Fragments From Floyd

Yesterday–a chilly Sunday morning so windy and rainy I didn’t bother taking an umbrella–it would have been blown inside-out when opened up on the hill outside Huffville Church.

Rounding one of the many blind curves toward home just before the rains swept up from the piedmont of North Carolina to give us yet another soaking, I come upon a free-ranging cow and calf sauntering ahead of me in the middle of the road, reluctantly moving over finally to let me pass.

It dawned on me where they most likely belonged–to a new neighbor that recently moved into the farmhouse on our road that sat vacant for more than a year. They have horses, too, and the fence is good enough for horses–but apparently not for cows.

Not ten minutes after I got in the house, momma and baby were in the yard eating grass (and making deposits) near the Here’s Home sign. Even though I closed the curtains to prevent it, the dog spotted our bovine visitors and all heck broke loose.

Tsuga quieted down a bit after the cows went out of sight for him, though I watched them through the window at my desk as they grazed the entire edge of the pasture and finally disappeared beyond the end of the valley.

I didn’t know how to get in touch with the animals’ owner (we know first names only) and decided NOT to try to herd them back a mile up the road and back inside their obviously defective fence.

Half an hour later, as I tried to take a ten-minute nap, the dog went crazy (again) at the sound of several hounds ranging in the wet woods of our ridge. From the front porch, I fired the .22 a time or two into the creek bank and the dogs moved on. (They reappeared acoustically about an hour after we went to bed last night. Now who do THEY belong to and why does the owner let his dogs run wild?)

Another half hour–about 1:00–and the storms started in earnest, wave upon wave of thunder and lightning, and the dog (yet again) goes bonkers. The older he gets the more terrified of storms he seems to become. He was determined he was coming up into my lap, all 90 pounds of him, no matter where I tried to settle.

He also for the first time in the past month has taken to running up the steps when he’s upset–the upstairs a forbidden area–and we’ll have to get a childproof expanding fence to go across the bottom of the stairs.

And finally at the end of a frazzled day, as Ann got home from work and started on dinner at dusk, we are startled by a knock on the back door–something that always means something more than a neighborly visit. Neighbors generally call first or honk or holler from the driveway to hullo us as a polite warning. Maybe this was the cow’s owner, come looking, we both thought.

No. A very wet stranger stood dripping in the door, his truck he said was a half mile up the road over the edge with only one tree stopping it from ending up on its top.

Like many of our door-knockers, this one also enjoyed high ethanol content and correspondingly altered reflexes. We called a wrecker, gave him some hot chocolate and temporary use of my jacket and stood him by the wall space heater to warm up.

After a half hour of manufactured conversation, I deposited him back up on the road to await the wrecker folk who said they’d be right there. Ann and I never saw the disabled truck (that was heading this direction when it was spirited off the road) or the wrecker go by, so don’t know how that story ended. Maybe it hasn’t, yet.

I’m through whining for now. And I’m hoping the dog will have a more peaceful day.

Update 8 a.m. : as daylight comes to Goose Creek (and I haven’t told the dog yet) I see we have two black and white hooved animals grazing contentedly in our pasture. They seem quite at home. Should anyone come looking, you can’t miss ‘em. If not, we have two large pets until the grass dies back in November.

Yesterday was one of those “pulled thread” days in which undertaking Task A pulls out Task B which unravels to reveal Task C…

The alarm to drain the water filtration tank popped up, and like most alarms, I snoozed it for almost a week until yesterday. I was going to be string-trimming the remains of the Jonquils along the branch anyway (and the tall grasses down in the wet depression where the temporary stream flows) so might as well open the door to what was a root cellar when we first saw the place and connect the garden hose and open the valve and let iron-tainted rust-colored water flow out of the tank and into the grass of the front yard.

Lo in the darkness, there were the screens that had been moved off the wooden love seat I’d tugged out of the cellar, up and over the rock wall, to put on the back porch for Abby’s friends that came to visit us while she was here two weeks ago. I’d moved the screens in front of the tank, so while I was draining the tank, having put down the string trimmer, I moved the screens out of the way and up onto the back porch.

And of course, I couldn’t have the screens as an unsightly greeting when She got home, so I forgot about the string trimmer, remembered to turn the water off after 10 minutes, and began installing screens. It was just starting to rain.

