Midnight Phonecalls [ominous music]

I changed our land line's ring tone. heehee.
Now, it plays the opening bars of..

Bach-Toccata and Fuge in D minor

It sounds epic. xD
I forgot to tell Blue and Silly... Both said, the first time the phone rang while they were home, they "nearly had a heart attack". I thought it was a far cry better than our usual 'LEE LEE LEE ... LEE LEE LEE', one of the standard, ear splitting out-of-the-box rings most cordless phones have.
I say it fits with our future plans to turn the boot room (tiny, tiny foyer) into a Haunted Mansion styled space. They say I'm going "a bit far" with the whole thing. In the end, though, we've kept it. I think it grows on you.
...besides, if they made me change it, I'd pick the William Tell Overture. LOL

ON TO THE PHONE CALL!
This is why I'm making a post, after all, to write about a phone call. Rather, what the phone call stirred in me.

I think a lot about the garden. When the realization first sank in, I was all gung-ho, ordering scads of seed catalogues and talking "garden" nonstop while visions of our back yard transformed danced through my head. As time marches on, however, my excitement dims. I'm holding onto the hope that it'll happen, that I'll make it happen, but every idea... every effort that goes nowhere leaves me more and more despondent. I've accepted that it won't look the way I want, that I'll likely be gardening out of containers for the foreseeable future. I've accepted that we simply, honestly, cannot work out there right now. We're all getting over this virus and the weather has been peaking steadily at 115* F. Hell, our inflated-ring pool is like slightly-warm bathwater now! WITHOUT the help of a solar cover! There's no way we could go out and rip up the ground like this.

Still... I'd like a little enthusiasm from my pair. I've stopped badgering them with facts and bits of trivia, I would love to hear the occasional suggestion or even encouragement. Now, when my seed books arrive, I don't bother beyond a cursory flipping. Drop it open to the middle, glance at a couple pages, sigh, and toss them in the drawer with the first ones. The ones I'd so lovingly studied, shared with GRIM, wrote notes regarding.

It's happened. I've hit the "what's the point" phase, and I haven't even got a handful of soil to show for it. I didn't plan on having anything planted this year, but I would have liked to buy a tomato and put it in a bucket. Something.

Which brings me to tonight's midnight call. My ominous Bach making me smile. There are only three people who would call me at midnight, when the baby's home. Silly, who works graveyard and gets lonely. Mom, who knows I'm almost always up at night. Patti, my aunt. We've both been the type for odd hours all our lives. Sometimes, midnight is the only chance you get. Your one chance to talk without an impatiently eager child clamoring to be heard by one end of the phone or the other, away from spouses that have an innate sense and decide that's exactly when they need you (similar to the previous).
The house is quiet, everything is peace and calm, you've had a chance to destress and let go.

~dee doo deet... deeedaaduuuudum.. dooodoodoooot dooo dee dooo, dooo~

So. It's my mom.
My son has informed her that I will *be there* for the fourth.
He is emphatic.
I WILL be there.
No one can dissuade him.
There is no argument strong enough, no reason valid enough.
I will be there.
He knows it.
KNOWS it.

...I'd like to know HOW he knows that.
I offered for him to come out here. Have a barbecue, watch the fireworks, splash in our wading pool, get heatstroke in the park down the street, maybe. I never once said anything about going out there. See, we already had two families coming in for Blue's feed-me-till-I-pop barbecue. I thought it'd be better to add two (or three, or four) mouths to the party, than have me out there.. alone.. trying to remember how long you wait before adding sauce.
Blue had told me the next DAY that he'd called it off because we'd all been sick. He couldn't take grilling and smoking in this breath-sucking dry heat, let alone a repeat of his birthday's chaos. I'd texted mom later that night, saying I would be out for the fourth, if it was okay with her. I hadn't talked to anyone outside of my own house or Blue's mom since then. Mom's phone wasn't set up for texts yet, so it never arrived.

Baffled.

The boy has the pure, singular ability to baffle.

