The Skeeters and The Yeller

Down the gravel road, on the left before the big bridge, is a place set back in the woods. The weathered sign said it was a lodge. When I first moved here, it seemed deserted. My daughter Lissa and I climbed over the driveway gate to check it out. I envisioned something stately with a stone fireplace and wood paneling.

What we found was a shack. Lissa pointed out lots of broken clay pigeons on the ground; I'd never really seen one.

It turned out that the people who came there used it mostly on three-day weekends. One of the young men stopped by and told me they came to do stuff they couldn't do in the city. They hunt deer with very loud 30.06 rifles, speed along the road on four-wheelers and set off fireworks.

Since they also shoot skeet, I've come to think of them as The Skeeters. If they were here all the time, it would be a bit much. They're far enough away that their voices are merely a happy noise. I've even stopped flinching when the guns go off.

They were up on New Year's Eve, which is not a holiday I observe much. It was dusk and I was finishing up some wood-cutting down by the river. Expecting it was the usual rifles and shotguns, I was pleasantly surprised to look up and see a fireworks display. Quickly unloading my wood up at the house, I took the rocker out on the front porch and enjoyed the show.

Also, that first year I was here, on the other side of the road from the Skeeter lodge was a house for sale. It was a bit of a fixer-upper that Lissa thought she might tackle. We got the key box combination from the realtor and looked inside.

As it later transpired, I would be grateful that she didn't buy it.

The place stayed vacant the following winter. Then the Yeller and his family moved in.

I introduced myself, but may not have made a good first impression. Carrying a dead Northern Watersnake draped over a stick, I was on my way to toss it into the river from the bridge so the dog wouldn't bring it back.

Foghorn Leghorn

My field and pond lie between our places, but the Yeller's voice could be heard distinctly as he swore at the wife and kids. I might have been living in an apartment with thin walls. He might have been living in a sawmill.

Perhaps he was trying to manage his anger, because he frequently drove past in a spray of gravel, only to return a few minutes later. He wsn't gone long enough to be running an errand, because it's ten miles to the nearest town.

The Yeller's three sweet girls ranged in age from kindergarten to high school. They came over a lot and visited me while I was gardening. I was taught that it is the height of bad manners to ask people personal questions. Those girls satisfied my curiosity by volunteering quite a lot of information about their dad. They said he had a bad back and couldn't work. So, maybe he was in pain or Mad as Hell about it, and was letting off steam. I'm sure the family had learned to ignore his continual outbursts.

My Uncle Buddy was quite a cusser. But since he was a soft-spoken, gentle man, I decided that swearing didn't make you a bad person. Uncle Buddy never swore at people.

The Yeller, on the other hand, did. I didn't mind the swearing so much as the yelling. Voices raised in anger have always made me uneasy.

People visiting me would hear him bellowing like a bull. "Charming," they'd say.

One summer day, I was dining with my knitting friend Karen on the back deck. The air got so blue that we took our meal inside the house.

Sometimes, when I wanted to knit on the deck, I would put on some very loud Beethoven. Then I could barely hear him.

The girls told me their dad didn't believe in neutering pets. That explained all the dogs they had. One basset hound was always having pups. Her short legs made for scant clearance for her outsized udders.

In a big cage out front, they kept a bunch of yappy little white dogs. The girls said they were going to sell them for lots and lots of money. The Yeller yelled at the frenzied creatures to SHUT UP; they never did.

According to the girls, the Yeller was able to work enough to fix the house up considerably. A real estate sign went up, along with my hopes. There followed two of the snowiest, coldest winters since the dreadful ones we'd had in the 'eighties.

The girls talked longingly of moving back to California. I rather looked forward to it. Finally, in May of 2010, the girls said they were definitely going in a couple of days. I made us some peach ice cream to celebrate. The next day, they left, leaving all their furniture.

Places can stay on the market for years up this way. It's so far to commute to a big city. So, once again, the house was vacant over the winter.

Lightning Strikes Once

Last summer, in late June, during a lightning storm, I heard loud pops. I thought maybe it was the Skeeters setting off Fourth of July firecrackers a little early. However, it was after midnight and it was pouring down rain.

Stepping out on the back deck, I saw flashing red and blue lights. Throwing a rain poncho over my nightgown, I went to the edge of the front yard, where I could see past the trees.

The Yeller's house was on fire. Flames were shooting out of the upstairs windows. There were fire trucks and water trucks but they were apparently too late to hose it down.

