Ticked Off Birds Cuss Me Out

The little brown bird's house and two newly-paved paths

Chrrrr! Chrrrr! Chrrrr! Chrrrr! CHRRRRR!

The little brown bird is totally ticked off – I ventured too close to its birdhouse again and the language coming out of that little body is truly peppery. Until three days ago, whenever I ventured too close to the house perched atop a garden post, he would immediately start scolding, and I could see his mate peek out of the birdhouse door to see what was going on, then pull back in, out of sight. Three days ago I heard peeping coming from the house, and both parents started flying back and forth from house to woods, bugs in beaks. I haven’t been able to get close enough to get a good peek inside, but I hope I’m in the garden when the babies fledge.

Facing away from the garden is another birdhouse, attached to the garden arch, this one with a sticks-mostly nest. It’s deeper than the little brown bird’s house, and so I don’t see anyone in it; but there’s a lot of to-ing and fro-ing around it, and I’m pretty sure I hear a deeper voice adding to the cusswords flying about when I try to do work at that end of the garden. 

The red house on the archway and more paved paths

 

The garden – boy, this has been a wicked slow, frustrating slog this spring. Between night-time temperatures too cold for tomatoes, a virus I caught that kept  me in bed during my annual garden-planting vaction when I should have been outside laboring in the dirt, and the lack of rain that means I’ve been poking seeds into what appears to be dust, I’m still not entirely finished. It’s late enough in the month that I think I’m going to have to give up on the remaining beans, but there’s still time – barely – to plant the basil and annual flower seeds. 

To add to the slowness of the process, I decided that this year I was going to change some stuff – I waste so much time weeding every year, trying to keep the field out of the garden and needing to spread hundreds of dollars worth of straw mulch between the beds, something had to break.  My garden is all raised beds – when we bought this field a hundred years ago, it had been a cow pasture, and below the first inch of topsoil was nothing but hard-pan, something that no rotor-tiller or even tractor was able to dig up. So we built raised beds, trucked in topsoil, and began the long and laborious job of building more soil with lots of cardboard and newspaper mulch covered with straw, and several compost bins always in play. Then one year some nasty grass seed in my so-called straw took over the entire garden in one season – that grass could sprout through15 layers of paper and cardboard, and did. I eventually gave up, after The Tall Dude, at the time a farmer, when called in to give his opinion and I asked, “What can I do to fix this?” answered, “You can’t. Give it up.”

Bird's-eye view of most of the garden

A few years later, after enjoying thoroughly a few years of planting a few things only in pots on the wart, I got sick of battling the chipmunks for the tomatoes and not having enough to freeze, so I started, one bed at a time, reclaiming the garden. Many years and many tons of newspaper and cardboard and heat-treated straw (in theory it kills any seed that might be in it), we’ve remastered the beds to a large extent. Some of the things I’d planted that had disappeared – bee balm, Jerusalem artichokes, asparagus – reappeared in unexpected, but mostly fortunate, places. Some things had disappeared altogether – most of the asparagus. And even though the beds are mostly re-domesticated, the paths remain a constant struggle, and if I turn my back for a moment the grass will happily jump back into the beds.

Wasteland waiting to be conquered - yes, that's cardboard and newspaper!

But this year it occurred to me that really, I know where the paths are and I’m no longer looking to build soil between beds in order to make them larger – at this point, the garden’s a little too big to take care of comfortably. But it’s the smallest size that makes sense, because we fill one of our freezers with vegetables and fruit from the garden and that’s a necessity for our health and our finances. But, damn, all that treated straw is expensive, and needs to be replaced every year, and all that mulching and weeding is time expensive. 

Bath and Ball

So I made a trek down to the local building supply place to see what pavers would cost me, and was shocked to discover they’re a whole lot cheaper than the straw I’ve been using, and if I put some landscape fabric under them (blocks weeds) I shouldn’t have to even deal with weeds between the pavers. And, for 15 bucks they’ll deliver a palette stacked high with pavers and bags of pebbles and bricks and bags of natural cedar mulch with their big truck, saving me about a thousand trips back and forth to the store, and lifting the heavy things twice more than I absolutely have to, and I get the entertainment of watching the amazing drivers use their on-truck crane up close. It’s worth the $15  just to watch them delicately lift the palette and stretch it across the lawn and put it down exactly where I want it right next to the garden. Whoo!

