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22
Aug 24

You got a saw? You’re gonna need a saw.

At some point, probably over the weekend while we were gone, we had a tree branch fall from one of the stately old trees on the north side of the property. We noticed it Tuesday. Today I did something about it. This is two-and-a-half sweaty hours distilled into a few words and photos.

It was much worse than this photograph, which I shot from the hip. Mostly because I was about a third or the way done with it at this point.

I was texting with someone and I received a good old-fashioned expression about how things were going for them, which made me want to come up with my own expression. So I was standing there thinking, I’m a lumberjack without a saw … which was both creative, and accurate.

But also inaccurate. I was cutting away the branches from the limbs, only I was using a pruning saw. It’s great for dispatching smaller bits, but becomes physical, quickly, with larger lumber. And as hour two turned into hour three, it became physical. Here’s a part of what I’d cut away, again, about a third of the way through the effort.

Not pictured is the stack of heavier sticks, sitting just behind that pile, that’ll make their way to the fire pit this fall. Also not pictured are my scraped up fingers and bloody knee.

And I still have to figure out something to do with the six-foot-tall pile of sticks and leaves. There’s only so much kindling one needs.

And then there’s the actual limb itself. But that’ll wait until another day, giant thing that it is, exhausted as I was.

Part of my repair was a nice shower and the last fresh-from-the-tree peach smoothie of the summer.

That’s right, when I want another one, I’ll have to go to the freezer and pull up some peaches I’d grabbed earlier this year. Or some of the peaches I grabbed last year.

I was too tired to ride my bike, and I can’t swim with my ear yet. Maybe Tuesday. Maybe Wednesday. So I just sat and looked at the water this afternoon.

And contemplated chainsaws.

Now, it’s coming into the evening. More on that tomorrow.

Don’t forget your hands

I was running late. Well, that’s not exactly fair. Let me back up. I was perfectly on time. But then I realized I forgot something, a notebook, and so I had to double back. That’s when the comedy of errors began. I’m sitting at a T-intersection, trying to turn right, and the whole of the town is going the same direction. And as the clock ticked by I waited.

I was supposed to be at a meeting, but now I was running late. And then a dump truck pulled out in front of me, that sort of road-joining that is mostly safely, but entirely annoying. That slowed me down some more, and so on, and then so forth.

I arrived at the meeting place to find the meeting had been rescheduled for tomorrow, which is today. The in-person meeting became a Zoom, which was helpful for file-sharing and the like. And that’s the story of the first meeting of the year.

The good thing about yesterday was that the meeting place was right next to a doc-in-the-box, which I wanted to visit anyway. I’ve been dealing with an unpleasantly persistent case of swimmer’s ear and I hear that medical science has invented an antibiotic drop that’s better than the stuff you can get over the counter. The woman, a PA I think, that I saw said that was indeed a thing, and she filled out a prescription. And, wouldn’t you know it, my pharmacy had it filled before I even got back home. So now there’s stuff in my ear.

Well, not right now, because it’d fall out as I sat here, upright. But I suppose there is stuff in my ear, because swimmer’s ear. It’s getting better, but not as quickly as it should, hence my side visit.

I wouldn’t recommend it. The swimmer’s ear, I mean. The walk-in visit was fine. I didn’t even sit down in the waiting area before they called me back. It was the most in-and-out experience you could imagine, as it should be for such a small thing.

Also, I got my palm scanned. Not for any street performer tarot reasons, mind you. This is how they identify people now. Not from the palm prints, but from the blood vessels. The nice woman at the reception desk told me that. I, of course, knew I could do four minutes of material on this. She knew it as well, because as soon as I started in, she handed me a one-sheet explaining the technology. The long and the short of it is that I have to remember to take my right hand back should I ever need to visit again.

So, note to self and all of that.

We had a nice moon this evening. The view from the backyard.

And the stars above us out front, to the west, looked fine, too. Watering plants in the evening has this reward. If you look up, you can have this nice quiet moment of wonder.

Not pictured, the plane going to Boston that ruined the first shot, cruising over at 30,000 feet. This was, of course, after I spent some time in the gazebo enjoying the fresh air of a cool summer night and the chorus of crickets and the song of whatever else was out there.

I was reading Walter Lord’s The Dawn’s Early Light. It is about the War of 1812.