Risking the incessant lightning, I stood there watching as the flames finally engulfed the entire lower floor. I heard the windows break out. The popping and crackling of the blaze was spellbinding. Sparks flew high into the rainy sky. Then the trees around the house caught fire. The top part of the house could no longer be seen. From midnight until after two a.m. I stood there in my bare feet in the rain. By then, the fire had died down enough for the emergency vehicles to pull out.

After I got dressed and put on some rubber boots, I walked down the muddy road in the tracks left by the big trucks. All that remained of the house was a burning door frame. The metal roof was on the ground.

It was a blessing that the Yeller and his family were safe from even seeing their house burn to the ground.

That was last June. Since then, the rubble remains untouched. The fire snuffed out my hopes for a retired gentleman gardener for a neighbor.

It is, however, wonderfully quiet around here, except for when the Skeeters are out.

Ask Your Analyst If Gardening is Right for You

Many people have no idea of the lifelong complications they may encounter when they join the ranks of amateur gardeners. Most individuals carry a natural adversity to gardening, believing it to be a lot of hard, sweaty work. Not all people progress from buying a six-pack of marigolds to becoming those who identify themselves primarily as gardeners.

Gardening is a benign activity. However, in the public interest, I must point out certain marked personality changes associated with this supposed hobby.

ARE YOU AT RISK?

The following are warning signs that should alert you that you can no longer take gardening or leave it.

--You may talk to plants and find they are talking to you.

--You may have no idea of what's on television because you are reading about the lifestyle preferances of perennials.

--You may no longer be content to have window boxes in your upscale apartment and move to a shabby place with an acre of land. This is known as the geographic fix.

--You may be able to rattle off the Latin nomenclature of many plants but have difficulty with family members' names.

--You may drag flower-blind people on gardening tours.

--You may ask friends to come visit you while you weed the strawberry patch.

--You may rope people into projects such as building a greenhouse.

--You may have a wardrobe that consists entirely of tee shirts and bib overalls.

--You may convert portions of your home into shelves and lights for plant propagation.

--You may judge others by their flowers and vegetables.

--You may obsess about soil, manure and seed viability.

--You may insist on guests meeting every single one of your plants.

--You may become oblivious of your appearance, wearing Willie Nelson bandannas to soak up the sweat on your brow.

--You may plant more than you can weed.

--You may get into serious debt buying gardening equipment that is clearly beyond your means.

--You may become rooted to your land, unable to take vacations during the growing season.

--You may become anti-social, relying only on telephone visits with other gardeners, only on rainy days.

--You may reach a point where you dare not visit a plant nursery for fear you will go berserk and not be able to stop buying flowers. A single six-pack will no longer suffice.

--You may find you've become a retired person and full-time gardener, working much harder than you ever did for a job.

TREATMENT

Those who grow things are not interested in becoming Recovering Gardeners. They never seek help, even when gardening has become annoying to those near and dear to them. On-site intervention is a bad idea. Concerned loved ones will be given gardening chores.

There is, in fact, no cure for this condition whatsoever, which is great news for us gardeners.

The Road More Traveled

Unfortunately, the road is the main feature of my front yard. With all the hilly acreage, it appears that they shoved some dirt level and put the house there, pretty darn close to the road.

The road is gravel, very dusty unless a rain has made it muddy. There is a chain link fence, inexpertly installed. Okay, it's rickety, but it affords some feeling of protection from country traffic.

Racing by are a succession of farm trucks with round hay bales impaled on spikes, big trucks hauling cattle trailers, grain semis, big pickups, dump trucks and just plain cars.

At a slower pace come giant tractors with enormous discs or other scary implements, propane trucks and combines. Sometimes, the combines are in a convoy of three, with grain haulers bringing up the rear. The farmers all wave as they drive by. Some even slow down.

It's so peaceful and quiet here in the country.

When I first moved here, I invisioned a darling cottage garden in the shallow front yard. That was before I tried working out in the choking dust and before struggling with the fierce grasses.

A Botanical Solution

What I needed was a luxuriant hedge. Lilacs would be perfect, leafy and full of fragrant blooms in springtime. Out back was a huge specimen, with abundant sucker growth. I dug up some starts, placed them every six feet along the inside of the fence and waited for them to become a thick barrier.

