Tag: creek

Mow-Noting

/ Derek Mueller
⏳ Approximate reading time: 4 mins
Spanish needles (Bidens bipinnata) thriving all along the banks at Wonder Hollow.

Not sure whether I will have to mow it one more time, but since today is autumn equinox, I guess this afternoon’s buzz around the holler counts as the last official cut of Summer 2024. It had been a few weeks, maybe three?, since I had carried the weed eater to the raised beds garden, to the micropark, or to the unevennesses immediately behind the front shed. Hardest of the weed eating is at the micropark because it is mucky in places, extra uneven, and prone to kicking up mud if the machine’s angles are off by even 10 degrees for a tenth of a second. A muck misstep means ankle deep in glop. Easy to do, despite the handfuls and handfuls of rocks I have carried and planted so dutifully to bolster the creeksides. When weed eating, eye protection takes the brunt of the mud, although that brunt today included a cord-kicked hunk of dolomite from where the gravel road meets the grass; it deflected audibly clonk! from the left side of the eyewear. In moments like these I feel relief from the close call and congratulate myself for taking every precaution to buffer my eyes and ears from the worst of it.

Today’s weed eating stirred an underground hive adjacent to the first of the five tiger grass tufts, the one nearest to the stump that housed for the past few months a thriving pair of orange marigolds and sage. When I transplanted the sage in May I was worried for a couple of dry, hot weeks that it wouldn’t take, that the relocation shock combined with the harsh midday heat would prove too much to withstand, but then it showed me I was wrong and went on flourishing. Possibly it was the hardiest of any of the curated plants around the holler this summer, though the volunteer morning glories, which started on their own but later were sent spreading up a twine path (thus becoming curated, sort of), have a strong case. They are their own trophies, so congratulations one and all is the spirit. I don’t know what exactly were the stinging insects living it up in the underground hive. The few that scouted me as a threat-nonthreat were mild mannered, appearing to be fogged by the change of seasons and not so keen on having a serious and stinging chase-off. I was able to finish the trim around the tiger grasses after a few minutes and didn’t get stung even once, thankfully.

Three summers of this have taught me the subtler features of the chthonic many who burrow into the mud around this time of year. Can’t see their houses, but their doorways give away which is a snake, which is a frog, which is a turtle, and which is a crawdad. Neighborhood is sort of frog frog crawdad crawdad crawdad snake and then turtle, with snake and turtle being far fewer in number than the rest. The crawdad doorways are the littlest, and the turtles are the biggest, as far as I can tell. Banks are lined with various doorways this time of year, which makes me wonder whether they have subterranean encounters with one another, whether their soupy abodes abide a sharing ethic or a competing ethic. Maybe some of both. The water lettuce atop the pond has split and doubled half a dozen times. There isn’t any fruit to speak of but the stems are thick, almost thick enough to harvest for a cooking experiment except that the advice on water lettuce edibility is mixed. The creekside weed eating sends up strong perfumes, too, as the watercress and mint are abundant and hearty this time of year. I leave most of it alone; both plant types have recently bolted and late season pollinators do well to have a few more dabs at floral pollen. Careful as I am it is impossible to be surgical about the edges, and so there is an occasional spray of aromatic plant pulp. Or fungus. Thursday’s heavy downpour queued more mushrooms than I could count near the long-piled stack of wet wood in the micropark. There, too, I tend to leave well enough alone, as the edge of the woods there not far from where Bitumen, Fluffy Foot, and Cinnabon were killed at the end of June hugs a sharp embankment with quite a bit of poison ivy vining across it.

With the weed eating done, I switched to the Gravely for mowing the terraced paths, the upper holler and the strip above the ledge. The strip is just four widths of the mower, twice down and back, quick. All of the rider mowing took me maybe two hours, give or take. I carry short and long handled clippers and a handsaw on the mower because the edges are prone to thorny shoots, and so maybe ten or twelve times along the perimeter I stop the mower and clip the sharp appendage of a wineberry or whatever. If I left them to growing–and especially sunlight seeking–wherever they wanted, I would get slashed upon riding by. Maybe from the heavy rain the other day, but a lot of the megaweeds are tilting, buckling under their own late season weight, surrendering, giving back to the holler’s soil course. Several milkweed plants near the phone of the wind were giving over to gravity, but it’s late enough in the season that I didn’t have to maneuver around them all that much. Figure it’s fine to mow and mulch them. I do wish I had a better option for one of noxious plants I haven’t identified1Stepped outside to get a photo and run it through the plant identifier app. It’s Spanish needles, aka beggarticks.. It is run amok along the unmowed banks. As its season ends, it shares with the world a small yellow flower followed by a starburst of seeds, which, by late fall will spring onto clothing and stick like velcro to anything it touches. Earlier in the summer I felt hope in thinking there weren’t too many of them returning, but now, today, I see there are hundreds. The solution, I think, is to avoid them. Hope they don’t burr up in Feta’s fur. They’re unmanageable otherwise. As I mowed, I kept thinking about ruderality, or those plants (and more?) that thrive in disturbance zones. I need to lookup the plant one of these days, but by numbers and by observable health, it is home here on this small corner of Appalachia, home here at the end of Rosemary Road.

