I have had 4 lessons now and am making progress. I generally try to practice after meals for 15-20 minutes and then Craig and I will practice Me and Bobby Magee. He is VERY patient. I could actually keep up with the song better before I started trying to focus on better technique which was a bit frustrating for both of us. This week I am really focusing on right hand technique and learning the notes of the bottom (tonally) strings.
Last week I really needed to “study” like I am used to – with a paper and pencil so I wrote out Bobby Magee in the Key of G, where Craig sings, changing it from Kris Kristofferson’s Key of A version that I usually practice with. It felt really good. The next day Craig gave me a binder for my songs.
My left hand is no longer spastic with “flying fingers” between different notes but I think it will take a very long time to get to a sense of fluid movement between the notes.
As we sat down to breakfast, I glanced at window and saw what I thought was a lizard peering in the window. I thought “how cute”. Then I changed angles and noticed it was a snake. Then I went outside and saw how “relatively”big the snake was.
Craig looked at it and thought it was a venomous pit viper. He has had enough experience with snakes to manage the situation but let’s just say adrenalin was flowing for a while. This is the first snake he has seen on the property in over 10 years. Maybe it’s home was disrupted with the recent massive rain fall.
Just as my anxiety about poison plants was lessoning, I will now be on high alert for snakes.
The Garden is on a slope adjacent to the cow pasture which is at the top of the slope. During heavy rains, the drainage of the pasture runs through the yard and north wooded area to the lowest point – the gravel driveway. After last week’s epic rain, we now have the driveway repaired again after A LOT of gravel spreading and compacting. The house was built on this slope 20 years ago so there has been 20 years of progressive run off such that there are a lot of exposed tree roots around the beautiful old trees that make mowing around them challenging.
For the past 3 weeks, I have been spending much of my time weeding around the trees where the roots are so prominent that you can’t mow. While they look OK for a short time after weed whacking around them, it doesn’t last long. The weather has been beautiful and I have listened to many wonderful books while I sat or stood and pulled weed after weed – salvaging as much soil for the nested roots as I could. It has been a weed massacre. I have thought about this new phase of my life – the joy and contentment I feel and try to make sense of it all. I can’t really. During much of my professional life I was an educator in one way or another – what my mom’s passion. Now I find myself in a place where I am thinking about soil erosion and conservation – my dad’s passion. He put terraces in his fields to help preserve the soil – sacrificing productivity. When the farm was sold, the terraces were removed. Now Craig and I look at the places the water runs across the yard and woods from the adjacent pasture and plan for simple terracing to prevent future washouts. While we now have much better equipment to manage the driveway, there are many more fun projects to do.
Carol Ann the wood chipper’s engine turned out to be a bit of a mess so Craig spent a lot of time getting her ready for action. It was likely true that it had only been used 6 times several years ago and then just sat after someone put the wrong fuel mixture in the engine. While she is running well, she is a bit persnickety and feeding her is not for the feint of heart. It requires eye protection and ear protection and watching for projectiles to come back out the chute. Really hard wood may get stuck and stop the engine. Seeing the mulch around the first 2 trees was very satisfying.
I am going to chip a lot of cedar to put in this area adjacent to the back deck. I have pulled out all of the tall weeds. Cedar is supposed to be bit of an insect repellent. Our first house project will be to extend the deck over this area, add a hot tub with a door into master bath and screen the deck in. Somewhere at the edge of the screened deck will be a small unscreened deck for an open view of the pasture area. Craig is not a bug magnet as I am so that will be his private deck much of the year.
Once I get the mulching done around the trees there are several areas I want to put some perennial, flowering ground cover. Below are before and after of two of the areas waiting for some colorful ground cover at the front of the house. I have not weeded around this tree yet because that is one of the areas where there was a small amount of poison ivy – waiting a bit longer
It is becoming a race to get this gardening done before the heat, humidity and bugs take the joy away.
After contracting poison ivy over 2 weeks ago and not realizing what it was and repeatedly spreading it across my body, this is my new outfit for weeding around the bases of the trees. After discovering we had an enormous amount of PI and Virginia Creeper (VC) in the north wooden area where the burning site is, Craig went on a massacre with weed killer and I always wore calf high socks and long pants when I was out. One day I wore ankle socks with no intention of getting close to our crop. Somehow I managed to get some toxin on my right ankle. I get weird rashes on my skin all the time. It didn’t really occur to me that it could be PI. I only had PI once as a child. While I had Tecnu scrub, Calamine lotion, anti-itch spray, I used topical steroids and spread it around. I am on day 6 of a 16 day course of oral steroids and am still a paranoid mess about spreading it. I take lava and Tecnu scrub showers twice a day and am doing enormous amounts of laundry so no clothing touches my skin more than once.
