Snakes and Other Sounds

We get used to the strangest things.

The sound is barely audible, and very, very brief. But I hear it above all the cars, birds, dogs, planes, mowers, whatever is going on around the neighborhood—a garter snake escaping from under the garden’s black plastic as I approach. I can even tell which garden and the exact location of the snake, watching it slither quickly into the grass.

I start working the soil for a new plot, and I hear the low, quick sound of my neighbor’s horse quickly flapping his lips. From two hundred feet away, through several lines of densely packed evergreens, he knows I’m there. I know exactly where along the fence he is, too, although I can’t see him and I’m not sure how I can tell—nor how he can tell that yes, just this afternoon I bought a bag of carrots to share, still in the car…but he knows.

The neighbor’s dogs—on the other side, five hundred feet away---bark incessantly. They have eight dogs (they show them). I don’t even notice the sound, until my neighbor periodically yells at them to shut up. His barking is the annoyance, and it never works anyway, other than a second or two of silence before the dogs begin again.

Red-winged blackbirds tsk tsk continually. That does get irritating after a time. I know it won’t stop, however, nor can I get away from it, as the birds are telling others that I’m there and where I am. I watch them follow me as I move through the garden.

I check my strawberry patches---lots of berries, and many more on the way. Finally, fencing out rabbits and netting out birds has proven successful. I lift the net and pick the ripe berries—only to find that I’m now competing with ants and slugs for the fruit. Damn frustrating. I pick all the ripe berries before any more damage can be done. I’ll clearly have to stay on top of harvesting.

I check my broccoli---the largest plant is lying on its side, cut halfway through the stem at the ground. Rootworm. Great. Sigh.

I’m not fond of snakes. However, they don’t harm the plants, and they eat insects. They can stay.

And I don’t mind the sound anymore—I’m used to it.

Writer

Days of Trees and--Nuts

A month ago I decided to expand my orchard to include nuts and some more fruits, so from an outfit in Wisconsin, I ordered Japanese Walnuts (I have Black Walnut), some Chestnuts, Hazelnuts, Pecans (I love pecans), Peanuts (I know, not a tree), Golden Apricot (My one apricot tree is lonely), along with Kiwi and three varieties of grapes (Again, yes, not trees). Just for the hell of it, because you can never have too many of these, I also ordered a handful of tomato and broccoli seeds.

Two weeks ago, I received a small box in the mail—my tomato and broccoli seeds. All else was backordered. Deep sigh.

*Ring—ring—ring* Not many people I know are morning people, so the early phone call on a Saturday yesterday morning was a surprise. *Hello?”

“Hi! This is Doug at the Post Office.” In a small town, we all know each other. “Hey, I’ve got a tree here that’s not gonna fit in the carrier’s vehicle. Can you pick it up?” I sighed. Yesterday I was home all day, a nice sunny day. Saturday I had a rehearsal and a concert out of town—not a day I could plant. Oh well. “Sure—be right down.”

He had two cardboard boxes, one 4 x 4 inches x 6 feet, the other 2 x 4 x 24 inches. Both had labels from the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture. Apparently, my supplier had the trees shipped directly to me. I opened the tops just to see what had come. I pulled out an invoice.

Everything. Huh? I looked down. I expected roots wrapped in plastic with cord or rubber bands. Nope. Pots. Pots! Those “cardboard” nursery type, half filled with soil—as nothing secured the plants from moving about nor the soil from falling out as the package was handled. Cheese heads have different ideas about shipping plants than we do in New York, I guess—the box wasn’t even labeled “This end up” – just a small felt pen marking, “Please rush—planting materials.”

Well almost everything—they shipped the female kiwi plant, but backordered the male kiwi. I opened the small “planting materials” box—and found the male kiwi. I looked at my watch and headed for the hardware store to pick up the stakes I’ll need before I would have to leave to rehearsal.—the hardware stores would be closed on Sunday, and EVERYTHING planted must immediately be fenced,, or the rabbits will eat it right down to the ground. (They even eat the needles off my Austrian Pines! It’s a running battle—I’ve become Mr. McGregor.)

So today is the day for the digging of holes and planting, fencing and watering of trees. Probably tomorrow too. Rain or shine.

Maybe I should pick up some extra ibuprofen…

Writer

Garden Roulette

I grew vegetables the first year I moved to the country. I had a dream of self-sufficiency, and with 3½ acres, why not? I flagged down a farmer with a plow one morning, offered him $10 to plow me a small plot, and I was on my way. I learned a few things--beans are great producers, and I knew nothing about growing corn.

