Tag: maintenance

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.

Februaryisms

/ Derek Mueller
⏳ Approximate reading time: 2 mins
One-Off Non Series #00 “The Disentangler.”

A commitment to attend a youth basketball game, the schedules grandmotherly texted to us, now holds one last opportunity to attend on Monday evening at 7:30 p.m.

A phone call to Virginia Department of Transportation on February 8, and a neighbor’s phone call to VDOT that same week, ‘pot holes multiplying and deeper by the day,’ brought the gravel loader and grater to Rosemary Road for the first time since July 17, 2023.

An impressively steady and unchanging headache all day today confirms that I am afflicted by a cold but have withstood the evidently harsher version of it, which so many around me seem to be hosting, sneezecasting, muling to and fro.

Eighth and ninth class observations within a three week window happened this morning in the two farthest-from-Shanks buildings; I have managed to put together the 600-word write-ups during each class session, then conference with the teachers while walking back to Shanks together. Five more, Friday, Monday, and Wednesday.

A stop-off at Cburg Kroger today had me carrying home sweet potatoes, garlic paste, and Gatorade, with the first two elevating a sriracha peanut butter broth ramen brewed to tame this blerg.

A side-shed hour standing with the chickens as they free-ranged a bit, turning their time in the sunlight to dust bathing, except for Tiny Honey who chose instead to scratch leaves and pull worms.

A book award committee with an intermediate deadline of March 3, so there is time to get to these last two titles (in the first round) but the first ten have me going to the refrigerator for that Gatorade.

A sighting of yellow flowers across the road near the mailboxes tells us the daffodils have bloomed on February 21 for the second year in a row.

And that sighting is through a today-installed picture window, which replaced the one that inexplicably presented us with an expanding diagonal crack in one pane, lower left to upper right, sometime in early December, after which my brother quipped as chemists do “you do realize that glass only appears stable and is actually in a flow state?”.

An air dancer (guardian) is on a timer near the coop and run, set to intervals of fan-fed animation during daylight, unevenly but more or less for 20 minutes each hour, and this afternoon, despite its flailing or perhaps because of it, high above and circling intently were a trio of turkey vultures and a pair of red-tailed hawks (whose earnestness about actually attacking the chickens we have yet to confirm; today they remained distant).

Along with the daffodils, today bloomed 2024’s first invitation to do an external promotion review this summer; rules of the house, strictly enforced, are no more than two because three last year was one too many and four the year before were two too many.

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.