It's so much fun to watch that I’ve repeated it three times already.

Waiting to be used

I’ve moved 5 bags of pebbles and about 150 pavers so far, and I’ve got another 5 and 75 waiting for me, plus 60 bricks. The bricks and the pebbles make the gaps between pavers disappear – this isn’t a structured, measured garden – it grew and was lost and was regained bit by bit, and it’s not at all organized except in my mind. The pavers set wobbly, and sometimes crack, and there are gaps because where they need to go wasn’t prepared with pavers in mind. But you know – I kind of love it, anyway.

Pebble path between beds

I know myself well enough to know that if I don’t fix the paths as I plant the beds, I won’t go back into the garden in the hot days to hump brick paving blocks around. So that’s also slowed me down some, and made me glad for the cool weather and nice breezes that have kept mosquitoes and too-hot-to-work at bay most days. But I think the extra work’ll be worth it. And my aching arms and back are reason enough to stand up straight and watch the birds try to tell me off. I still find myself in the garden at 8 pm some nights, unless Buzzy Boy has chased me home when it gets later than he thinks I should be in the garden. Since the peeping started, he seems less inclined to visit the garden than he did earlier this season. As little as the angry brown bird is, he’s several times the size of Buzzy Boy the hummingbird!

Peas, beets, onions, fava beans and some escaped Johnny-Jump-Ups.

All photos copyright Deb Marshall 2018.

For the blog alone, 15 June 2018. 

Will This Vacation Never End???

Wood frog outside the kitchen door; Deb Marshall photo

Tenth day of 17-day “vacation” and counting: so far I’ve spent one full day (Day 2) doing work-related paperwork and sending the Tick article to the newspaper, two full days (Day 1 and Day 5) making trips to the city with Mom to get stuff we needed, and a return for stuff we needed but neglected to get during the first trip. Two more full days (Days 3 and 4, one of them wicked hot and one raining) were spent with a friend who was down visiting from Maine, whom I see only a few times per year. The first day of his visit we managed to get the two potato bags planted and then gave up and took the Barkie Boy for a walk, because even late afternoon it was too hot to think. The sixth day of vacation I donned garden war gear: bug-spray soaked bandanna, DEET-soaked elastic-ankle pants and socks, bug-spray-soaked long-sleeved shirt, DEET-sprayed sandals - and headed out to the garden.

Spring lovelies; Deb Marshall photo

Three days before that the local building-supply-and-other-stuff place showed up in their gimongous truck with my relatively small order plastic-wrapped on top of a wooden pallet in the middle of the giant, otherwise empty, truck: 3 bags of pebbles, 15 bags of cedar mulch, 30 patio blocks, 2 bags of chopped straw, and 4 bags of potting soil (to go with the 4 I’d hauled home with me in the back seat of the car the week before). This was major excitement, I gotta tell you: the truck was big and loud enough to wake the mostly-deaf Barkie Boy out of a deep sleep, and big enough that it took the Husband and the Truck Driver Dude a good 15 minutes of discussion to decide where to put the truck to get the pallet where I needed it, and how to turn the truck around once that was accomplished. I live pretty much in the middle of a field, you need to understand, but there’s a garden and a house smack in the middle, a well and a septic tank and leach field to either side, and a low spot that, this time of year, might be soft if a giant truck were to venture over the lea. All the while, much barking ensued, as the Barkie Boy announced his opinion of the situation.

Lots of these this spring; Deb Marshall photo

Eventually they got the plan worked out and pulled the truck in-between the well-head and the wart steps, then the Truck Driver Dude climbed up onto the very top of the cab and sat on a seat that let him operate a wicked exciting crane. I’d never seen a crane at work close enough to actually watch, and I’ve got to tell you, it was impressive, and exciting enough that I’ve decided it was worth the $15 delivery charge (that would have equaled at least 6 car trips and a lot of cussing and sore muscles to move the same materiel over several days or weeks) just for the entertainment, and I fully intend to repeat the order so long as they’ll promise to deliver on a Monday when I can watch. What a skilled Crane Dude can do with a crane is breath-taking. The crane acted like a robotic arm – I couldn’t believe the tiny little sensitive corrections the Dude was able to make – I was gob-smacked, to say the least.  And the Barkie Boy had more excitement than he’d had since the Minister’s Husband showed up with his two Barkie Boys and there was a flurry of unexpected treats and Big Dog bumping.