But my career got busy, and since gardens take work, I abandoned the practice for several years. After all, the stores were full of produce, and veggies were only part of my diet anyway. Things change, though. Fruits and vegetables have become most of my diet (for both health and maturity reasons), and with that much more skill in choosing them and constructing appealing meals. Add to that sharply rising prices and not always a good selection out here in the country without traveling to the city all the time to a superstore, and it was time to grow again. Anyway, I kind of like the “back to the land” thing anyway.

Time was still scarce, however. What to do? Experiment.

I designed a few separate plots. I did not invest in extensive turning of the soil, but rather hoed a few rows at a time with the intent of creating a “rolling harvest,” not a ton of produce due all at the same time (as I’d be too busy to deal with such a harvest during the academic year). I covered these plots with large sheets of black plastic with slits for the rows--the idea was to eliminate the need for weeding and to see if I could extend the growing season by creating warmer mini-climates. (The plots in different areas would also help cope with the weather, since different spots receive differing amounts of sun and water. One year one will be too wet, another year too dry, while another plot may be fine.)

At first, nothing. I had forgotten one thing--rabbits. I bought metal stakes and chicken wire, dug trenches around the gardens (to bury the bottom of the fence), and with the fences--suddenly I had lots of produce. (I still need to fence the strawberry plots, but one thing at a time. The strawberries will probably need netting too if I want them before the birds.)

OK, I had forgotten two things--vines climb. Without other opportunities, they climbed the chicken wire--and it’s just not sturdy enough to bear all that weight. The fences are still sort-of there, but I’ll have to invest in sturdier construction and something solid for vines to climb. (While I’m at it, I’ll enclose clear plastic between the new fence and the old chicken wire, then build similar panels for the top. That way. perhaps I can create warm enough spaces to start planting in April and grow through October.)

I didn’t start planting this year until June, so I was taking a lot of chances. I lucked out on the weather, though, with the first frost in the last weekend in October. I harvested lettuce, spinach, peas and beans all summer long, and I now have a few cantaloupe, one pumpkin, a fair amount of small, baby watermelon, and two copier boxes full of “close to ripe” green tomatoes (which will hopefully ripen soon). I didn’t get anything from the peppers I planted--just not ready yet.

What really hurt was the broccoli. I harvested a grocery bag of it, but it was just getting going, growing quickly. In another week, I’d have had 7-8 bags of it. Oh well. Next year.

At least I now know which crops do better in which plots and can plan accordingly. I’d also like to start growing some produce indoors--see if I can plant a little each week and hopefully have fresh produce ready all year round. At least so for, my gardening gambles have worked reasonably well.

Writer

An Open Letter to the Hawks

Dear Red-Tailed Hawks:

For quite some time, I have enjoyed watching you circle above the land, floating on the thermals, presumably looking for prey. I’ve even seen you sitting on the utility wires, and a few times standing by the side of the road. Given your strong numbers, your clear proximity, and your superior vision (eight times greater than human eyesight!), I can’t help but wonder a few things about your behavior.

My land is increasingly overrun with voles. The unsightly valleys they dig, yards and yards and yards of them, exacerbated by erosion, just get worse every year. They’ve even killed trees, and my neighbors tell similar stories, including that the problem just gets worse every year. We also all complain about rabbits, and again, they are worse every year. Last year, they destroyed my entire orchard, save one apricot tree. This year, we are all growing large gardens, even those of us who decided in past years that we just didn’t have the time, largely because the high price of gasoline has pushed the price of produce so high. We’d hate to lose this to rabbits.

The encyclopedias report that your primary diet is rodents and small game like rabbits, so we were wondering—what’s the problem? Why don’t you swoop down and help yourselves? Granted, some prey, like birds and chipmunks, keep the cover of the trees, but I can’t walk across the lawn to the garden without seeing voles, and as I strive to keep the grass cut—why don’t YOU see them? Rabbits too—they get hit in the road everyday. Is your vision overrated? Or do you just not care?