And thus last night through the screened and open windows, I was able to hear the torrential downpour and know in the wee hours that yesterday’s lettuce and chard seeds that completed the row containing the potatos, the grass seed over the ramped walkway entry into the garden and the buckwheat seeds planted yesterday afternoon as a cover crop to hold the soil over the poorer parts of the garden against erosion were all washing downstream along with more than a few pounds of our topsoil.

So I wished I’d snoozed the drain-the-tank alarm at least one more day. I’d have slept better.

” Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of care,
The death of each day’s life, sore labor’s bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,
Chief nourisher in life’s feast”

I wish you could step out onto the front porch with me this morning, that I could send you the sound of the creeks, the soft exchange between a towhee and a distant whippoorwill in the half-light; that you could feel the calmness, silhouettes painted against a dark pewter sky before dawn.

It is too early yet for the smell of pollen from the pasture grasses, but we’ve already had hints of the “mystery perfume” whose source we have yet to identify.

It is for me the most perfect of times, some wildflowers of spring still holding on, the rank overgrowth of summer yet to come. The garden lies fallow and full of promise like this white space before me filling with words never before seen above ground.

I’ll put in some lettuce this morning–a few weeks too late–to join the dozen strawberry plants a friend brought us, and the couple of dozen potato plants that was all we have room for this year.

I tilled the garden yesterday after unfouling the spark plug (thanks to a small-engineer neighbor for the problem-solving) and the term “from scratch” came to mind as I lurched along behind the Honda struggling to make a dent in the poorer soil on the shed end of the garden. Toward the house, a fill of topsoil gives us some depth and that’s where the potatos went. The rest of it will take a couple of years of cover crop, compost and sweat equity to bring to good tilth.

And in this world where almost never do goods come unadulterated with their own costs, my back is not doing very well since unloading a half ton of donkey doo from my truck. A recurrent muscle injury creeps in a day or two after this kind of moderate physical work these days to keep me humble.

There’s a fine line between humble and broken. But I’ve spent a lot of years teaching folks how to cope with physical disability, to adapt and problem solve. So I vow to be both resolute and reasonable and do what I can with the tools and time I have. All a body can do.

And regarding other crops: I sometimes consider an end to this long stream of verbiage and then I run across readers of various of my rambles who give me encouragement–two emails yesterday from Slow Road Home readers and in town, neighbors I’d never met–one who reads the blog and one who reads the Floyd Press columns. Thanks, all.

On mornings like this, the words come easily, and then the quiet moments I am heading toward just now with a third cup of coffee. Come with me. Listen.

…to actually getting something in the ground.

The metal roofing comes in next week, then the rough pine siding goes up, then the door, and finally the two old windows selected from those that came out of the house when we renovated in ‘99.

It is the gentrified gardening equivalent to the world’s fanciest outhouse going up in downtown Floyd.

Somewhere an owl hoots in the dark, moon sinks in a slant slicing across the corner of my window beyond a barricade of maple branches. And I am exhausted. How do single moms, double moms, whole platoons of moms (occasionally plus dads) live through the constant demands of infanthood? How can one small child be so consuming of attention, energy and care? I’d forgotten how constant a baby is–compared to, say, a dog that you can ignore in good conscience, bribe with a piece of kibble or put in the pen and let him bark.

As of yesterday, we’re keeping Taryn (seven months) and Abby (seven years) for four days while their parents visiting from South Dakota attend a wedding in Charlotte. Abby of course has the creek, the dog, and her own imagination to entertain her. I’ll be going out with her later this morning to see how many wildflowers we can find.

But the addition of little Taryn throws these granddaughterly visits into another light entirely.

Ann and I had forgotten 1) how much a baby can eat and how often and with demand this with such urgency; 2) how no matter where you put the baby on the thrice-cleaned floor she will immediately find a piece of bark for her mouth and crawl inexorably toward the dog’s water bowl; 3) about throwing up; and 4) about what happens in a short time to all those strained carrots, a transmogrification that requires at least six hands and a dozen baby wipes to contain–and we also remembered to NOT attempt this Superfund cleanup on the grandparent’s bedspread–ever!