Notes

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    Stepped outside to get a photo and run it through the plant identifier app. It’s Spanish needles, aka beggarticks.

Feta

/ Derek Mueller
⏳ Approximate reading time: 4 mins
Feta, the Scandinavian Elkhound.

We’d been watching the Montgomery County Animal Control website for a few days, figuring right now to be as good as any time could be for taking the leash on a new pet, a guardian of the chickens who would not succumb to predator instinct nor terrorize the cat, Z. I dragged my feet on an impulse-trip to the shelter on Friday, but on Saturday, sure, why not?, and so we drove across town. We’d seen the profile of a Great Pyrenees who was by breed and age and temperament a promising prospect. The shelter also happened to be hosting an event called Purricane, what I understand to be a kitten season adoption and fundraising extravaganza made even funner-sounding by blending ‘purr’ and ‘hurricane.’ We witnessed it not as so much storm-like but as heavily trafficked with kitty oglers such that were it up to me, I might have gone with Catectacle. Catectacle drew a magnificent crowd.

The foot traffic boded poorly for really meeting a prospective foster dog. The shelter hallways were golldamn, devil, bustling, and most of the dogs mirrored the energy, which was filled with possibility, nerves, anxiety, and barks of all sorts. We met the Great Pyrenees, and then as A. was lingering with her, I walked a round to have a look adjacent, like we did back in the olden days when libraries had books on shelves and we browsed by looking not only for the focal book but also looking around at its near neighbors. As I did, I spotted a dog who quietly and smartly seemed to be telepathizing something like ‘I’m the one.’ A Norwegian Elkhound, she presented as sagely and warm and hearty, like she remembered her great-grandmothers were Scandinavian wolves and that this shelter scene was only temporary. Her self-control under the duress of the raucous shelter ambience suggested a different kind of interiority; I want to be careful here because it’s not as if I am some kind of dog whisperer, but I had a feeling just by pausing with her, looking at each other, that there was more to her than was common. A good feeling, an I-could-get-along-with-this-dog feeling. I was surprised when I went back to A. and said there was another dog here worth of a look that she said she’d already sent a photo of this Elkhound to her mom because it reminded her of her childhood dog, Pepper, who also happened to be a Norwegian Elkhound. A. was thinking that I was hard-set on a Great Pyrenees, but since I wasn’t, the Pyrenees-adjacent, serendipitously glimpsed dog elicited even more interest from us.

Saturday’s click meant Sunday included housewarming and yardwarming efforts: complete the foster-to-adopt form on their website, order and assemble an outdoor pen, and revisit the process that would allow us to have a trial period before committing, as aggression toward Z. or the chickens would be a deal-breaker. The form asked for a list of childhood pets: Cookie, Brandy, Peppy, Sheba, Jake, Kelly, Mushroom, Fang, Pigeon, Max, Tony, Cujo. Not all of these were dogs; Kelly and Mushroom were cats, and Cujo was a guinea pig. But mostly, in those years, dogs were the pet of choice.

We’d been lightly considering for several months a tandem, two dogs, one named Salty and the other Cousin, but fostering two dogs at once was, as the real and pragmatic conditions came into view, just too complicated. With everything else lining up as it did, we were green lighted to pick up the Norwegian Elkhound and bring her home on Monday afternoon. The folks at the shelter had given her the temporary name, Snigglefritz. And we talked some about the decision either to go ahead with calling her Cousin, or, instead, to spend some time with her and for us to come up with other possibilities later. By Monday night, we were thinking either Saga or Feta, both being two syllables with a hard second consonant that would not sound too much with the names of Z. or the chickens. Is. confirmed by text that Feta was a good choice, and so that’s it.