I admit my species can’t do much better. Just as we can’t seem to control the voles and rabbits, the hawks in Washington circle above the country seemingly just as aloof as you to our persistent and growing problems. A quarter of the country’s people have no health insurance, and as costs rise, that percentage does too, so people wait until they must go to the emergency room, a much higher cost to the nation than preventative care. Funding and management for natural disasters remains inadequate, and past victims are still coldly left to fend for themselves. Social Security will need some adjustments, and even though it now shows a surplus the government uses to fund its debt in other areas, and even though preventing a crisis still a few decades away is readily achievable now, the will to do so seems absent. Pollution keeps getting worse, but the government continues to study it, deny it, whitewash it, excuse it. And education is so bad that we even graduate college students who can’t write correct sentences—and yet we keep cutting funding for education.

Our hawks ARE good at attacking things when they want—but only attacking. Going after Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan was one thing, but invading Iraq seems so ill-advised that even the administration’s party big-wigs advised against it; brushing off such seasoned advice, the administration arrogantly attacked anyway, confident of quick victory and ushering in a peace that would spread throughout the region, even to Palestine. Instead, we now see endless civil war in Iraq, thousands of deaths, and a drain of billions of dollars—all likely to continue for several years.

These hawks even blindly attack their own allies in their own partisan operations, to their own detriment. After hiring a well-respected Secretary of State, a seasoned general of the FIRST Iraq war, the administration side-lined him, replacing him with a Sovietologist—who has managed to sour own relations with Russia to the point where their President has threatened to re-aim missiles at Western targets. Although elder party leaders have stressed the importance of talking to regional players like Syria and Iran, the administration refuses to negotiate unless absolutely forced to do so. And when one good public servant accurately questioned the administration’s distortion of “factual” evidence, administration officials rabidly turned to punish him by destroying his wife’s CIA cover—an act of treason. They followed up by lying to the grand jury, in strict violation of the U.S. law they’re sworn to protect.

When anyone questions the hawks, those critics are ridiculed as advocating “cut and run” policies—even seeing their patriotism attacked. This is an old game, of course, as even early presidents like John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were attacked as cowards when they opted to build trade with other nations instead of attacking them. Ironic that we refer to a strongly constructed woodworking joint as a “dovetail.” Building is so much harder, and takes so much more long-term courage than attacking things. No wonder that Jefferson famously observed that given the choice between government and the press, he’d prefer the press—and no wonder that the administration so hates and mistrusts the press. After all, I’ve frequently noted small birds chasing hawks away.

Perhaps, then, you hawks are simply judicious, knowing when to pursue, when to back away. Perhaps you simply choose your targets carefully, seeking balance, not vendetta. And, I suppose, you could fairly ask that since I have a dog who has already proven her competence against both vole and rabbit, why don’t I simply let her loose to address the invasion? The answer is that she wouldn’t be so focused, but would hunt indiscriminately, wandering far off our home turf.

Come to think of it, maybe we don’t have hawks in Washington after all. Maybe we have dogs.

Writer

Rabbits and Seals

I like rabbits. I really do. My sister had a white rabbit as a pet for years. People a few miles down the road keep rabbits to comb for Angora—something I’ve considered myself. When a careless driver hit but didn’t kill a wild rabbit, I stopped and even took it to the vet (it had to be euthanized—severed spinal cord).

My rabbit adventures, though, really started when a former irresponsible neighbor, after keeping rabbits for a bit, changed his mind and set them loose. [Where do people get these ideas about animals? Most animals in the wild never live to see age two—let alone abandoned pets. That puppy you let loose to enjoy its freedom? The one with the cute kerchief around its neck? It’s now dead.] Now that the rabbits were no longer his responsibility, at least one of them became mine—chewing its way through the skirting of my home, ruining my winterizing efforts. Eventually, the rabbit disappeared (probably dead), and when the weather warmed, I ripped out all the damaged skirting and replaced it with aluminum flashing, burying it a foot deep (to keep out mice, rats and voles as well). Whether by cause and effect or by chance, however, wild rabbits took up residence across the grounds, to stay.

To a point, I didn’t really mind. Hey, if they eat the grass—terrific! Once in a while one would get hit in the road—sad, and I’d have to do something with the carcass. My old shepherd mix caught one—I have no idea how, since she was almost 16, tired and very ill. Perhaps she fell on it. Dunno. I let her have it—bunny was half gone as it was, and I was going nuts trying to get my poor old dog to eat protein anyway.

Rabbits were evident from time to time. One year I planted 50 black cherry seedlings around the borders of the property (black cherry is native here, and the wood is valuable). By spring, every one was gone. Rabbits were the main suspects, of course, but without any hard evidence, no court would ever convict them.