Four years later, I am still waiting. What I failed to take into account was how long it may have taken the original lilac to get to its present twelve foot height. What I learned, a little late, is that it's an old-fashioned lilac, which grows slowly. In the side yard is a faster-growing French lilac, unsuitable because it only gets four feet high. Height is desirable so I won't feel that passers-by are reading over my shoulder as I sit in the house.

The fence lilacs have made some growth, increasing their stems and even blooming last spring. They resembled little cemetary bouquets. The six-foot spacing appeared wildly optimistic, miles between the two-foot tall plants.

Watch My Dust

This year, I plan to do more than apologize to the lilacs for letting the grasses invade them, failing to water them during dry spells and cutting down the new starts accidentally with the weed whacker.

My online research has turned up some grass herbicides that leave no residue. So far, I haven't been able to use weed killers around the lilacs for fear of wiping out the planting entirely.

While I'm at it, I'll use some of the grass poison along the fence between the lilacs. Tall sunflowers will go there and some other flowers that will screen the billowing dust. Soon, I'll be well on my way to having that dear cottage garden of my dreams.

The only drawback to my plan is that the herbicide is rather expensive. Maybe I can sell one of my naughty cats.

Sickening Stuff

Even now, in the dead of winter, I can count on my big dog to enliven our long walks down by the river by fetching something truly ghastly. Yesterday, it was a large turtle shell with mummified appendages and bones dangling from the brown semi-carcass.

Beauregard was so proud of his find, which he carried aloft like a fabulous prize.

My usual response, "Oh, yuck, what is that?" seems to be high praise for Beau. If there had been a bottom shell, I might have identified it as a painted turtle; the top shell was smooth.

Living the high life here in the country, Beau gets to scavenge treasures from time to time. Deer season, just past, is always good for the odd leg left behind by local hunters. This time, it was a spine, ribcage and head. Beau worked on it for days, dashing off and burying it in leaves when it looked like I might take it for disposal. Finally, all that was left was piles of fur here and there and some grisly but interesting teeth.

The Offal Truth

Cattle farmers nearby don't dispose of fatalities in the herd, preferring to let the turkey vultures do their job. When I see the vultures in the lone sycamore across the way, I know Beau will be coming home with another tasty chew. That is usually after the coyotes have had their fill. Even the impressive bald eagles will swoop to eat carrion, spoiling the national image.

Beau's prize bone was an adult cow's femur, which looked like it came from a mastodon. He worked on it for some time but couldn't grind it up. I had recently gone to tremendous work to establish a new iris bed. I found the plants dug up and the bone placed in their stead. Beau looked hurt when I didn't appreciate his thoughtful gift.

One of the more unacceptable finds was a calf spine and head. After the head had become detached, I put it in a bucket in the cold workshop to get rid of later. It was unnerving to have it appear to stare at me while I used the log splitter there.

No matter what state of decomposition, Beau will try it. In fact, "the deader the better" seems to be his motto.

Once, he threw up something on the carpet that smelled so horribly disgusting that I ran for my respirator before cleaning it up.

My coon hound is not a killer, though. He is great at chasing raccoons up trees. Then he barks ferociously until he is wild-eyed, panting and frothing at the mouth. The last time that happened, the raccoon had the effrontery to fall asleep on a high branch. I saw it later as it crept down and slipped away from the exhausted, sleeping dog.

Living with a canine gourmand brings me a closer look at critters that I might not otherwise see, or want to see. Sometimes, these doggie delicacies are even identifiable.

Corner of Ravine and Vine

Late last winter, I inadvertently started what may yet become a park overlooking the river. I certainly would never have deliberately set out to do a jungle clearance.

On the way to the river, my path crosses a damp spot that becomes a stream after heavy rains. A short distance away, the stream has cut a ravine. Between the path and the ravine on the left was a great tangled mass of vines and trees.

When I began the project, I was scrounging around for dead wood. There it was, hanging from the grape vines that had killed the trees but wouldn't let them fall from its clutches.

Having a fairly level spot to work, I started cutting a swath. With my chain saw, I cut the enormous grape vines at their roots. The stumps oozed a clear thick sealant that kind of made me feel bad, like they were bleeding. However, they were tree-killers, climbing high into the canopy, blocking the sunlight, then spreading to nearby trees. For all that growth, they bore only tiny grapes, which I was sure must be sour.

