Reflections - I Can See Clearly Now

Bedroom Window

“Your windows frame the outside making nature look more beautiful.”

My daughter’s 2006 comment, when she’d first looked out our log house windows, still motivates me to wash them—especially before her visits. Since she planned to come the last week of May, I washed windows the first two warm, dry days in the third week.

Bad choice.

On Monday May 17, when the temperature rose to hair-sweating warmth, I mixed window washing solution in a spray bottle and gathered rags.

Three cats followed me to the bedroom.

Taking down the curtains I’d sewed to coordinate with my log cabin quilt, I carefully laid them on the bed.

The cats pranced over them exploring their unusual placement.

I pulled the top window down a crack, pushed the bottom up a foot, and unlatched the screen. Ready to yell for Spence if one of the furry fellas jumped outside, I stuck my elbows out as wide as airplane wings and angled the screen inside.

Its metal edges scraped against the window frame.

The cats tore off the bed and scratched the wood floor in their escape to the great room. I marched out behind them with the offending three by five-foot monster, and they exploded into a frantic chase.

Glad to leave them, I stepped onto the porch. Cicadas droned in the woods. A cat bird warbled a concerto of its neighbors songs. The wet rag swished against the soft plastic screen. Leaving the screen on the porch to dry, I headed back to the bedroom.

The cats scurried behind me.

I sprayed washing solution onto the window.

Six cat ears twitched.

The rag squeaked across the glass.

Six cat ears flattened.

Clusters of carpenter bees hovered outside the window. Buzzing and maneuvering in a weird ballet, they zoomed toward the window. Boink. One bounced off the glass.

Six cat ears straightened.

The carpenter bees must have picked that warm, sunny day as perfect weather for boring nesting chambers in the log house. Spence would have lots of round, quarter to half-inch diameter holes to caulk.

Boink. Boink.

The repeated bee bashing against the window made me nervous. Not nervous that they’d sting—males can’t and females don’t unless they’re handled. Nervous that when I yanked the window off its tracks and tilted it inward to clean the outside, bees would fly in and cats would jump out.

“Spence!” Toting the rags and the spray bottle, I found my husband working on the bid package for the township’s French mattress project. “Will you set the step ladder up by the front bedroom window?”

Having fallen off ladders, he takes them seriously. 

So I could set up the ladder myself for the other first floor windows, I studied his techniques—press levers and shift the ladder around until it doesn’t rock.

“That’s steady enough.” He hustled back to his paperwork.

I climbed to the second step from the top, squirted, and inhaled the aroma of vinegar mixed with fragrance of white narcissus. Robins hopped in the grass. They alternated cocking their heads to listen for worms and to monitor the human trying in vain to fly. Three cat noses pressed against the inside of the clean window. 

Cats and robins would have accompanied the window washing any day, but the carpenter bees hadn’t been this numerous before. Buzzing bees whirled around me. Their sound escalated to incoming-missile decibel when one dove for the window.

Carpenter Bee

As if peak bee hovering weren’t enough, roadmaster Dan picked that day to deal with the pot holes in our dirt road. His grader scraped past Wells Wood four times turning the road surface into an inch of powdery dirt. His assistant Dave followed in a dump truck pulling a spring-tooth harrow which drew parallel lines through the dust. He stopped and shouted, “It’s like making a Zen garden.”

Passing vehicles created dust clouds. They rose and floated toward the house. A tow truck driver hauling a car on its flat bed spotted me, braked, and crept past. Dust still rose behind him.

Spence ambled back to see if I’d fallen off the ladder. “The window looks better.” He gave me a thumbs up.

A red sedan stopped. The electrical inspector leaned out of the passenger window and said, “There’s a hell of a lot of dust.”

While he and Spence chatted, I replaced the screen.

Maybe I should have waited for a day without dust.

Wash on a rainy day when the road’s muddy.

I want a dry day without dust.

Wait until winter.

But Ellen’s coming next week.

She won’t care about a week’s worth of dust.

Except for me moving and positioning the step ladder, cleaning the next windows went the same with investigating cats, hovering bees, and rising dust. Hopefully the screens would catch most of the dust.

Having exhausted themselves, the cats curled for naps. Relief. Loft windows came next. Because I would NEVER climb twenty-five feet up the heavy extension ladder, I had to tilt loft windows inward. I could press the plastic track and pull the bottom one in, but I needed Spence to press while I balanced the bottom window and yanked the top. With the cats sound asleep and being high off the ground, I figured the cats, dust, and bees wouldn’t interfere.

I got a third of that right.

A pickup dashed by raising a cloud of dust as wide as the road and higher than the telephone wires. At least the cloud thinned out at the top.

Carpenter bees favored the logs near the peak of the roof as much as the first floor ones. Instead of banging against the glass, they flew right in. I flicked the rag to shoo them out and squirted vinegar water at one heading in. It jerked back and hovered. I squirted again. It flinched but didn’t retreat. Lest I annoy a female bee by accident, I reverted to the flicking-rag method.

By the end of the afternoon, I had half the log house windows washed. Dave spayed brine to lessen the dust. He only treated the middle of the road because that’s where country folks drive.

Tuesday brought less drama.

Though dust clouds floated toward the house, the brine kept the dust at tailgate height. I only needed my rag-flicking technique for the crank-out windows above the kitchen sink. I could stand on the porch and deck to wash the outside of others. That eliminated ladder balancing. And the cats only glanced at my now familiar cleaning tasks—until I went out to the porch and slid Spence’s summer desk away from the great room window.

A mouse, with three or four babies clinging to her back, scampered from the folded floating row cover and ducked under the paper cutter.

Long after I’d cleaned that window, replaced its screen, and muscled the desk back in place, the cats occupied the log hewn table on the inside. Staring out, their heads moved in unison as if watching a tennis match. Rills swiped his paw at the mice on the other side of the glass. At least I’d provided the cats with a clear view.

Last, I cleaned the sliding glass door. Ande leaped between the door to peek at me and the window to monitor the mice. A few carpenter bees slammed into the glass. Sunshine warmed my back.

I rubbed the last smear away and stepped back.

Wow!

Ande and the great room disappeared. In their place reflections—of pansies, the dirt road, and trees stretching into a cornflower blue sky—wavered.

I would tell Ellen. Even looking in, windows frame the outside making nature look more beautiful.

Reflections in Sliding Glass Door