Tamara Unleashed

We dog sat for Brady and Carli this weekend and Craig finally got to witness their very unique style of play which started in September of 2022. Their play centers on Carli humping Brady – sometimes doggie and sometimes missionary position and often with Carli’s head or leg in Brady’s mouth. They wrestle a bit in between and sometimes just need a rest break in the fun. it never fails to make me laugh.

A week ago we were still digging post-holes and laying in the first layer of telephone poles and we were just entering the extreme heat wave. Tonight we are looking at the completed 2 layers of telephone poles with 11 posts.

While the heat was challenging, the shade and fans and lots of diluted Gatorade made it possible. The fact that it did not rain at all since we started the project on June 5 made it so much easier because we did not have to pick up all of the tools at the end of each day and bring them out again the next morning.

Last night, after the last pole was laid into place and secured, we both had a big sigh of relief. Later I saw Craig sitting outside reflecting on all that had to go “go right” along the way for us to get this terrace completed. While we still have work to do, the hard part is over. We were working with old telephone poles that Craig had acquired several years ago. The poles were different diameters and lengths and of variable quality. Craig had a plan to complete it with the existing poles but decided on Wednesday that a couple of the poles planned for posts were too deteriorated to have total confidence in so we found some better quality telephone poles about 15 miles away.

End to end alignment of the poles was challenging and this would have not been possible without Katie Kiota to do the heavy lifting.

Tomorrow we will finish adding gravel and compacting it layer by layer until it is level with the top of the poles. The posts will be cut down to be just above the top of the poles. The we have to figure out how much if any filling of the pasture on the other side of the terrace and how to handle the area on the yard side of the terrace. It will take a couple of truck loads of soil to replace all that has been lost to erosion since this house was built 20 years ago. Hopefully with this and the other much less complicated terraces to come, the new soil will be protected.

There were a few challenging communications during this project. I did get better at waiting for instruction rather than moving forward with what seemed like the obvious next step to me. Much of Craig’s frustration was concern for my safety. I do not have much of a sense of fear and may take unnecessary risks especially given he can’t always see things from my angle.

Wednesday June 26 will be one year since Craig and I initiated our text conversation. We are taking the day off to reflect on all that we have shared and experienced on this fabulous journey.

Digging post holes today provided Craig with ample opportunity to reflect back on the many post holes he dug with Grandpa Clarence on his grandpa’s cattle ranch in western Kansas. Craig never really understood what “hubs of Hell meant” and Grandpa Clarence wasn’t inclined to explain. There were plenty of roots and rock to deal with today so the dirt was definitely HARD in places. The other favorite quote was – “what’s YOUR dirt doing in MY hole?”

We got up at 530 AM and were out working around 7 AM. It was already plenty warm and more humid than yesterday. The second layer of logs was moved into place before deciding on location of the post holes. I spent the day filling in gravel around the first layer of logs and tamping it down. For reasons that are not clear, expect perhaps that it sounds more masculine, Grandpa Clarence pronounced tamping as “tomping” I had a bit of tamping experience before today, but now I AM AN EXPERIENCED TAMPER. We have two sizes of tamping sticks. It is truly amazing how many pieces of equipment/tools we have used in this process thus far.

I was finished getting the gravel tamped down around the lower logs by 3 PM. Craig worked another 15 minutes getting one the 4th of 9 post holes to 2 feet depth – aided by a fan if you look closely.

I thought I was keeping up with fluids and electrolytes today but my body did not think so. Tomorrow I will wear my hydration pack. Hopefully we can get the posts in tomorrow – with more tamping of the gravel around the posts.

By the end of the day, Craig was feeling more positive that this plan is going to work. We have watched a lot of YouTube videos about building terraces but could not find any exactly like what we are doing. Fingers crossed.

I am still trying to figure out if Craig’s statement was positive statement or not. He does appreciate my help – mostly. My need to figure out the next step in the process when I don’t understand the process is challenging for Craig at times. When I try to just wait for instructions my mind starts wandering. I don’t really take orders well. Fortunately I did not become a nurse like I originally intended.

After the driveway washed out for the 4th time, we decided we needed to take terraces from the middle of our TO DO list to the top of it. The amount of soil lost across his sloping land this spring is shocking. It is particularly noticeable when mowing – the tree roots that were barely visible last fall are in full view now.

So we are tackling the terrace at the top where much of the water enters the property. Craig had acquired some telephone poles at some point and after doing measuring and taking a telephone pole inventory, he determined we had enough poles for this most important terrace.

The work started a week ago with marking the line for the terrace and establishing a marker line. Katie Kiota helped break up the dirt along the line for the trench.

Then I GOT TO START DIGGING.

I enjoyed the digging. There were less rocks than Craig thought there might be. I am getting better at cutting through massive tree roots but fortunately Craig has a LOT of experience with them. The telephone poles all had to be power washed before they could be cut with chainsaw. The ends were cut at 45 degrees. Craig spent a lot of time trying to figure out which pole to place where along the line. To make it more interesting, the poles are not all the same diameter. They need to be placed in the trench so that the top surface is even and level which means the floor of the trench is different under each pole. Thank goodness we could use Katie to lift and place the poles as they had to go in and out a few times.

After a week, we have the bottom layer of poles in place. They are level.

Tomorrow we dig the holes for the posts to hold the top level of poles in place. We will put rebar spikes through the poles as well to secure them. Once we have the poles in place we will need to build up the ground between the terrace and the pasture.

This part of the property is in the shade in the first half of the day so with the onset of the heat, we are going to try to go to bed early and get up a 5 AM tomorrow.

BTW, a few days ago I realized for the first time in 6 weeks, I didn’t have any spots that were itching. Such a relief to have the poison ivy gone at last. Just in time for bug season. Craig sprayed the yard a couple of times and we put cedar mulch around the deck so hopefully it will not be too bad this year.

Last Saturday after suffering with poison ivy for nearly 3 weeks, I finally felt all of my spots were dry/healed enough that I could use sunscreen without risk of spreading it. So I applied sunscreen and wore a sleeveless shirt out to do some weeding and wood chipping, At some point I noticed the weed whacker and thought I could do a bit a weed whacking ahead of mowing on Sunday. Less than one minute into the whacking, I realized I had previously seen some poison ivy in the area I was working so I stopped but not soon enough.

Fortunately, I was still on the steroids so I tolerated this round much better. Hopefully I have learned my lesson. Craig has gone on a Poison Ivy massacre three times now. Fortunately he is much less sensitive to it than I am.

Last week Craig took his 16 foot trailer into Nashville to help with delivery of several Nashville Tools for Schools projects. While delivering a new picnic table to one school, the principal asked if the old table could be hauled away. Craig recognized that the table was easily salvageable and decided it was a good project for me (really us) to work on.

We disassembled the table and found that there was only one piece of original wood that was too warped to use as a top piece but we were able to cut it up for replacement supports for the table top. We only needed to use one piece of new lumber. I have learned to use a table top planer – a really great piece of equipment to have when working with hard weathered wood. It would have taken forever to sand the wood into a state that could be stained.

Today we will work on sanding and routing the edges before staining. I am not sure what we are going to do with the table once finished. Perhaps the school will want it back or another school would like it.

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.

The journey continues.

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.