Big dogs agitating for a treat; Deb Marshall photo

And, I got a pallet out of it, which anyone with a home-constructed compost bin knows is like getting a free prize.

Sherlock; Deb Marshall photo

So, anyway, back to Garden Day: so much weed-sprouting has taken place since the weather turned sometimes warm enough for planting that I couldn’t just stroll out to the garden and make big dents in the chore. First I had to weed the 2 beds I’d planted almost 2 weeks ago, and everything – perennials and the newly-planted stuff – needed watering because it’s been extremely dry since I last planted. Then I needed to get some of that mulch in place, on top of layers of winter-collected newspaper and cardboard to cut down on the amount of time I waste weeding paths in my raised-bed garden. Then I needed to do the same in one problem path, on top of planter’s paper, with some of the paving stones. Then I needed to start weeding the next couple of beds I intend to plant. By then I was exhausted and the blackflies were ignoring the bug spray, and it was late afternoon.

I girded my loins and got the rest of the onion sets planted and one and a half packages of peas in. I discovered I have no idea what biennial  - or maybe perennial – flower I planted near the end of last planting season, near the color-changing ball in the garden. It’s come up beautifully and flowered in white and purple, the bees love it, and it looks like phlox except there’s no scent and the leaves are wrong. There are another couple of mystery plants, too…maybe this year I’ll finally learn to write this stuff down, which I enthusiastically do at the beginning of the season and regularly don’t at the end.

Mystery plant; Deb Marshall photo

That was Thursday, I think. That night, the little cough I’d had that was left-over from my once-a-year bout of virus, three weeks before – I thought -  bloomed into something that kept me up all night, coughing my brains out until I retched. Day 7 I spent at the ER, making sure I didn’t have pneumonia, which those sneaky little viruses have had an affinity to develop into, this year, and collecting prescriptions for an antibiotic – which even I, after so long with a nagging cough that Chinese meds weren’t entirely eliminating, am willing to swallow (unlike some folks, my body generally gets along well with pharmaceuticals, which is important to know about your own body) and a cough suppressant – which doesn’t. Suppress, that is. After I got home, I gathered just enough energy to get most of the plants that needed to be put in wart pots into wart pots, and watered them. Then I collapsed, hacking and cussing, onto the couch.

Front wart planter; Deb Marshall photo

Days 8 and 9 were spent lying on the couch, sleeping when I wasn’t hacking and retching and – well, you ladies of a certain age know what else. Let's just say that after this is all over, I'll have a mound of carefully folded wash cloths to deal with. At night, I spent my time hacking and retching and that other thing, and sleeping for a few minutes in-between bouts. I think it may have rained part of that time. I did manage to cover the wart plants on the cold night and refill the hummingbird feeders. And pick a tick or two off myself, compliments of one or another of the Furry People. And freaking out because the gardening isn’t getting done, and I can hear the weeds growing.

The Husband hasn’t been entirely without use – today he planted 10 hazelnut plants one of his clients gave him, he hooked up the hoses and helped water, and he’s moved a bunch of the mulch bags to where I need them. But the man grew up in Cincinnati and if I handed him some seeds to sow, he wouldn’t have a clue what to do with them – it’s best to wait until I can at least supervise. 

Coughing until you puke isn’t much fun. I’m a Chinese medical practitioner – no, before you ask, acupuncture really doesn’t help stop coughing from a virus. The herbs weren’t working alone, or in combo with each other. The right medicine is the medicine that works – be it pharmaceutical, Chinese, Ayurvedic, homeopathic, over the counter, or folk.  In my case, none of these has worked – so now I’m combining. One pharmaceutical cough not-supressor, plus ½ dose of Nyquil, plus Chinese cough syrup as needed, plus Chinese cough meds in pill form, plus a heating pad on neck or low back, will give me a break for a few hours so I can sleep and all the aching muscles in my torso can get less sore. 