This one, if I recall correctly, I got because someone my mother-in-law knows was downsizing. She had a great big stack and let me take whatever I wanted, so I of course came away with my arms full. It’s been in the To Read bookcase for a while. Published in 1972, I am just intrigued that a little side note like this one, from the British capture of Washington D.C., made it into a popular history book a century-and-a-half after the fact.

I am up to the subsequent attempt to conquer Baltimore now, so there’s really only whatever happens there and New Orleans to go, I suspect. But it has become one of those books that you don’t want to end. It is my first Lord book and I’ll probably be adding more of his work to my bookshelves. Lord was a talented writer with an incredibly active voice.

We return once again to We Learn Wednesdays, the feature where we discover the county’s historical markers via bike rides. If I am still counting this correctly, this is the 44th installment, and the 76th marker in the We Learn Wednesdays series. And this one is relatively new. It is also not especially historic, but I published a similar one last year and the concept is nice.

A rain garden is a shallow basin planted with deep-rooted native wildflowers, grasses and shrubs. Their extensive root systems filter stormwater runoff and help prevent pollutants and sediments from entering our groundwater and waterways.

In addition to helping to prevent erosion and improving water quality, native plants provide essential food and habitat for local wildlife. Their seeds and nectar provide a valuable food source for birds, butterflies and other insects. Native plants are those that were here prior to European settlement. They are well adapted to local conditions and require very little care once established.

I just happened by this one the other day, seeing it out of the corner of my eye as I pedaled between two historic markers. I wonder why there aren’t more of these, wherever there’s a free spot.

There are always free spots.

Next week, we’ll visit a properly old site. If you’ve missed any markers so far, you can find them all right here.

memories / music / photo / Re-Listening / Tuesday / video — Comments Off
20
Aug 24

There’s a hint of live music below

Well, today was just beautiful. Impossibly so. Sunny, blue skies and temperatures settling into the 70s. There was no ambitious mercury in the thermometer. No overbearing sun. Just this …

… and the promise of another day or two of it afterward.

It was this beautiful. I couldn’t decide what to do with the day. Which was weird.

Finally, I settled on sitting outside and reading. It was a good choice.

It was such a good idea, I did it again, sitting outside this evening, listening to the symphonic crickets, flipping through pages of a book, asking myself why I don’t do this all of the time.

I should do this all of the time. Or at least more.

We return to the Re-Listening project. Regular readers know I’ve been listening to my old CDs in the car, and in the order of their acquisition. We’re in, let’s say it is 2006, listening to a 1998 record that I picked up at a library sale. It’s everyone’s 1990s friend, the Dave Matthews Band.

“Before These Crowded Streets” was their third album. Béla Fleck appears. Alanis Morissette is on it. And so is the virtuoso Tim Reynolds — this being just before he joined the band. It was another successful album, even as they were beginning to change some things up. The instrumentation gets more exotic, the time signature experiments are underway, and the themes got a bit more mature, a bit more worldly.

This was the record that pushed the Titanic soundtrack from atop the Billboard charts. Three singles became hits, the record went platinum four times in the United States.

Some of the best parts of this record are the interludes, usually outtakes, between the songs. And the biggest memory I have about this record is actually from a live show. They play the amphitheater in 1998, supporting this record and the version they did of “Don’t Drink the Water” was just about the most intense thing I could imagine seeing at a yuppie party. Here’s a version from that tour, about three weeks earlier than the show I saw. This is sedate in comparison to my recollection.

They’re still at it, of course. Ten studio albums and something like 17 live albums later. Touring machines, who even knows how many millions of concert tickets they’ve sold at this point. But I know some people who have purchased a lot of them. My god-sisters-in-law (just go with it) and their large entourage see them a lot, probably four or five different dates a year. And they invited us to one of them. It was my third or fifth time seeing them, and my first in 20-plus years.

I don’t think I even mentioned the concert here. We left the show early for some reason that was never explained. The group gathered and walked out and, I said Who doesn’t stay for the false finish, let alone the encore? And the answer was, the crowd of people we were with, for some reason.

Though I blame DMB as the sole culprit in the outlandish ticket prices we’ve seen explode in the last several decades,
they still create a happy crowd. And their tour continues right now. They’re playing the northwest, before heading back east in late September for some festivals, and then a few fall dates in Mexico.

We’ll go north, to Canada, when next we return to the Re-Listening project.