Hanging out with them were their nefarious cronies, the nasty greenbriar vines. Those meanies are pretty much solid needles. Not as thick as the grape vines, they could be cut down with the pruners. They grew in clumps, as did the monster wild rose canes growing in profusion nearby.

Merely wanting the firewood, I hacked my way toward it. Some was on the ground, some hung diagonally, some was over my head. Unbeknownst to me, the whole enterprise was well over my head.

Wearing thick leather fencing gloves (for barbed wire, not swordplay) I started pulling the cut vines down. I kept backing away, sometimes over twenty feet, until they came free from the treetops.

Gathering the intertwined grape and greenbriar vines into big loops, I flung them into the nearby ravine. The gloves were no match for the rose thorns, so those I had carry with the pruners, the same as I did with the ubiquitous poison ivy.

Joining those plant gangsters in the deep ravine went the useless punky wood. One rotten snag at the edge of the drop-off was so far gone that I was able to push it over the brink. That made me feel powerful, which somewhat mitigated my sense of puniness against all that strapping stickery stuff.

Bit by bit, I cut the firewood and hauled it out. The project went on for many an afternoon. At last I had all the dead wood, with the exception of a standing hedgeapple tree that had three trunks. That was too much of a challenge for me to attempt. Later, my son cut it down for me.

Looking around and seeing the whole picture, I was stunned to find the difference I'd made. This widest flat spot high above the river had the potential for becoming a nice grassy park.

A big pleasant-looking tree grew at a slight angle, perfect for steps for climbing. I could see the grandkids up there. Okay, I would enjoy climbing it, too.

While I was at it, I thinned out some skinny trees that were competing for sunlight with the established stately trees.

Next, I used the bolt cutters to cut down the rusty barbed wire fence. I snipped it into tidy lengths and put it out with the trash. The ravine could accomodate any amount of brush. Knowing that the spring rains would lift it and float it away, I didn't want anything in there that would trash up the landscape downriver.

The hiatus came when I couldn't cross the creek on Rosie the Ride-On Mower. While I waited for things to dry out, the greenbriar, grapes and poison ivy sprouted where I'd cut them. Some nettles joined their tough gang. The vines slunk through the grass, faint shadows of their former vertical rise. The poison ivy made it a bad neighborhood for me to venture into all summer.

I have not lost hope that the riverview park is small enough that it could be tamed by one relentless woman. After all, the hard work has already been done.

Naming My Non-Virtual Domain

The first summer that I moved to my acreage above the river, I could not get down to the water. Poison ivy stood between me and the shore.

The elderly couple who lived here before me didn't venture outside the house. He had emphysema and she had a bad knee. For years, they had let the neighbor graze his cows all over their land. They had a fenced yard and the cows had the rest. Down at the river was a fence above the high water level. Between the fence and the steep bank was a fairly flat spot that had become Poison Ivy Heaven.

It was the scariest poison ivy I'd ever come across. I gasped when I saw it. It grew four feet high, standing like sapling trees. Where there were trees for it to climb, the stuff snaked up the trunks, branching out on the way to the treetops. The hairy vines were two or three inches thick; quite formidable.

When I lived at the farm, I raised dairy goats. They followed me on long walks, where they ate quantities of poison ivy. It was a delicacy for them, since they are browsers and prefer leaves to grass. Then I drank the goats' milk and became immune to the itchy stuff.

Since then, however, I have not emerged the victor in encounters with poison ivy. So, I was held back at the fence, as if I were one of the herd and not the new owner.

After the frost had killed all foliage, I ventured forth to claim my waterfront property. I was armed with the bolt cutter for the barbed wire and pruners for the poison ivy. I recognized the dormant growth by the wavy stem topped by what looked like a creepy hand. Being careful not to touch them, even with my leather gloves, I cut them down at the base.

Past the undergrowth was the steep river bank. I made a zigzag path down the muddy bank, using the sapling sycamore and willow trees to brace my feet against, stopping their downhill slide.

When I finally stood on the rocky shore, I couldn't have been more proud of myself had I been Lewis or Clark coming at last to the Pacific Ocean. In true explorer style, I named the smallish spot Fishing Beach. Out in the middle of the river was a black rock that looked vaguely like a whale, even though it was only about two feet long. Whale Rock is a good gauge of the water level. Both the rock and the beach are fequently not to be seen.

Upriver was another rocky beach, much bigger. The steep muddy bank made walking to it from Fishing Beach impossible. I scrambled up through the woods to reach it. There I found beautiful freshwater clam shells, iridescent pink inside. That became Clam Beach.