Taryn nodded off to sleep in my (aching) arms on a walk back down the logging road at dusk last night. Wonderful. I laid her in the bed we have for her (a play pen–not ideal body mechanics as the sides don’t let down and lifting and lowering become a major back risk) and she stayed asleep–for ten minutes, and woke up crying. More milk, and no more crying. Repeat this cycle twice more.  She woke up around 9 (by which time we were zombies) and wanted to play which at that point meant crawling over the moribund bodies of Granny Annie and Dumpa near-lifeless in bed. She was determined to stick her pacifier in my mouth.

When she woke up at 1:30, she went immediately to sleep after 3 more ounces of formula. Because Ann got the notion the baby was cold (it was 71 inside–I went and looked) she insisted the baby sleep between us under the covers. I dare not move all night long for the fear of waking her up. I really should have moved. I feel like lead pipe wobble-head doll.

Sometimes they just ain’t enough coffee. Yes, later I’ll have pictures.

There is first the feeling of let-down, the weight of responsibility removed that should let you float free–but for a while, habit of duty still oppresses, smothers, blames you for your sudden idleness.

Then comes the shaft of light breaking through to reveal empty space, unspoken for energy, free clear days on the calendar, “me time”. Aha!

You immerse yourself in all the things you weren’t able to focus on while the Big Event consumed you. It is exhilarating at first, this new freedom, until you become overwhelmed by what has been left undone. Even so, you slip in a few totally unnecessary, unproductive diversions–a few wildflower photos, a new widget for the desktop, a chapter in a neglected book found between the couch cushions, started pre-Big Event.

Then life settles in again, and another B.E. comes along and the cycle repeats.

Thursday we go fetch the grand daughters–the youngest in diapers and a whole new ball game. The intensity and seriousness of the cleaning frenzy imposed by the General on the single Troop here would make you think we were preparing to host the Bubble Boy. I say a little dog hair is good for their immune systems. But that’s another story.

Friday while the girls are very much with us, the SAWC writers meet the Floyd writers in town, and grudgingly, I’ll be allowed to shirk my grandfatherly duties to go party–which I will do with full and focused intent. But I’ll pay for it.

And finally, when we get back from taking the girls to meet their parents in Statesville on Sunday, the shaft of light will break through, the unpaid bills will beckon, and I’ll play with all the pictures taken over a few days of child’s play (and some adult play, too) on Goose Creek. And life goes on.

Image: mayapples unfurl, wet umbrellas, fairy parasols covering the hillside, glisten with spring rain

If misery loves company, then we should be pretty happy. I keep hearing of more folks who once were able to garden unmolested–or should I say unDEERravaged. But once THEY get the taste of something tastier than grass, there’s no turning back. And others I’ve heard about are going vertical so the horizontal is worth the time, expense and sweat-equity that goes into a garden.

And this garden fence will outlast us by a long shot, and others will reap the harvest of our investment–her investment, really. I would have given up. Between the above ground and below ground invaders, the insects that come earlier each year, the cold soil, the arthritic body parts and the general lassitude of the end of middle age, I would have written off the garden as one of those things once precious and productive of both gratification and groceries.

Life goes on, and as one ages, they gradually relent and give things up, rather in reverse order to the gains added in strength, skill and wit as one grows older. I was prepared to let gardening go. I hope I’ll be glad she was determined to invest in the earth–an increasingly wise place to put one’s income as banking on human economies becomes more and more a gamble. But I digress.

I’ll show additional shots over the next few weeks and the summer. This one puts the garden in context–below and nearer the house, wedged between the road (plus the county’s cussed 15 foot right of way that eats considerably into our only level potential garden plot) and the bank, which we’ve had to excavate into and then shore up with railroad ties on the house end. Exposure is long side to the southeast.

We were limited in the length and stopped where we did opposite the house because to come farther image-left brought us into the septic field. Construction offers not so many options on “mountain land” and you use what you’ve got.

You can see how close to the creek the garden is–good for using the little lawn and garden battery for pumping to irrigate if we need to (versus running a hose straight down the drive from the well’s artesian pressure to power a trickle-hose.)

Being on the creek is bad in the sense that we are in the low point of a low sheltered valley– a frost pocket–and a growth zone NORTH of the main plateau of the county a mile and a half west and five hundred feet higher than we are. Our hours of sun, of course, are also reduced here (and so is the summer heat that Roanoke will endure. We’re often 10 degrees or more cooler here in July and August.