I am nearly done with my weeding and Craig has done a second round of PI/VC spraying so hopefully I will get beyond the paranoia soon. About 10 days into this experience I recalled my mom using lots of cotton balls to apply the Calamine lotion very carefully to prevent spreading it. I wish that memory would have surfaced earlier.
Last Monday after the second day of compacting the gravel driveway, Craig decided it was time to try out the new metal hook he had gotten to put on the front end of Katie to help lift and move fallen tree branches. There was one in particular that came down last spring that was huge and was partially supported on its way down by 3 small trees and still partially (barely) connected to the trunk.
I was there in my chainsaw chaps ready to cut the logs into liftable size pieces but Craig was in the mood for dragging larger pieces. Guess what happens when you drag a heavy log across the freshly compacted gravel. I was a tiny bit perturbed for a mini second then just laughed.
Two days later we got 9 inches of rain over 36 hours I understood that compacted gravel is no match for large quantities of water running down hill.
At the bottom of the driveway is a stone bridge over the ditch that Craig designed and built in 2016. Thankfully he put fir tress on either side of the bridge as Wednesday when he left during the rain to go to a dental appointment this is what he found at the bottom of the hill. Because of the two small trees just above the center of the photo, he was able to see where to drive.
As soon as the rain stopped the water receded enough that he was able to see the bridge was intact when he came back home two hours later. After the second wave of rain came later in the day, this is was we were left with on Thursday.
Here is all of our gravel at the bottom of the hill across the grass
Craig spent 2 days reclaiming gravel and spreading it up the driveway again. There is still much gravel raking to do but the driveway is pretty much repaired and ready for a day of compacting before it rains again tomorrow.!!!
The forces of nature are amazing.
Today is gorgeous and I will go up and down this driveway as many times as I can to get it as compacted as possible before it rains. What we had last week was the worst it has been the 10 years Craig has been here.
There will be a wonderful Mexican meal at the end of the day at a local family owned restaurant.
We have had busy week. At the end of every day, we have said “We killed it today”. I returned for Iowa late on Monday. We were up early on Tuesday for Tools for Schools on Tuesday followed by a Zoom call for “business”, a session with personal trainer and then to The Garden to mow and weed whack. Weed whacking is soooo much easier with an electric weed wicker. Not as heavy or noisy. As I was weedwacking on Tuesday and Wednesday, I discovered that we are covered up in poison ivy this year. Craig is out on a search and destroy mission for the poison ivy right now.
I started having an unusual rash over the weekend but it has intensified and is on several areas of by body now. Intermittently very itching but no blisters. I always had gloves, long sleeves, long pants and high socks on when outside so I am not sure it is poison ivy.
When I got back Craig told me he had traded a big garden tiller which he had never used for a wood chipper so we can make our own mulch out of the abundance of wood we have. Her name is Carol Ann (named by previous owner). While I thought I was on the fence about being a gardener, it is looking like I am headed that direction — figuring out how to have as little to do as possible in the summer when it is hot and buggy.
Fortunately I had not gotten around to doing weeding around the shed as I might have been tempted to think this was the weeds I had been removing from other areas. Surprise.
We went to another songwriter round on Thursday in a different venue and all singers were enjoyable. We are working towards Craig participating in these rounds.
And I have been diligent about practicing my bass guitar. Miguel thought I was doing very well during my second lesson and I have advanced to practicing scales.
Yesterday we worked for 8 hours on driveway maintenance. A gravel drive running down hill develops ruts. We did a lot of work in December and the ruts we had now were much fewer and smaller. First you have to use the leaf blower to get the old leaves and grass out off of the surface and out of the ruts. Then Craig uses Katie to distribute mounds of gravel on the areas with the ruts. Then the gravel is spread out over the rutted areas with a garden rake followed by running the earth compactor over the entire area which is about 2-3 city blocks long. With the new tractor (Katie) and our very own earth compactor it is much easer to do than when Craig was working with his antique tractor Gilda.
Gilda will be put up for sale this week. Craig has invested countless hours in keeping her running and she works well for a 50 plus year old tractor. Hopefully she will find a good home.