While all this sounds vast, the two beaches are close enough that I could throw a rock from one to the other, if only I weren't such a hopeless pitcher.

At that time, I didn't name my place Hickory Acres. The reason was that I didn't know what a hickory tree looked like or that I had so many of them. It was the nuts that finally were a giveaway. Once I got on my naming spree, even they were to get monikers as I claimed them for my very own.

A River of My Own

I once owned a smaller river, but it was like some cats I've had; it didn't respect my home.

It took many years, but I finally found a bigger, wilder river. This time, I made sure the house was well above the 500-year flood plain.

This new and improved river meanders in huge curves through farmland. Along the banks are tall sycamore, silver maple and hickory trees. All the while, the river is trying to get at their roots and sweep them away.

Bridge Over Troubled Waters

High above the water a little ways downriver is an impressive bridge, built in 1988. During the infamous All-Rivers Uprising in 1993, logs jammed between the steel girders. They are still there, mute testimony to a staggering amount of water.

In the spring floods since I moved here in 2007, the roiling brown water has not gotten anywhere near that high. The spring thaw sends huge uprooted trees floating past. It's exciting for me to stand on the bridge and feel the shudder as debris hits the massive cement supports. The railing is altogether too short, about two feet, but I can never resist looking over to see the moment of impact.

From my shore, I see the collision but must wait for over two seconds for the report of the thud to reach me.

This river flows into the Missouri River. Each mile downriver from here, it gets bigger and more impressive, deserving the name Grand River. Where I am, there are shifting sandbars that keep it from being navigable. That's all to the good, keeping noisy boats from my domain.

On Thin Ice

These last few bitterly cold nights have frozen the river along the shore. My coon hound, Beau, made me uneasy by venturing out on the thin ice and crossing to the other side. He must be smarter than I thought, because he crossed down by the bridge, where it is the most shallow. When the river is low like it is now, water flows over the rocks there and makes a pleasant waterfall sound. Somewhat like a dormant volcano, the river is waiting for a little more temperature to do something dramatic.

My Starter River

When I lived on my first river, it was during those record-breaking cold winters of the seventies and eighties. In springtime, the break-up of the river was spectacular. I would take a lunch and sit on the rip-rap in the mild spring air.

The ice had frozen to a thickness of over a foot. There was a bridge downriver there, too, a smaller one, closer to the water. The ice and debris would get bottlenecked there and back up around the bend to where I sat waiting for the drama. From upriver, entire trees floated down to my vantage point. They hit the jumbled brown ice, dove under it and shot up into the air like breaching whales.

It was an unforgetable spectacle, with the sound made by the ice and trees slamming together. One of those times when the earth really shook.

Although those few days of break-up were the high point of my river-watching year, I could never coax anyone into experiencing it with me.

When I mentioned it to my farmer neighbor, who'd lived down by the bridge for decades, he told me that he also spent hours looking on as the ice broke up. He laughed, then said, "But if you tell anyone, they think you're crazy!"

The Grasslands War

The Envelope, Please

This year, my big seed order goes to Pinetree Garden Seeds. They have the most complete selection of my favorite seeds, low prices and reasonable shipping. I know I'll have good results with the vegetables, but it's going to be a war with the grasses to succeed with the flowers. I need to bust some sod first.

Diamonds Are Not Forever

It got down to twenty-four degrees last night. The morning sun showed the brown grass wearing diamonds in its hair. Sparkles of reds, blues, greens and gold winked at me. It was beautiful, but rather like a tiarra on a wild hog.

It's the look of the brown grass that spurs me on to think I will be able to get past it to the dirt to plant the flowers. The grass isn't dead, it's dormant, biding its time like the Wicked Witch. When warmer days arrive, it will choke out everything but dandilions and chicory.

Fescue-Wrestling

In my book of weeds, fescue is the biggest thug of all. It's a non-native grass started by cattlemen. The cows across the road love it. I hate it. Fescue actually favors clay soil. It survives our cold winters and hot, humid summers. Cows, those big lardos, can walk all over it and it cares not.

A recurring daydream I have is me using a giant flame thrower to prepare the soil for the flower beds. It's a very theraputic image, until I remember that fescue comes back even better after a fire.

Fescue and other grasses do serve a useful purpose in controlling erosion. But to the gardener wanting to plant anything on its turf, it is The Enemy.

