Reflections on the Tenth Week of Spring - Nesting

    The week's nesting adventures started with a fat robin. It grabbed the string marking the third potato row, pulled, and flapped backwards. The string slipped out of the robin's beak. The robin tried again. Because Spence tightened the string to get it off the ground, I couldn't count how many times the robin would try for that nesting material before giving up.

    All over Wells Wood, I walked past birds sitting on nests–in willows, maples, the old pine stand, the evergreen nursery, the woods, and on three corners of the log house. The robin on the nest above the porch steps flew away every time I stepped out the front door. The phoebe on a nest above the guest room window flew away when I checked the first pink iris blooms in the front yard. But she didn't abandon her eggs when Spence hammered the last boards in the guest room floor. The mourning dove, nesting under the eaves above the bedroom, used a different strategy. When I approached with camera and zoom lens, she crouched over her babies and sat possum-still. On my third visit, though, she sat beside the baby birds staring at me as if proud of her children or confident I couldn't fly up to pester them. The fourth corner of the house, between the porch and deck, had the only nest without a sitting bird. No doubt, the prowling-through-pansies and arthritis-sunbathing antics of our cat George convinced the nest builders to try another location.

    Birds did need to protect their nests.

    My awe in a Red-tailed Hawk circling the blue sky with wings spread so feathers extended like fingers turned to dread. It dove and met a screeching ruckus. Dwarfed by the hawk, four robins chased it across the north garden and over the west field. Two more scolding robins zoomed in from the south garden. The six pursued the hawk till it perched atop a tall maple in the woods.

    A baby Blue Jay could have used that robin posse. In the grass near the old pine stand lay its four inch gray skinned body with dark blue wing feathers and a fuzzy black streak down its head and back.

    Though I didn't need to ward off a Red-tailed Hawk–just duck from swarms of buzzing carpenter bees, I prepared for nesting too. I potted a red Chilean Jasmine and orange Firecracker plant then set them on the deck. I washed the sliding glass door and went inside to turn on my camera and focus the zoom lens. Nestling in my Adirondack chair, I waited.

    A female Ruby-throated Hummingbird found the Firecracker plant the next morning. She hovered and sunk her beak into the long slender orange flowers four or five times a day giving me plenty of tries, before she streaked away, to lift the camera to my eye.

 

Reflections on the Ninth Week of Spring-Internet Connection 

    Because our Wells Wood Internet winked in and out, my brother Bob said, “You live in the sticks.”

    A week ago Thursday, Spence woke and turned on his computer. No Internet. We don't have cell phone service at the log house or long distance on our land line telephone. He drove to the highway for a signal to call Barb, the Meadville Windstream supervisor who tells Lester to make repairs. Internet service came on for forty-five minutes mid morning. Then it went out and took the land line telephone down too.

    No Internet meant I couldn't pay bills. Worse, I couldn't study weather to pack appropriate clothes for activities on Hilton Head Island including my mom's memorial service or check in for the flight to meet our daughter Ellen in Savannah. I packed turtlenecks and put off the other two tasks till Friday.

    But Friday dawned without service. Spence drove to the highway and chatted with Barb again. Weak cell service let me send a text asking Ellen about weather forecasts for the trip. She answered, “Sunny. Temperatures mid eighties and high seventies.” I unpacked the turtlenecks, put in T-shirts, and figured I'd pay the bills when I got home Monday night after the flight to Pittsburgh and drive to Wells Wood.

    No Internet Monday.

    No Internet Tuesday. That morning Spence hopped in the truck, called Barb a third time from the highway, then went to Cochranton Library to check email and post an Nonprofit Quarterly article using the library Internet.

    Tuesday afternoon, I drove Spence to Greenville's Huntington Bank. At the counter, I waved six bills at the teller and said, “Can I pay these here? My Internet has been down for five days, and one bill was due yesterday.”

She said she couldn't but left her work station to consult the manager about my dilemma.

    The manager said, “She can use my computer.” The manager waved me to her desk, turned her screen toward me, and slid over the keyboard. She asked if I were left or right handed before placing the mouse and mouse pad by the keyboard.

    I logged onto the bank website, paid the six bills, and thanked her.

    At the top of Route 173 hill on our way home, a lime green service truck was parked on the berm. A man's backside and legs stuck out from the Windstream box.

    I parked across from the truck.

    Spence got out of the car and met Lester. Spence asked about our Internet and invited Lester down for a cup of coffee.

    When we got home, the Internet was on but slow. I answered three emails before it winked off.