So we’ll need season extending ideas. Cold frames, for instance. And someone emailed about “plunge pits”–I haven’t googled that yet, but will. I’m also going to put down some scrap black plastic in a few places for a couple of weeks to see if we can get the soil temps up so seeds don’t rot in our garden when most Floydians have plants a foot high.

The garden shed will cover the width of the garden and be ten feet deep, open for the most part on the house side. You can see the taller post that will support the header for the metal roof. That work may start today.

Bottom line: I’m feeling almost extinguished garden zeal again. We’ll see what comes of it. Stay tuned.

   The neighborhood kids piled in our Chrysler, front and back, all eyes fixed on the odometer. And on the 5th or 6th trip around the block, there was what we’d come to see: all those zeros rolling up at ten thousand miles–an incomprehensibly large round number. Wow!

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It is called “The British Beat Live! and was a gift recently from my wife. On the CD, the stars from the sixties–those who survive and can still stand and sing–do so before a live audience of those who knew their songs as Top 40 hits. They perform some more or less mutated version of their original music (even while the backup bands provided for the event are often decades younger as rock band members of the era probably had rather short performance or life expectancies).

I used to sing those songs and play them on the guitar, so small wonder I had to sing along with my peers (where do those lyrics live in the brain all these decades?) in their noble if not always impeccable efforts to recreate those lived moments from a time long ago. Don’t Let the Sun Catch you Crying. A World Without Love. Groovy Kind of Love.

A thousand gray heads swayed and bobbed in the swirling stage lights to the rough beat as Reg Pressly and one or more Troggs hammered out Wild Thing. You make my heart sing. I had to wonder if that much excitement might make their hearts go into fibrillation. Old people, young hearts, and the deep places that melody and memory live together. Life goes on within us and without us, another British group told us.

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I watch the miles add up, having been around the block a time or two myself by now. So adding a six on this particular date to but a single zero is just one more mile, and yet also makes for what seems like an incomprehensibly large number. Wow!

So climb on in, lets see where this thing is headed. And by all means, roll down the windows and let the wind blow what hair your have left; turn on the radio to the Oldies Channel and crank up the travelin’ tunes! Let’s see what kind of music the sixties give us this time ’round the block.

Seems fitting that this seasonal story be retold just now as the same set of characters and props congregates on Goose Creek: a mailbox, a writer with a gun and a phoebe intent on defacing a front porch lintel with moss and poop. Here’s how the story ends:

I slapped the handcuffs on the criminal’s wrists and wisked me away, sobbing. I am incarcerated now in the white clapboard house near the damaged mailbox, and will be serving a sentence of three hundred thousand words to life. I am counting on early parole for good adverbs. Please send e-cards (and if you could slip a small file in as an attachment, it’d be muchly appreciated.)

Read the rest of True Detective from Fragments ~ June 2003.

And I should add that we have solved (we hope) the lintel problem by covering it with aluminum foil that both protects the paint and confuses the bird. So far this year, no nests.

Some–perhaps many–of our virtual technologies separate us from the real events and places and times of our lives. That is exactly what so much of computer life consists of for some folks–the virtual travel, adventure, action and detachment of simulated realities that removes the X-boxer, the Second Lifer from the mundane grind of the ordinary.

Discovered this morning on my Mac a technological wonder that is like a digital knitting machine that does just the opposite of what I described above. It weaves together a tapestry of memories, experience and familiar faces using my photographs–tens of thousands of them–into a single image mosaic of another composition in time and place: a screen saver that creates an amalgam of a photographer’s life.

It begins like a normal image-based screen saver with a single image on the screen. After a short pause, that image recedes into the distance, becomes one of a thousand, and other images appear in rows and columns, also receding, growing smaller and smaller as they move into the “distance” of the monitor screen.

In the end, each of the several thousand images on the screen become a pixel in another image in the group of images I’ve selected. A first image of Ann’s Falls is joined by scanned images of our children, the dog in the snow–Buster, our dog that died in 2004; friends who visited us here so long ago I’d forgotten; various silly blog posts going back to 2002–images aggregated and oriented as needed to build light and shadow, blues, greens and golds to give shape to the “whole” of our house in the fall. This then starts the sequence again, building another whole from fragments of memory and light.

Life is like this after all–each conversation, each view out the window a metaphor mosaic of all the days, memories, language, and experience come before, nothing lost, receding into the distance called the past–pixels in our evolving grasp of who and where we are and were.

You can watch a demo of this here.