Anyhow, our call gets dropped mid-sentence, and I can't reach my mom. I'm going straight to voicemail, then I get some man speaking Spanish. I wait a little while, and she doesn't call back. Now, she isn't in the best of health. I know this and I'm starting to worry, so I dig my aunt's number out of the phone and wake her out of a sound sleep. Sure, she can go check on mom, tell her I've been trying to call back. Then, since mom's busy, I end up chatting with my aunt.

She's renovating that tiny house, the standing vestige of my grandfather's memory. She's planting in his once-loved soil; mourning the dead lizards that crawled into the walls to hibernate and didn't find a way out.
As is generally true, talk of the property leads to talk of my grandfather. Everyone but his family called him Jim. We called him many other things, from 'grandpa' to 'Fattio Daddio'. He was a great man, but had flaws like anyone else.

He used to cut up half gallon and quart milk jugs, the "paper" ones, and make them into "lizard houses". You could find him outside, kicking back on a pile of old wood like it was a luxury lounger, and he'd gesture you over.
"Quiet!" he'd hiss, grabbing you roughly by the wrist before you could step into an unseen bolt-hole. Once you were settled in, silent and still... he'd lean back again.
Like a magician, his hand would disappear. Bringing it out again with a casual flourish, he'd drop a blue-belly lizard in your lap.. or your palm.. or on the sleeve of your borrowed "cover" shirt.
And there it'd stay.
Staring at you.
You could swear... the damned thing was judging you!
Eventually, it'd look back to him, he'd nod, and it'd skitter off or settle in.
Once they were on me, I found I could sit stock still for hours in that heat. I'd giggle and try to stifle it, squirm a bit with the excitement of it all, and stare deeply into reptilian eyes that seemed just as human as any other. Sometimes, they'd let me touch them, but mostly not. My grandpa, meanwhile, would be crook'd into his lounge, muttering around his rollie cigarette.

I used to think he did it because he loved me best. I was his first, he told everyone. First grandchild; and later, the bringer of the first great-grandchild. His golden one. I thought it was my duty to learn everything he had to teach me. That somehow, all of these experiences were lessons I would need to know when I was grown, when I would take on the mantle none of us could picture him letting slip. Now... Now I think he just needed some peace. A little space of quiet and stillness. Like a child told to play "Let's Pretend" and they've been given the role of "moss on a log", I eagerly accepted and strained to do the best I could at being still and silent.
He never was an outwardly affectionate type. He told people he loved them by saying things like "get a haircut" and "you're too fat". If cornered, he'd admit that he was never taught how to show love. He didn't want his family to be taunted in school, so they should cut their hair. He worried about their health, afraid of seeing them die from something that could have been prevented.

Mostly, though, his love came through in money. "Take some money out of my account and buy that girl of yours a new dress. I don't like her wearing rags." That was said after the family got together (in old, faded clothes) to scrub his floors clean, after he was moved into what would become his hospice area. This man, who would fish out clothes that had washed downstream and take them home to wear, whose ceiling was a schitzophrenic's dream of colors, who'd eaten out of cans he bought by the case.. hated seeing his children or his grandchildren in anything less than "Goin' To Town" clothes.

So we got to talking about the lizards in the walls, my aunt and I. Until she mentioned them, I'd forgotten all about those cut up rectangles. They, like my grandfather, had just... always been there. Accepted, loved, appreciated, sought out. No matter how faded the logos got, no matter how warped by rain they'd become, we - and the lizards - still returned to them, year after year and season after season.

It looks like my Big Idea is going to have to wait for another entry, but I do hope you'll stick around. Whoever... wherever... you are.

Wobbly.

So, after the work on Booshy Boosh, I got sick. We don't know if it was due to something on the bush being breathed in (it was dusty and smelled funny) or if something else got me, but I've been unable to continue on Project Clear Out for the past few days. To put it simply... I'm wobbly. When I stand up, my legs feel like they're shaking and soon to give out on me. I'm weak, nauseated, dizzy, having a hard time with food. Everything feels like it's separate from me, like there's a layer of cotton batting wrapped around me and keeping the world outside. Most of my time has been spent curled up on the couch, wishing it was over. Today, after a lot of sleep and a lot of huddling, I'm feeling quite a bit better... and GRIM is sick. -headdesk-