    The Windstream truck crunched gravel in our driveway. Lester checked connections outside before coming in for a cup of coffee. He wore a crew cut, black rimmed glasses, and a frown. “You've had nothing but trouble with this connection.” He crossed his legs and cradled the fat blue mug in his hands. “If I was the kind of man who got frustrated, I'd be frustrated now. But getting frustrated doesn't help.” He finished his coffee then found a wire in the basement that broke in his hand. Lester speculated another repairman had nipped the wire when he'd made repairs, and the wire had been touching off and on making the Internet connection wink. Lester updated the router and made two calls for tech help to establish connections. After two and a half hours, the Internet wasn't working. Lester drove to Meadville to fuss with wiring at headquarters. That worked. Internet came on. Lester drove back to Wells Wood at 7:30 to check that the Internet was still working.

   And he called the next morning. “Do you have Internet?”

  We may live in the sticks, but rural folks–at the library, in the bank, or from a lime green service truck–know the value of staying connected.

Reflections on the Eighth Week of Spring - Mom Dot's Memorial Service

Columbarium at First Presbyterian Church of Hilton Head

      Saturday at 10 a.m., my brother Bob, his son Robert, Spence, our daughter Ellen, and I gathered at the columbarium outside the First Presbyterian Church of Hilton Head Island. Sunshine lit an azure blue sky, a cool breeze tousled Spanish moss dangling from live oak trees, and the swish of cars on William Hilton Parkway sounded like waves on the beach. Pastor Susie Cashion led the memorial service for Mom Dot. In addition to prayers and other readings, she read Psalm 23, my suggestion, and Mary Stevenson's “Footprints in the Sand” poem, Bob's suggestion. The only hymn was “Be Still My Soul,” my sister Anita's suggestion. Pastor Susie sang all three verses a cappella by herself. Though I'd practiced the hymn with YouTube versions, I only got the first two lines out before I choked up with tears. I shared a pocket pack of tissues with Bob. After Pastor Susie's talk, “Meeting Kindness with Kindness,” Bob and I only had two tissues left. After the service, Pastor Susie helped with family photos and rearranging flowers.

Bob and Janet

Reflections on the Seventh Week of Spring - Weeding to Relax?

      Spence threw himself into gardening this week.

      I helped.

      With a satisfied grin, he harvested wild garlic, radishes, kale, and oodles of asparagus. All of them became ingredients in stir fry concoctions he made himself. I indulged in plain asparagus as a side to meals from breakfast potatoes to homemade pizza.

      Every morning Spence checked weather on his computer. When would the lows stay in the fifties so he could take the tomato and pepper seedlings outside to the porch for hardening off? Not this week–which made him nervous.

In the great room both our cats took turns sitting by the bottom of the four plant shelves holding seedling trays. Emma sniffed and gazed over the plants to the birds on the deck. George nibbled.

      Spence yelled, “GEOOORRRGE.”

      George turned his what's-the-matter-with-you-now-old-man eyes toward Spence then sauntered away. But he returned, yanked a tomato seedling out with his teeth, and pawed the liberated plant as if it were a mouse he'd caught.

      Spence also made daily garden checks. Onions and garlic grew taller. Blueberry and strawberry flowers opened. Six packs of cauliflower, cabbage, and bok choy sprouted in small cold frames because there was no more room for seedlings in the house. On Wednesday's check he declared the soil dry enough to till.

      He revved his tractor and tilled a potato patch.

      Spence doesn't eat potatoes, and piles of spring leftovers just shrivel up after growing long hairy eyes. So why did he buy twenty pounds each of Yukon gold, Kennebec white, and red Pontiac?

      “Because I like planting potatoes,” he said.

      Friday, after hammering posts and tying string to mark three rows, each one hundred twenty feet in length, I got down on my knees. He dug holes. I dropped seed potatoes. For an old man with a torn rotator cuff muscle, he still dug faster than I could pull weeds, remove rocks, and set potatoes. He tossed rocks out of the garden too. They whizzed past me and ricocheted off the plastic collecting bucket next to the potato row. Would fastening my knee pads around my head with their Velcro straps act as a helmet? Caked soil in the groves of the plastic shields discouraged me from trying.

      I didn't help with Spence's second project–planting Improved Maestro and Early Frosty peas in a large raised bed.

      Actually, he started that project months ago when tree service men had cut down two white pine trees at our Cleveland house. One of the trees was over a hundred feet tall. Spence asked the men to saw the trunks into five foot sections and pile them in the back yard.