I didn’t notice them much. My husky mix puppy caught one while on her lead, but since she’s essentially lightening with fur, no big surprise. We walk around the property sometimes, she on her 26’ retractable leash, and yes, she often explodes into a run after game, ripping my arm from its socket, but here in the country, that could be almost anything; she loves to chase birds, and we have lots of them.

She especially loved “helping” to plant my fruit trees. She didn’t understand what all this was about, but she quickly learned that first, playing with those strange sticks was verboten, and second, whatever we were doing, it involved a lot of walking and digging. Gotta love that! With gusto, she “helped” dig holes for the trees, and when I walked back to my shed to get each tree, she carefully guarded each hole (I don’t know what we’re doing, or why, but this is OUR hole, so just back off!). Four varieties of apple, two kinds of pear, a few cherry trees—a week of hard work and a summer of watering yielded my own orchard. Despite a few problems—beetles, for example—the orchard was healthy and progressing well.

Then, over the winter, the rabbits reduced it to dead twigs. Hundreds of dollars worth destroyed.

My electrician, a friend, over to replace a leaky meter, noted during conversation that his fruit trees had suffered a similar fate. An acquaintance of his at the Ag/Tech college suggested protecting the trees with black PVC tubing cut at an angle. Seemed worth trying. As soon as the school year closed, I bought an assortment of apple, pear, peach and plum trees. I mentioned my circumstances to the clerk. “Rabbits,” she said, shaking her head.

I headed for the hardware store for PVC tubing. I explained what I wanted, and long since accustomed to my quirky ways, the staff listened patiently. For what I wanted, they explained, I could use waterline. Comes in inch and a quarter. Fine. They’ll sell it by the foot—just need to cut it first. OK.

I sat in the car. And waited. And waited. I drank my coffee. I was glad I had bought the paper. I read it. Finally, the yard guy arrives with a large roll of tubing. “We had trouble cutting it,” he explains. I can see that—one end is squashed flat for a few inches.

“How am I going to cut it, then?” I asked.

“Oh, no problem—we just didn’t have a good saw. You’ll be fine.” Unconvinced, I stuffed the roll in my car and headed home. I backed down the driveway and leaned back, relaxing for a moment. A rabbit peaked out of the evergreen trees, then hopped about with impunity.

A friend suggested I cut the tubing in a spiral to wrap around the tree. I soon learned I’d be lucky to cut it at all, let alone get it around the trees. I soon settled for just cutting a slit, but just as soon realized (1) that would be difficult with a circular saw and (2) I was already lucky to still have my hand as the saw kicked back. So, I just cut the stuff in half, and took 3-4 halves and taped them around the trunk. That was going to take quite a bit a tape for several trees. Back to the store. The rabbits could easily reach past the first branches, so I also grabbed some 4’ chicken wire to circle the trees—along with black plastic sheeting to control the grass inside the fenced circle. And so, after a lot of trial and error, after a day’s labor, I had planted—a tree.

I managed a few more before dark, each in its own little concentration camp, acutely aware that for all the effort I was investing in cottontail prevention, the critters had ipso facto the entire year (or two or three) to breach security.

For reasons I can’t quite explain, I’m reminded of the end of the first chapter of Joyce’s “Ulysses”:

"A voice, sweettoned and sustained, called to him from the sea. Turning the curve he waved his hand. It called again. a sleek brown head, a seal’s far out on the water, round.

Usurper."

Writer

The Great Green Whale

Ahab had it easy. At least once you kill the whale, it stays dead.

Twenty years ago, with little or no money in my purse, I turned not to the sea, but to the land—my land. After watching my rents continually climb until I could no longer afford them, and since I always wanted to live in the country anyway, I maxed out what credit I had and purchased what I could afford—three and a half acres of rolling meadow nestled in the hills, and a forty year old single wide. I was ecstatic—I was a landowner! I walked the grounds, singing “This land is my land, this land is my land, this land is my land, this land is my land…” It was a lot of land to manage on my own, without machinery (I couldn’t yet afford to drill a well at the time)—an acre was originally the amount of land a team of oxen could plow in a day—but I made a deal with a local farmer: you cut it, the hay is yours (nice hay, too, almost all timothy grass). [And to give Ishmael his due, a drainage ditch does bisect the plot, so technically, he’s still correct.]