While I was having problems sleeping, I talked to Blue about the pots we saw that I wanted. Turns out, we've both had very different ideas of how our back yard would look in the long run. Hm. This... could be a problem. Miscommunications have abounded, on both sides. I'd talked of planting the garden under the old swing set, he'd talked of reusing the wood FROM the swing set to build my raised beds. I'd mentioned getting GRIM a baby swing to hang from the swing-frame's eyes, closest to the play house, he'd seemed agreeable.We'd talked about taking out the two idiotically placed trees in the middle of the yard and planting one shade tree off to one side. I want to keep the play house's frame and rebuild it where it stands. He wants to tear the whole thing down and put up a new one somewhere else. I think we should take out the old tool shed and put in a newer one, maybe something bug-proof. He doesn't see a problem with the existing shed staying. I want to rip up all the damned palm bushes. I have no idea how he feels about those. I also want to rip out a bunch of the purple-flowered vines we have, as they're taking over and clearly animals are hiding in there. He sees no reason to do any such cutting. We DO agree on one thing, though. We both want to keep the freaky-weird citrus tree that stands in the little grassy island between playhouse and shed.. maybe the fuschia if I can save it.

I dropped another bomb on him, today. I want to scatter seed for Corsican Mint in our lawn. He doesn't know why, and I'm not sure I really have a reason, other than I like it and I happen to think "lawn" in the back yard is a complete and utter waste of resources and space. Not that I want a cement pad back there.. but there's a lot you can do with all that space that isn't mowing/blowing/raking/weeding/feeding/watering/etc.

So while we were talking about the pots I wanted, I found out I won't be getting them for my birthday. Since they're at Big Lots, chances are they wouldn't be there for long, so I won't really be getting them at all. He was full of reasons why they'd be a bad idea, why just getting regular wood half-barrels is so much better than planting in plastic-foam-form "wood" half-barrels.. but I'll admit I was sad. I had a specific plan all laid out in my head, and it needed four round containers. Large containers. I've seen what happens to wooden barrels after a few seasons and I thought plastic would be much better. Anyhow, we talked and it was all very "meeting of the minds" and we both were very clear that any talk we made of the back yard and "plans" was very up in the air. Nothing is set in stone and we're talking about things we'd like to have in place years down the line. That's all fine and good, but if I got planters for my birthday, I could garden THIS YEAR, not next.

Putting away the daydreaming I'd been doing about the plastic half-barrels did do me some good, though. It got me back into looking at what's out there. The next day, I had something new in mind. It's not pretty, it's not architectural, and it doesn't fit with my little dream garden. Honestly, if this thing works as well as I think it would, I couldn't care less how it looks.

I'll share the New Idea with you next time.
Good gardening!

Please Pass the Gas Mask...

When we first moved in here, we had no idea how close we lived to wildlife. Then I saw tiny birds... birds are good! Later, a squirrel being chased along the top of our back fence by some larger birds. Large wildbirds and squirrels, yay for future slap-stick entertainment in our own back yard!
And then, the first night I spent in the house. I slept heavy but badly and woke up just as the sun was lightening the skies. Hubs and I shuffled around, freezing in our skivvies and bare feet across frozen ceramic tiles in a house whose heater was deemed so fickle as to be unusable. The water had been shut off by some jerkoff from SMUD (who waited.. outside.. in his truck.. for us to LEAVE for the day to turn off the damn water that we'd paid to transfer.. -mutter-) the day before. So there we were, hopping from foot to foot, sloshing bottled water into a tiny pot to make some crap-as-free freezedried coffee, when I glanced out our beautifully large - and at the time broken and half-covered with cardboard - kitchen window.

"oooo. Lookit, we have a visitor!"
"...is that a skunk? Tell me that's a cat."
"It IS a skunk! HOW COOL! We have a SKUNK! In our back yard!" (bouncebouncebounce)
"No, it's not cool.. it's a skunk. We can't have GRIM around a skunk."
"Oh, pff. It's too early for any of us to be out there and besides, the house has been empty for a while. It probably got used to coming through here because no one lived here."