Last night I had finished mowing the lawn and noted that the cows were coming into the west pasture. It was about a half hour before sunset and I had not tried to find #14 since she first approached me a few weeks ago. I walked up to the fence and started talking to the cows as they walked by. None were closer than 10 yards away. Some stopped and looked at me curiously but no one approached. I kept at it for about 5 minutes and then I noticed one cow walking towards me. She got close enough for me to see it was #14. When she was about 10 feet from the fence she stopped to pee. before walking up and licking my hand. As soon as she started approaching the others stopped and watched her and many moved closer. I looked out and the cows were all fanned out looking at me over the adjacent pasture.
I didn’t want to reach for my camera and potentially scatter them so II yelled at Craig who was in the shop. I had to yell pretty loud so he could hear. He looked out saw all the cows and thought I must be injured based on how loud I was yelling. He came running and once her realized I only wanted him to take photos, he needed a minute to recover.
By this time #14, now named Elsie, had wandered off and the others came closer. A young cow (about 6 months old) approached and was very friendly. She let me pet her for about 5 minutes. Even though she was not tagged yet and has NO distintuishing markings I decided to name her Caitlin – seemed timely. Hopefully, I will be able to pick her out in the future. Then #100 approached and let me pet them. I was going to name her Honey until Craig told me Honey was a boy. I quickly renamed him Henry.
They stayed focussed for me on the 15 minutes I stood there. I eventually decided to go in and get ready for dinner.
I had my first bass guitar lesson on Wednesday. This is my practice chart. Miguel who was the lead guitar player in Natalie Stovall and The Drive has agreed to give me lessons. I am very comfortable with him as I embark on the journey. I am learning on an electric bass guitar which we were able to acquire used. I had to get a practice amp that can easily be moved from place to place. Money has been invested and I will do my part with an open mind and practice to see if I can become an adequate bass player to accompany Craig.
Now for a couple of updates. The mice seem to be gone so the silver ware drawer is back in place. I successfully the tires on the bike. Now to find time to fit all of the activities in.
The new major project at The Garden is to get new gravel laid down to refresh the driveway that will go all the way around the shop. There is now a garage door opener on the south door where I park my car. We can now fit two cars, a truck, a tractor and the lawn mower in the shop in addition to the 46 Chevy Panel truck that is further down the list of activities to get running again.
Inside we have a living room to paint and kitchen and master bath to remodel. The bath remodel will include an outdoor hot tub. So much fun ahead.
While I grew up helping in our vegetable garden and canning the produce, it was never my thing. In large part because I needed to avoid the sun AND I am a bug magnet with rather extreme reactions to bites. The fact that I have found real joy in pulling weeds around the trees and around the house this past week has taken me by surprise. After mowing last Saturday and weed whacking on Sunday I was left with the below. I wasn’t sure how much may be flowers. Craig is not a gardener and the flowers that are here were here when he moved in. So I called my friendly gardening expert Deb. She said to send her pictures. Within minutes she had sent me her assessment of what was in each picture along with the warning that there was poison ivy in several places
Bottom line, most of what was growing was not flowers so I set about pulling weeds. The weather has been perfect. Sixties and low seventies and there are no bugs yet. Listening to podcasts and books I have had a great time pulling weeds and learning which are easy to pull out with roots and which require a trowel. I see the squirrels playing, wild turkeys in their mating ritual, hear peacocks who live across the road. and the woodpeckers The cows are often nearby. It has been immensely satisfying,
The before and after are pretty dramatic. Craig is an expert at the poison ivy.as h
e hauled 6 truck loads of poison ivy vines away after he moved here 10 years ago. I am over half way through with getting rid of the weeds. It will be so much easier to mow. Now Craig wants to know what I am going to do with the areas I am cleaning up. Am I ready to become a real gardener and actually plant something? Should I just mulch or should I just weed in the spring and see how fast the weeds come back before beautiful weather for weeding next spring?
I am off.to Iowa for the weekend and hopefully I will still have a week of good weather for gardening when I return.
Craig generally lets me know when he takes his hearing aids out at night so I know that he will not be able to hear whatever I may say unless I am very close to his ears. The other night he modified it a bit. “I am going to take my hearing aids out. Wait a minute if you have any complaints.” It took me a few seconds to process what he said and erupt in laughter.
We finished our step project a week ago. I made the stone landing at the top. A good upper body work out rearranging the pieces. The following morning Craig left bed first which generally means he is getting coffee. He came back a few minutes later without coffee and I asked what he had been doing and he said “I went outside to go up and down our stairs.” It was 49 degrees out. He sleeps in the buff. He does not like the cold. It still makes me laugh.
I love looking out the kitchen window and admiring our shared project.
Tamara Unleashed 