This was the last year mowing would be so easy. [Loomings, indeed!] I wasn’t worried, though. First, I had no intention of cutting all that grass, just a half acre or so around the single wide, and second, I planned to plant trees, and they would keep the grass (and the winter wind) down. And plant I did—over two thousand trees, one year old seedlings available inexpensively from the state through Cooperative Extension: Norway spruce mostly, 8-10 feet apart, but also blue spruce, black walnut, black cherry, maples, red oak, Austrian pine, all with just a shovel in soil of heavy clay. These trees needed water during dry spells, hauled with a five gallon bucket with water from my newly drilled well. I also had to keep the grass cut at first around the trees, but quickly found I simply couldn’t keep up with what little time I had while working long hours at multiple jobs to cover all the credit I had tapped. Once established after that first year, I figured, the trees would survive on their own.

I was used to grass growing around my parents’ house in the suburbs—I wasn’t used to how grass grows in a meadow. In just a few weeks from mid-April to mid-May, the grass can shoot up to unmowable lengths—a few weeks more, and it’s waist high. Some weeds will reach six feet—makes for slow going with just a push lawn mower. The task was hopeless. But, my trees were surviving, and would one day grow about the meadow. Further, I was happy to just let nature go about her business, well, naturally.

I learned a lot about nature those first few years. I had grown up believing the “survival of the fittest” model, and at first I thought it true—one grass would flourish for 3-4 weeks, crowded out by the next grass, which would be crowded out by the next. The timothy grass field was gone. But the next year, I realized my error—rather than a continuous conquering by new species, the meadow is a ballet: the same grasses reappeared, coming and going according to their seasons, yielding to the next grasses in their seasons. I noticed something similar about insects—they would l leave my garden in peace, even into harvest—unless I didn’t harvest promptly. Then, they ravished the slightly too ripe vegetables.

I also learned just how naïve my views were about nature. When my dog and I took possession of the meadow, the ground hogs and deer decided they could find more hospitable loggings, but oblivious to my argument that the meadow and surrounding lands offered more than enough for all creatures, the mice took up residence. So did the rats. I got a cat. Then another cat. I trapped dozens of them, then finally turned to poison—which worked for a while. Rabbits chewed through the particle board skirting. I replaced it with aluminum flashing buried 18 inches, but this was a deterrent, not unbreachable. I got the message—the land must be kept mowed.

Easier said than done. Trying to balance this task with other chores and career obligations, I decided to cut grass for an hour or so each day, working my way across the land. The problem, though, is the grass just cut a week ago is already eight inches high, so I had to continually turn back and start over. I altered my goal to just reach the drainage ditch at least once each summer (singing Talking Heads' "Take Me to the River"--another point for Ishmael).

Then nature helped—one very dry summer, the grass simply behaved, growing much more slowly. I reached the far border, not once by twice. The whale had been conquered. And, the evergreens have thrived on the fertile ground, growing dense, bushy, and rivaling the telephone poles. In many places, they completely prevent grass, in others severely slowing it, and in still others, grass has been supplanted by moss. All welcome developments. Then the next summer, wet weather created such a lush jungle that I could only cut a third of the grass.

So this year, as soon as I could near the end of the term, I devoted several hours on consecutive days to cut, cut, cut, determined to get ahead of the resurrected whale before the grass becomes unmowable again. Or at least survive the encounter. If I can’t match Ahab, I’ll settle for Jonah.

I watched the teenager next door while I was moving away. His mom moved in last year, after the house had been vacant two years, so attacking their lawn (roughly an acre and a half) falls at last to them, instead of the realtor.

They’ve got a riding mower (they don’t have all the trees I do), but I’ve never seen anyone do such an incredibly poor job with one. I didn’t even know it was possible. The lawn looked like someone had attacked it with a weed whacker. His pattern of attack seemed almost arbitrary, and every 10-15 minutes or so, exhausted from his heavy labor astride the mower, he needed a break.

This went on for hours, with no better results. Finally, Mom came out. A conversation ensued. Mom took the mower herself, running the perimeter of the property, calmly smoking a cigarette while the grass took notice and lay behind her in neatly trimmed, golf course quality turf. She dismounted. Another conversation. Junior took the wheel again. He started mowing this time in back, and, while certainly no golf course, doing a credible job. He lifted his eyes, waved. I gave him a thumbs up. Then he took a break. By dark, he had finished cutting 1/3 of the plot.

He finished the next morning, again, a credible if not stellar job, and I continued pushing my aching muscles to strive to stay ahead of the rising tide of green.

Writer