Gardener

Oct26

Encouraged by the lovely fall afternoon weather, I wandered outside to inspect the flowerbed alongside the driveway. The first thing I saw was a small, innocent looking vine pushing up through the new layer of mulch. “Ack” I yelled into my silent, empty yard, and scolded, “You stupid, stupid weed! Don’t you know mulch is supposed to smother you?”

My body posture was tense as I leaned over to yank the little sucker out of the ground, root and all. A second later, I triumphantly held the weed up over my head. It had a five-inch white root and a twelve-inch vine. I loudly announced, “Ah-ha, that takes care of you!”

I had recently watched New Zealand’s All Blacks Rugby team do a goose-bump inducing Maori war cry, called haka before one of their games. Their yelling and intimidating posturing was impressive. In my mind, I was doing an American version of the haka to intimidate the nasty, unwelcome, but irrepressible bindweeds. Leaning over the flowerbed, I spotted dozens of other bindweeds that needed to be pulled up.

Bindweeds look cute when they’re small, but if they are not pulled up by the roots, they will take over the flowerbed. They wrap themselves around, through and over the top of any neighboring plants, strangling them with an abundance of triangular leaves and white flowers resembling small morning glory blossoms.

Leaning over, I began to pull the all the weeds within reach. I mumbled to myself, “One blessing is that they pull out easily because of the mulch.”

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Under Cover Cats

Oct19

Tammie preferred living in dorms during her college and grad school years. Although the convenience and location worked for her, it also meant that she couldn’t have a pet. “Unless,” my daughter pointed out to me one day, “The pet can breathe under water for more than five minutes.”

I cynically commented, “Well, that rules out a cat. But we could get you a nice, colorful Beta fish, though.”

My daughter exclaimed emphatically, “No! I want a cuddly kitty like the ones I grew up with.”

During the last four years of higher education, Tammie spent countless hours wishfully staring at shelter cat pictures on a computer screen.

One day, shortly before Tammie graduated, she was home for a visit. Her sister Niki commented, “A stray cat has been hanging around our house for the last few weeks. Anne and Jon named her Buttons. Last weekend she crawled under our back deck and gave birth to a litter of six kittens. It was cold and raining, so I ended up taking the mother cat and kittens into the house.”

Tammie snapped to attention. She announced, “I’ll take two of the kittens off your hands. By the time they’re old enough to leave Buttons, I’ll be in the apartment I’ve rented and working as a librarian.”

Niki’s children fell in love with Button’s babies and gave them names. They didn’t want to give any of them up, but two kittens went to a farm family and were never heard from again. The children were allowed to keep two. One was gray, and hilariously named ‘Moldy Cheese’ while the black and white one was called ‘Salt and Pepper’. Tammie took the orange and white cat named ‘Macaroni and Cheese’ and a gray tabby they named ‘Carla’ after they heard Tammie say that was the name of the library director at her new job.

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Chuckle Berries

Oct12

“Mom?” Tammie questioned. “Do you think you can get up and walk around for a while?”

         I looked sadly up at my daughter’s concerned face from where I lay on a cot in the corner of my living room. I’d had a total knee replacement three days earlier. Sick of how painful my leg felt, I complained, “Since my leg hurts even while laying down, I may just as well be up walking!”

Like a good little nurse, Tammie had come home for a few weeks to make sure I was well hydrated, exercised and comforted as I recovered from surgery. She placed the walker next to the cot and I pushed off the mattress with both hands and my good leg. My daughter suggested, “Let’s go out on the deck. It’s in the shade now and the weather is really nice.”

After taking a few steps, my surgical leg really didn’t feel that much worse, so I felt encouraged. Stepping out into the fresh air, I took a deep breath and sighed with satisfaction, “This was a good idea.” I settled down onto a deck chair. A lovely Goldilocks breeze ruffled my bedhead hair.

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Getting the Job Done.

Oct5

I pressed lightly on the gas. The trailer hitched to my SUV inched backward. After a few feet, it became apparent that the trailer was veering too close to the house. Fighting the impulse to crank the steering wheel in the direction I wanted the trailer to go, I cranked it in the opposite direction. Overdoing the wheel turning, the trailer went the direction I wanted, but too much. It quickly jackknifed.

Grunting with disgust, I slammed on the brakes and eased forward. With the car and trailer straightened, I tried once again to back the trailer towards the coal chute. After much rocking back and forth, I finally placed my trailer, loaded with six tons of wood pellets close enough to the chute.

Getting out of the car I mentally prepared myself for the job ahead. Fortunately, many years before, my late husband had installed a coal chute in place of a basement window to make it easier to throw winter fuel into our basement. It was hard work throwing 300 forty-pound wood pellet bags into the basement, but I’d done it before.

Slowly and steadily I worked, tossing the heavy bags into the chute. When the pile of bags in the basement grew too large for more, I went to the basement to stack them on pallets along the walls. After a few hours all six tons were in the basement. The only help I needed was stacking the last two or three tons.

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