Yesterday wasn’t too coughy during the day, and I had enough energy to make a beef stew for supper, so I tried eliminating the pharmaceutical not-supressor and the Chinese cough pill at night. Last night was not a pretty night, and I was awake and retching most of it. Today, Day 10, trying not to freak out about how many days I don't have left to get the garden in, I’ve had only enough energy to do some work on the computer. The Barkie Boy isn’t getting his walk, again – the Husband’s working, and I fear collapsing by the side of the road coughing and retching and that other thing if I try walking the boy, and he’s too old to drag me home. I did wander around the garden for a few minutes to take photos for you, however, and in the process pulled a couple of handfuls of weeds, which was enough to convince me it’s too early to be head down for long!

A feral plant that domesticated itself; Deb Marshall photo

I was excited to be dive-bombed several times when I went out on the wart during the last few weeks – as soon as I put out the hummingbird feeders, in fact. The Husband has been, also, and we’ve both caught a couple of glimpses of the dive-bomber. Buzzy Boy is back, hurrah! I really feared we wouldn’t see him this year, being unsure how old hummingbirds can live to be. He hung out with me when I was planting up the wart plants the other day, and he’s very busy chasing off other hummers, though there’s a little female he tolerates. He hasn’t chased me out of the garden yet, but then, I haven’t been in the garden much, yet. 

Buzzy Boy's domain; Deb Marshall photo

Both birdhouses that we put out in April on the garden arch and one of the garden posts have nesting material in them. I haven’t seen the birds who are using them, and I’ll need to get a flashlight to get a good look inside to see if there are eggs, but I’m thrilled to know they’re being used. I have a clematis we’ll plant at the base of the arch where that birdhouse sets; the climbing plant I put there last fall doesn’t seem to have survived the winter, alas, but maybe by next year the clematis will make a lovely bower for that house. Both houses are near the sour cherry tree and blueberries, and not far from the bird-bath I put at that end of the garden. I’m trying sweetpeas and garden peas along that part of the fence this year and hope they’ll sprout and grow soon.

One wet night when the wood frogs were still quacking and the peepers had just started, when I let the Barkie Boy out for last pee I found a wood frog setting on my kitchen door. There wasn’t enough light to get a good shot, and the flash agitated it, but here’s a look, anyway – I’d never seen one before, they’re very shy. Last night I noticed that the woodcock is still peeting away in the field, trying to lure ladies, the peepers are quieter but still peeping, and the toads have started their night-time carols in the wooded marsh behind and to the side of the house. Their trilling choruses always send a thrill up my spine.

Wood Frog from inside the kitchen door window; Deb Marshall photo

It’s a totally gorgeous time of year – as fully colorful as autumn, but gentler. The trees, as they bloom, range from rose to tender green, from bronze and copper to the dark of the conifers. My field is swathed with wild forget-me-nots – white from a distance, a pale violet up close. There are higher white patches of pussytoes. The cemetery pinks are in full bloom, as are the wild cherries, the honeysuckle around the old house foundation wall, the gone-wild apple trees, and the ground is fluffed with the confetti of their dropped blooms. 

Dandelions, once a hot-house cherished plant, dot the world in yellow; black locust and lilac scents the air. My seckel pear tree, a lone pear that produced a lone fruit last year, is awash with blooms this year, as is the sour cherry and the apple; the peach is slower to start, and that’s a good thing, it’s been so cold at night lately. The strawberries, wild and semi-feral, are heavy with blooms, and the marjoram – bane of my garden existence – is madly trying to capture more space for itself. My ancient rhubarb plant is already huge and thick with promise, and I actually managed to cut and eat four stalks of the asparagus that went wild in my garden, moving itself from its original ruined bed to the end of the bed where I plant scarlet runner beans nowadays. This was a good year for asparagus, and if I’d felt well, I would have had several meals of it but now it’s as tall as I am and going to seed. Promises for next year.

Biscuit on a hunting break; Deb Marshall photo

I’m hoping Day 11 will dawn after a night of no coughing – I’m going to take all the meds tonight – and maybe I’ll be able to do a few hours in the garden. There’s so much left to plant!!! But now I’m going to go hack up a hairball and take a nap.