But what will we get into here tomorrow? Be s ure to stop by and find out!

adventures / food / Monday / photo / triathlon / video — Comments Off
19
Aug 24

#GoRenGo

Some many years ago I had a brief passing thought about a photograph project. What would it be like to shoot all of the rust? It has a certain beauty. It says, well, a few different things, if you contemplate it long enough. It’s also everywhere.

And sometimes, I find myself staring at a bit of rust.

When I do, I think of that passing thought. How long would that take? And who are you kidding? How many things would rust away by the time you got back to the starting point? Saturday, when I was looking at that bridge, I wondered, wWhat does all of the rust in the world weigh?

I was staring at that bridge while my lovely bride was checking in for her triathlon. She did a half iron this weekend.

The half iron includes a 1.2 mile swim, in a river, this time. Here, she is exiting the water right on schedule.

Immediately after that, there’s a 56 mile bike ride.

She dropped her chain, and said someone swung out in front of her and ran her off the road. She was OK. At least two different people were less fortunate, and had accidents involving cars. Excellent job securing those semi-controlled roads by the race organizers and local authorities.

And after that 1.2 mile run, and well-paced 56 mile ride, she had a half marathon to wrap up the event. Here she is setting out for the run.

She had a great swim, and she was pleased with her bike ride. But she did not care for her run. Aches and pain and no shade and so on and so forth. Nevertheless, when she made it to the line, she finished with a smile.

And that’s her fifth 70.3, to go alongside her three Ironmen triathlons. And wraps up the best part of the season. I think she has one or two more runs scheduled, just for fun, but everything is for fun from here. (It should all be fun, I say. Finish with a smile, that’s what I say.)

On the way back home today, we stopped at this place. ‘

Because, look, when you tell a trusted friend you are driving through her native neck of the woods and she simply replies that you have to go eat at this place, you take the advice.

Our trusted friend was spot on with that recommendation.

Today was a long day in the car; there was a lot of reading Wikipedia to pass the time. Tomorrow, it’ll be back to work.

photo / Thursday — Comments Off
15
Aug 24

Up in the trees

I probably should have spent my day doing things other than what I did, but you can’t fix that now, can you? You can only blame past-you for mistakes like that. And that guy has no recollection of the problem and, seldom, any remorse anyhow. So there’s no use in that, whatsoever.

I didn’t even do, today, the things I need to do for tomorrow or this weekend until late this evening. It’s been one of those days. But, hey, past-you tells yourself when he is present-you, sometimes you deserve a day like this.

And we all know what those days are like. We all know, even as those days are unique to each of us, what that means.

Anyway, this is coming down tomorrow. The soon-to-be erstwhile pest control company is coming out to take care of this. Mostly because I don’t want to risk it, and we still have this company and it’s their fault, really.

If you read around online, the suggestions for dealing with great big nests like this are to attack in the early morning or evening, be sure of your escape route, and wear a lot of layers.

Oh, I thought up a whole plan for this, but the more I thought about it, “boiling soapy water and run like crazy” didn’t seem like much of a strategy. There’s always close air support, but to drop something on this nest is to also hit the house, so the pest control company gets one last chance to impress here, even as their efforts and attentive eye lead to this basketball-sized condo of 2,000+ stingers.

Speaking of up in the trees, we are coming to the end of the peach harvesting season here at Smith Orchard. This also means we are desperately trying to give more peaches away. I’ve eaten a lot. We’ve eaten some more. We froze still more. Joe the Elder’s wife has been over a couple of times to collect some for them. Then, because she is a delightfully sweet person, she makes us a cobbler. With our peaches. The ones we are trying to foist onto others.

This evening, I took some of the peaches which are turning over for them to share with the deer that live in the woods behind them. In addition to the deer sneaking over whenever they want and eating freely from the tree, they’re now getting about two baskets worth of locally harvested fruit.

Joe the Younger’s family will get some peaches tomorrow. We’ve packed up sacks full for other people as well.

I’ll still have about two baskets to deal with.

But, look, I’m actually picking them off the tree.

This, I maintain, is a positive step. I am not playing catch up, and just picking up the ripe one from the ground. I can be assertive. I took that photo, such as it is, thinking it was the last peach on the tree.

It was not.

There are still quite a few more to go. Peaches can be quite overwhelming.

So you really need to stop by. (They are quite tasty.)

I’m taking a day off the site tomorrow. All will be explained Monday. See you then, and have a great weekend.