      With the help of Bob, our contractor who did heavy-lifting repair jobs, Spence loaded a few logs at a time in his Chevy pickup and hauled them to Wells Wood. Without lifting help here, he slid, spun, and rolled the logs out of the truck bed and onto the tractor bucket. He drove them to the garden and placed them for raised bed walls. He lined the bed with cardboard and an old bedspread then started the hard part–filling the raised bed with soil.

Because Spence didn't want weed seeds in the soil, he bought forty pound bags of top soil at Home Depot. He lifted twenty-five bags into the pickup. Back at Wells Wood, he ripped open each bag, poured the soil into the tractor bucket, and drove four bags-worth at a time to the raised pea bed. That first thousand pounds filled half the bed. He bought, lifted, ripped, poured, and dumped twenty-five more bags.

      After raking the pea bed soil this Wednesday, he constructed three weird looking goal post contraptions with PVC pipes, his version of tinker toys for men. Each of his creations had three legs and a top crossbar with arms angling towards the ground. He tied string on the legs to mark his three rows and to give pea plants something to grab. Once the peas germinate, he'll attach chicken wire to arms and let it drape down the sides to deter rabbits and groundhogs.

      While he lifted and tinkered, I weeded the onion patch. Soil damp soaked through my jeans, pantyhose, and underwear. Blood sucking gnats buzzed my ears and swarmed my face. I waved them away and tried to imagine why my friend Marlee had said weeding was relaxing. Hurling weeds across garden rows to the grass field gave the task some athletic release, and I enjoyed the bird show adjacent to the garden. Chickadee, wood thrush, and sparrow sang a chorus. Robins pulled worms and butted chests. Cardinals added a political flavor calling Bernie, Bernie, Bernie.

      Weeding to relax? No. But with a Mom Dot clean onion row behind me, I walked out of the garden with a satisfied grin.

Reflections on the Sixth Week of Spring

   Wednesday Spence lifted his laptop off his legs, moseyed over to the garage basement, and fired up the Mahindra tractor. With brush hog attached, he drove out of the garage and headed uphill for mowing. A ten ton pile of gravel in the old driveway surprised him.

    Spence had ordered size 2B2 crushed gravel from our neighbor Tom, who runs a small hauling and excavation business. Had Tom delivered the gravel Tuesday while Spence was in Cleveland painting the laundry room floor and I was inside the log house working on my quilt show story?

  When Spence finished mowing, he detached the brush hog and headed for the gravel pile.

  I grabbed my camera. 

   He scooped a bucketful of gravel, hauled it to the garage driveway, and dumped it. Spence used the back side of the tractor bucket to pull stones level–a technique he'd perfected from plowing snow. After a few loads, he took my camera, handed me the ear protectors, and waved me onto the tractor seat. “I want to get photos for your children,” he said. 

     Spence stood quietly while I experimented with the joy stick to figure out right angled the bucket up, left angled it down, forward lowered the bucket, and back raised it. 

     I was ready.  

     With the bucket angled down, I drove it into the gravel pile then pushed the joy stick forward. Oops. The bucket lowered, and the tractor's front wheels lifted off the ground.

   Spence hid a laugh behind his hand.

   I backed up and tried again. With the bucket angled down, I drove into the pile. I moved the joy stick right to angle the bucket up, then pulled the lever back to raise the bucket.  

   All four wheels stayed grounded.  

   I backed out of the old driveway. 

   Spence shouted, "Give it more gas. You've got a heavy load." 

   I pulled the gas lever from turtle to rabbit. 

   The engine revved. 

   Spence nodded. 

   I trundled over to the garage driveway and dumped the load. Not having plowed snow, I leaned over the side to monitor the bucket leveling the stones. 

   Spence took the ear protectors and handed me the camera. He spread more gravel in the garage driveway then dumped stones at the end of the deck ramp, by the porch steps, and along the tractor path to the basement garage. Plenty of gravel remained. “I'll use it to firm up tractor paths in the woods and build a drainage line in the south garden,” he said. 

   That evening, we drove the truck down Creek Road to pay Tom. He said he'd delivered the gravel Tuesday afternoon.

    I'd probably heard his Chevy dump truck with dual back wheels but assumed it was a logging truck. Amish loggers had been cutting trees a half mile up the road. Truck after truck turned around in the gas well driveway across the road when they came to haul the mill logs away. "But wouldn't I have heard the stones dumping?” I asked Tom. 

   He shook his head. “It only makes a swish. You'd miss it with the door and windows closed.” 

   Thursday was my volunteer morning at the Learning Center. I backed the Crosstrek out of the garage. Instead of a jolt when the back tires dropped two inches off the cement floor to hard packed dirt, the tires rolled onto cushy, loose gravel.

   Another surprise.