With that, the subject was (mostly) dropped, aside from my eagerness to tell all and sundry "We had a GUEST!" that morning. Most of those who heard about it know me well enough to accept the childlike eagerness/abandon and simply rolled their eyes or made laughing comments about how glad they were that it was OUR guest, not theirs.

Then... we got the pool. And the first time we went for a midnight soak with a friend, I saw a tail peeking up behind our lawn mower. Nevermind that someone had left out the lawn mower. I'm sure there's a reason it's still sitting in the grass days later. But, seeing just the tip of the tail waving back and forth, I thought it was one of the neighborhood cats. They were also being seen a lot, that first week. A big orange puffball liked to sun on the porch of the playhouse, a siamese mix kept sauntering up to the Clear Out The Hastily Vacated House trash pile, and a sleek orange marmalade had been known to make his skulking way across our back yard.
Shortly after getting Piper and Blue's attention, I realized it wasn't a cat. We both sank deep into the water, chins perched on the inflate-a-ring top of the pool, and whispered under our breath about it. Was it trouble? Was it the same one? Did we want to breathe and risk scaring it into spraying something? It looked so small and adorable, glossy and sleek. It's tail was huge, so fluffy and wispy that I just wished I could reach out and stroke it like a cat.
To be sure, we were on the far end of the yard from it, nearly the width of the whole house away. Plus, we were zippered up inside a screened gazebo and the only light on was over the skunk. But it might hear us and it might spook. No one wanted to take the chance that beating a hasty retreat into the house. More accurately, no one wanted to wash whatever got sprayed if it DID take offense. And so we just held very still, watching it's excursion and eventual disappearance into the brush behind the shed. This is where the first "visitor" had disappeared, so I took the moment to remind Blue of that fact - partly as a further reasoning why we should weedwhack the entire viney overgrowth on that side of the yard and 'reclaim' the space, or at least buzz it all down and make it start over.
After the night was over, we didn't really talk about it, much. We live within walking distance of a large school field, a large park, several natural creeks, and a runoff. Two sightings since April didn't seem like that big a deal. The next night, though..
Piper came back over for another twilight soak and we all hopped in. Right around midnight, I started smacking Blue's arm while he was busy talking to Pipes. He freaked, thinking it was a bee (I'm allergic), a vagrant (unlikely) or something equally unsavoury. Considering we were all skinnydipping, something as simple as his mom deciding to come for a visit would have been quite a problem. Still, it was very late and our back gate was latched.

[loud, somewhat frantic whisper]
"What what what?!"
"We have a visitor!"
"Where?! What the hell are you ta-- shit."
"It came BACK!" [sloshing water]
"Damn. Well at least we know where to set up the trap."
"awww.."

This time, emboldened by past experience with this cool customer, we talked a little louder. We watched it closely while we talked of traps, of how it might have got in, how it was making the same circuit of the yard as it had the night before. Eventually, it disappeared into the same vines, and we all climbed out and went into the house.
The next night, another appearance, just as we're getting ready to get out. This time, Piper stayed home and it was just the two of us. By now, we've begun to speculate quite a bit. We're all more comfortable around each other, as it can clearly hear us and doesn't seem in the least bothered. Chins perched on the side of the pool, we chat about it's ease around us. Living so close to human habitation, it surely must have adjusted to the sounds of people and feels safe enough to come into the fenced off yards that don't have pets without feeling overly threatened. It definitely doesn't act rabid. All of this is interspersed with many a quiet cry of how cute it is and how tiny. Now, this skunk is decidedly laid back. Not only does it cruise through habitated yards at midnight, there isn't the tiniest bit of "skunk" on the air. I've seen skunks before that reek within a twenty foot radius. I've been told it's a sign that the skunk is easy to agitate, as it's sprayed often enough to have musky fur. This one, though, is as fresh as a daisy.
Blue starts talking (jokingly, mind) about finding the perfect spot to set up a lookout, inside the play house maybe, with a shotgun. The funny thing is, the more he talks.. the more the skunk seems to zero in on us. His meandering takes on a different shape from the previous nights. This time, as Blue goes on about plans to "take it down" and whatnot, it heads straight for us. Not in a 'gonna getcha' charge, but in the meandering root for bugs way it's been foraging through the yard when it wasn't being talked about. Blue eventually gets just a bit concerned that maybe it can understand words like "shotgun" and starts up a quietly laughing mantra of "oh shit, it's headed right for us.."
Giggling, we backed into the pool and watched it head under the play house and over to Half-Booshy Boosh. Whereas I was all eager to have it there before, I'm now territorial.