PS. The Pleasant Lake Veterinary clinic, which is located in Elkins, is a great place where a bunch of ladies take wonderful care of all our critters. Mona, the owner and vet extraordinaire, is also a Chinese-veterinary medicine-trained vet, doing acupuncture one day a week at her home in Sunapee, and dispensing Chinese medicinals for many of her furry patients to great effect. There is a rather large, rather handsome, long-suffering clinic cat named Lou – a big, white, bruiser of a boy – who manages to put up with the furry intrusions on his space, and the well-meaning but bumbling services of his clinic servants – that is, the clinic staff – mostly with a great deal of cat aplomb. He blogged for many years, then was unable to get onto the internet for a few years, but lately someone left his pussword where he could find it, and he’s back on-line. If you google PLVC and go to their home page, then click on the Staff button, you’ll find access to Lou’s blogs, old and new. They’re well worth a look! And in an upcoming new one, you’ll discover that Catmandoo and Lou have a …well… interesting relationship…

Catmandoo showing off reading skills; Deb Marshall photo

For the blog: herondragonwrites.blogspot.com   21 May 2018

Ticked On

What's that? Deb Marshall art

Black flies and ticks; black flies and ticks. Yup. Yup. We’ve got plenty of them this year. Every trip out to the garden – still unplanted, except for a couple of small beds – results in wild arm-waving to ward off the flying hordes, and regular freaking out whenever I have to venture into likely tick territory – which is everywhere this year; followed by tick-picking which, somehow, hasn’t been terribly effective. There’s always more than one. Even after a shower and a hard hair-brushing, there’s still more than one. There are always more than two. There are always more than three...in fact, there’re often more than nine. Arrrghh!

Then there’re the night terrors: lying in bed, following several tick checks and removal of what feels like innumerable little buggers. Almost asleep: but, what’s that? What’s that --- sensation --- on the leg? And that one in the hair? And that one on the nape of the neck? And that one on the arm? And on the back where I can’t quite reach? Arrrghhh!

Next morning, sitting at the dining room table. Finally…a little coffee, the comics, I can relax. But wait – what’s that on the side of the neck? And that, on the side of the leg? WHERE ARE THESE TICKS COMING FROM?? Is it possible they came in on the garden basket, that now sets on the floor over by the window? OMG, are they lurking on the tablecloth? Arrrghh!

Picked up one of the Furry People, plopped him down on the counter where they eat. Wait – what’s that in his ear tuft? A tick! Take it out and squash it. But – what’s that on his back? Another tick! And in his tail? Another tick! And in his mane:  another tick! Four squished ticks in less than four minutes. I keep a special tick-squashing rock on the wart railing – how sad is that? Don’t see any more ticks on Catman. But wait – what’s that on my arm? Arrrghh!

OK, time to go do morning ablutions. Time to get dressed. But – what’s that on the sleeve of my shirt that’s hanging on the bathroom hook? And that small moving thing on the floor? And that spot on the shower curtain? Arrrghh!

The Husband went out to do some work in the garage. The Husband comes in and picks four ticks off himself.  I’m hiding inside today, doing paperwork – the need to plant the garden be damned. What’s that sensation on my foot? Phew, not a tick. What about that one on my neck? Still safe, just sympathetic tick-sensation. The Husband takes a shower: picks off three more ticks. Then he takes the Barkie Boy for a walk, and when he comes back, picks a tick off his socks, and another off his leg, then one from between his fingers. Now he’s sitting on the couch, watching tv, and I’m watching him pick off more ticks. Arrrghh!

The Husband’s heading off to bed and I’m refusing to hug him, tick-carrier that he is. I’m definitely not going to sleep again, tonight. I’ll lie awake wondering if we should get some chickens – hens like to eat ticks, right? We could fence the entire field so it would become a tick-free zone, right? I wonder how many dozens of hens it would take…and how big a henhouse we’d have to build...is it possible to litter-train a house chicken or two? What’s that sensation in my armpit? Arrrghh!

I have a hat. I have white socks. I have pants with elastic in place of hems. I have long-sleeved shirts with tight cuffs. I tuck everything in. I have a hair-covering bandanna. I have DEET spray; I have herbal spray. I have to get the garden planted if I want to eat later this year and all winter. I have nightmares. 

I haven’t been into the woods in years. Sometimes I stand on the edge and remember what it was like to go boldly where my feet would take me. I vaguely remember what trillium, and marsh marigolds, and Lady’s Slippers look like. I remember when playing outside wasn’t scary; kind of like the way I remember when the daily news wasn’t scary.

What’s that on my ear? ARRRGHH!

For the blog, 13 May 2018; published in the Concord Monitor, 19 May 2018, as "Tick Nation."