Feta commonly refers to a simple, crumbled, brine-based cheese. Languages being many, in Norwegian, which I don’t know about you but I can plausibly suppose a Norwegian Elkhound more or less comprehends, the word ‘feta’ translates to ‘fat’ in English. Given the troubling ways this pejorative association tracks, we can instead say she is a Scandinavian Elkhound, generally Nordic, possibly Icelandic. But then there is the similar phrase, “fytti faen,” which a lookup tells me is Norwegian for a milder version of “fucking hell,” translated roughly as “golldamn, devil.” Should I be worried about this secondary connotation? No. It’s just enough to not want to shed the Norwegian valences altogether.

We’ll continue for another week in the maybe phase, but after a day it has already become a maybe–probably phase and by tomorrow could be a Feta is where she belongs stage. She’s an astonishingly kind, patient, subdued canine, a creek wolf with Diogenesian quirks who wades in until the water is almost touching her belly, then sits, solving for just-right depth. And golldamn, devil, does she shed. A lot. Guess it’s a seasonal thing, winter coat loosing its blankethold. Creek currents willing, I’ll introduce Feta as friend and flock protector, and, in time, I suspect, as much more.

A Norwegian Elkhound (named Feta) wades in a small creek.
Feta wading in the creek.

An Unlit Stick Pile

/ Derek Mueller
⏳ Approximate reading time: 3 mins

Back felt well enough yesterday that I attempted to unblock the 2″ PVC line that diverts creek water to the pond. I’d attempted to free the line twice this winter, once failing fairly quickly, and the second time taking extra steps to dig out the spring-fed muck underneath the line’s only bend, then to snake from both ends with 25′ coil line. No magic in the conclusion. It was plugged at the bend, 20′ up line from where it empties into the pond, and 10′ down line from where the creek feeds it. The problem remained, but I pushed a stake in the ground and left it there until yesterday. Yesterday I was over-prepared. I’d gathered a belt of implements Wile E. Coyote would’ve admired. But then I tried again with the plumber’s coil and just kept at it, and for a few minutes the line echoed tink ta-tink, tink ta-tink, tink ta-tink before it broke through.

Not that the pond is ready to be corked and refilled. I still need to power wash the retaining wall and coat it with something I have yet to figure out, possibly Drylock, possibly a more basic masonry slurry. And that also means borrowing (or buying, but preferably borrowing) a power washer. And more research about the trade-offs with drylock versus other coatings. Trial and error. Should it be sealed-sealed? Or just laxly coated so as to hold on for a season? What is the hoped for horizon with such things?

The creek burbles along rocks, pooling in a few places before bending east and tunneling under the driveway. It’s in a zone of the yard I am now more than before thinking of as Wonder Hollow Micropark. One purpose for the park is to enjoy it and to put seating there where others can sit when they visit. Another purpose is to write a grant to get the park’s stewardship funded by an outdoors supporting benefactor. I’d guess it’s only 700 SF, a narrow strip between the steep bank of the road, the other steep bank of the mountain, and at the far end, the thicket of brambles where any day now hummingbird guests will return for summer. They showed up last year on April 10. The Micropark catches morning sunlight but is in the shade by 3 p.m. Getting to it—also getting the push mower to it—requires stepping over the creek, or edging slowly along slopes of 20-30 degrees.

The park has a couple of dead trees next to it. When the winds gust, old branches fall. It’s nothing clockwork, this slow, branch-shedding funeral. Tending to the park means piling sticks for burning, eventually. Yesterday I tried to light the heap of sticks using as a wad of scruffy stems that had remained upright throughout the winter, and they started, but then stalled. Nah. Wasn’t to be. The pile will burn another day.

I carried over a garden rake, and walked the creek, nudging free leaf-clumps, a kind of anti-coagulant pass that would by the end leave the stones showing—juts to the sky—and raise the audibility of water falling, here a couple of inches, there a foot, and then another couple of inches, and so on down. Without the leaves the creek reclaims a seasonal aesthetic more pleasing in spring-summer-early fall. Walking the creek slowly, rake in hand, I noticed two different watercress patches where the watercress is fresh and healthy-seeming, and the water courses through it with a calm adjacency, running, but running quietly and casually in contrast to the higher volume rush. Every bend is unique, but one rock in particular bears such a shallow and constant water course that it is more like a rinsed-over ramp than a part of any of the more active transitions. That one rock suggests itself as a painter, much quieter than a poet, like you could pin a sheet of paper or canvas to the rock with two stones, and let the water’s steady rinse make its marks. Creek as mixed media artist.