"It's going to get into my garden, isn't it? That little shit is going to dig up all my stuff!"
"...you don't have a garden, yet."
"I'll have one next year and it's going to tear everything up looking for grubs! Dammit."
Laughing, Blue finally decided it was as far away as it was going to get; we covered the pool back up and went scrambling for the door.

Tonight, he's off to bed early and I'm washing my hands in the guest bathroom. I catch a whiff of skunk.
"Oh, no.."
Sniff.
"Ew.."
Sniff sniff.
"AUGH."
Out in the hallway, one step and opening the bedroom door. He's in the middle of climbing off the bed to come find me.
[Simultaneous]
"Did you piss off the skunk?"
"No.. I thought you did."
"I got a blast of it through the window."
"Me, too. Someone must ha-- maybe the neighbor's dog?"
"Or it got run over."

So I run to the back yard, flick on the lights. He says it doesn't smell like it's coming from out there, more like it's from the front. I head out the front door, walking lightly and staring hard at everything in our covered walkway.
Sniff.
Choke.
Definitely from the front yard.
And there goes the sleek marmalade, walking hastily by on the other side of the street. No sign of skunk in the street, but I'm NOT going out the gate to look.

Now, warm as it is in here, I'm not opening the windows tonight. The bedroom and bathroom windows are shut. It still reeks.

So.. got any wildlife in YOUR yard?

About The Yard

So I've done a little puttering about the yard. Spent a little time over two days with the camera.
Bad perspective changes, should have stood closer to center when I took the pictures.
Left fence, red line depicts start of back fence, second red line depicts end of back fence, right fence.
The garden will be on the right-hand side of the first line, between the phone pole (that's behind the fence) and the playhouse.



This.. is Booshy Boosh. It's huge and it's been getting bigger ever since we arrived. It's also taking up way too much yard and harboring hundreds (may be an exaggeration) of snails. I have Big Plans for Booshy Boosh.

After a couple hours of work, two days ago...
Booshy Boosh started on it's way to being a bit less... Booshy.

While this was going on, Punkin Little..

..was watching me from her stroller, which I'd pushed outside. The grass has been treated with Weed & Feed and she loves to pluck off bits, stick them in her mouth, and then make faces..

...so it wasn't safe for her to be down in it. She thought it was hysterical to pick "stars" off her tray and fling them in my general direction while I'm sweatin' and swearin' and bush whackin'.
Screwed up my thumb, my hand, and my ankle. Got a "bark bite" on the inside of my opposite arm. Got loved on VERY MUCH by some sort of weed..

Ignore the hair, please. These are the weeds I was "loved" by. They were on my shoes, my pants, and up to chest high on my shirt. Which is odd.. considering the weeds I was walking through were only high enough to reach my ankles.

Elsewhere in the yard... we've got a pool! Hub's mom bought him one of those pipe-and-mesh screened gazebos and an inflate-a-ring above ground pool for his birthday. In a moment of brilliance, he put one inside the other. We jokingly call it our "indoor pool" and have taken to soaking in it every night. It's not really big enough for any sort of swimming, seeing as it's only high enough to reach (barely) the top of my thighs and is about 12' in diameter, but it's awesome for relaxing at the end of the day or splashing with our little waterbug.

Gardening Dreams

I've wanted a garden for years.
Growing up, I had several grandparents inspire in me the urge to grow. My grandpa Ray had a huge amount of land behind his house, to us city dwellers. He'd go out every year and till a good, wide patch for peppers, tomatoes, melons, and god knows what else. My grandpa Jim lived out of the way, in a tiny "blink and ya passed it" town called Princeton. His two acres sat between the local post office and the hardware store/mechanic. Across the way was public works (open only by appointment) and behind him, the Sacramento River. With his sandy soil and the town's "valley" cupping the scorching heat each summer, he grew tomatoes by the bushel and anything else he fancied. He would trade produce with a woman down the street for her chicken's eggs, bring ducklings to his window to show me, and always demanded I eat at least a tiny bite of onion with my country breakfast. My Texas grandparents, Evelyn and Miles, had a peach tree in their back yard and flowers in the front. Occasionally, my grandpa Miles would get an urge and we'd all head to the garden supply. I was always allowed to pick out at least one flower and, if it were a garden year, some seeds or starter plants. The ground was good for a couple of inches, and nothing but hard-pack clay below. Still, we managed to play around with our new babies throughout the seasons.
I still hear stories about my early escapades in the garden. How Ray told my mom there was "nothing out there" I could hurt and to let me be. A while later, I came in, beaming at him as every tiny pepper and tomato his plants had held rolled around in my cupped-up skirt. How I would crawl under the canopy of twining indeterminate tomato vines at Jim's place, playing with his chickens and ducks. The way I'd listen so carefully to Miles as he patiently explained for the tenth time that my plants won't have grown another inch since the day before and nod my agreement, only to run outside with the ruler, yet again.
I've dug tiny garden plots in every property my mother moved to, including her last. I'm still embarassed to see the dip in the exact center of the left half of her lawn, when I go to visit. Why couldn't I have done it in the back yard, or maybe off along the side of the house, why did I have to scar her lawn - her landlord's lawn? She still jokes about it and I still defend my reasoning. The other spots wouldn't have had enough sun, and besides she sure seemed to enjoy the hell out of the garlic, onions, peppers, and tomatoes I'd brought in. Years later, when my grandpa would be moved into the little "in-law cottage" behind my mother's house, I'd plant an apple sapling in a giant plastic "drinks" tub and bury cut-off sprouts from her russets in back, where my grandpa could watch them from his chair by the window. My aunt and I would dig up little potatoes and cut down swathes of white and yellow iris to bring in and marvel over with him.
Over a year after his passing, years after I'd planted my potatoes and moved away, my mom still finds tiny ones in the dirt, dug up by the new "back neighbor's" dog.

These men taught me something more important than being outside or risk/reward behaviour.. They taught me to respect my land, to respect my food, and to know the pleasure of growing something with your own labor.

I haven't had a garden - even a plant - in years. I moved out of Jim's place, away from owned land and wide spaces. I met and fell in love. I marveled at living in an apartment for the first time since my very first years. I was ecstatic over hot, running water that was safe to drink. A toilet that didn't lead to a septic tank. Showering inside. Walking down the street for cigarettes or a gallon of milk. Pizza delivery, having access to a phone and a car. Internet! I didn't need a plant; I could hang over our tiny, ground-level patio and look at the bushes and grass of the apartment complex.
We would move many times, after that. Renting half a house owned by out of state family, with in-laws as roommates, sharing a rented house with other in-laws, struggling to maintain rent on the same house alone, downgrading to one side of a duplex. At each place, a familiar refrain: "Can I have a garden?"
And then... the housing market was dealt a set of terrible blows. Prices had gone up from 'expensive' to 'unreasonable' and then 'you're kidding me!' The bottom fell out. Those that had taken out loans and mortgages on such high values couldn't keep up. Banks reclaimed, real estate officials donned sackcloth and ash, proclaiming "the end is nigh". And off in a little room, our little GRIM cried. Soon, grandparents were thinking about the tiny, wriggling bundle's future as well as their own.
We call what we do here "renting", but really.. we're paying back a long-term loan. We have a house. We have a pair of yards - front and back. We're in a safe, quiet neighborhood. There's a park just down the street, and the elementary school GRIM will one day attend is just beyond our fence. We. Own. A. Yard.

"Can I have a garden?"
"Well, it'd take a lot of work..."
"Duh. Can I have a garden?"
"There's still a lot that needs to be done *inside* the house."
"Noted. Can I have a garden?"
"...If you help, yes. You can have a garden."

This.. is my sandbox. I will take all I have learned at the knee of my elders, and make it something they would be proud of.