Fescue forms an impenetrable carpet of thick clumps. Even jumping on the shovel, I can barely slice into it. It can be mowed down to the ground, but then tillers buck at the thick roots and clay combo.

Battle Strategies

Since I'm an organic gardener, toxic herbicides are out of the question. The only thing that has worked for me has been smothering it. Even so, it's so tough that it took most of the growing season without light to kill it. I've had good results with a tarp in the garden and bits of plywood elsewhere.

Last year, I created a cottage garden in one corner of the vegetable plot, the low end with all the topsoil. Even though the dirt has been tilled repeatedly, bits of grass roots are still in the soil. They are always ready to lurch to life like an almost-dead villian in a scary movie.

I Will Never Be Defeated

Glancing up from my nearly-completed seed order, I see the grass out there, lying low. I believe it is saying, "Sure, you can plant all those seeds, over my dead body." It is sullen and intractable. "Just you try and get rid of me, you fool," it snarls.

However, I will be victorious. In last summer's skirmishes, I gained valuable ground, over twelve square feet, at least.

Nothing So Rare as a Day in January

Here in the Midwest, we occasionally get an unseasonably warm day at this time of year. Talk about a mid-winter break. It's been sixty this week. Usually in January the temperature struggles to get above freezing, with lots of snow thrown in to make spring seem light years away.

Any day when the ground is not frozen is a day for some sort of gardening activity. So for the last two days I've been digging up dirt and spreading it on my whimsical garden.

I think about dirt a lot. Now referred to as soil, it is a subject of endless fascination and struggle for me.

Clay is soil but it isn't really dirt. Dirt is loam.

Since taking possession of the badly-eroded garden plot, I have become a scavenger of topsoil. When the river went down after the spring flood, it left behind a deep layer of mud. Somebody else's topsoil then dried to a very fine silt that was easy to shovel into two buckets. Not so easy was staggering up the bank with them to Rosie and the garden cart. Many buckets were required to fill the cart; my arms felt longer.

Making Amends to Mistreated Soil
I did a lot of research about techniques for clay soil. Some suggestions were unacceptable, like moving to someplace else.

I was annoyed to read about a man who transformed some hard clay into luscious loam with the help of a cadre of volunteers. Who couldn't?

Similarly, the French Intensive method with all that horse manure would not work for me here. I have no pickup truck. Paying for someone to deliver horse manure is not in my budget.

Raising earthworms for their castings was another option, but there was something about getting started with them that sounded like opening a can of worms.

I had to get realistic and work on a few square feet at a time. Therefore, what I did was slip through the barbed wire fence and snitch some dried cow pies from the neighboring field. I didn't think they would be missed.

On My Way to the River
With the current spell of sunny warm weather, I was off to get more instant topsoil down at the river. Passing a big oak not far from the house, I stopped to check the undergrowth. There was lots of brushy stuff that had held leaves in place for years. All I had to do was hack out the grape vines, buckbrush and poison ivy roots. I emerged in two days with four Rosie carts of friable soil that smelled wonderfully woodsy.

Up at the garden, I dumped the bucket of kitchen compost materials, formerly known as stinky garbage, onto the clay. Then I spread the buckets of dirt on top.

I am having such satisfaction rebuilding the soil that sometimes I fear I will never plant any veggies. I'll merely keep adding amendments and mixing them in with Tillie, my Mantis tiller.

I believe it was better when we called our home Earth instead of the current The Planet. Earth is close at hand, underfoot, and is synonymous with soil. The Planet is viewed from outer space. We don't live in the blue part.

How I Came to Have a Whimsical Garden

Formerly, I was a farmer-type gardener, putting in long wide rows. There was no whimsy about it. Nothing cute.

Then I moved to this hilly place. The previous owners had a garden on the one relatively flat spot. There was plenty of slope, allowing most of the topsoil to wash off, leaving clay subsoil on the top end. I suspect they ran the tiller to maximize runoff.

Stuck with the stupid slope, I had to build some terraces or give up having fresh vegetables. Money was a non-existant object, so I had to use what was on hand. Those folks, whom I will call The Foulers, left plenty of stuff behind. Most was trash, but there was a pile down behind one of the outbuildings that I call My Home Depot, an endless source of iffy but free building materials.

I dragged out some long pieces of aluminum soffit and galvanized chain link fence top railing poles. Cutting the poles with a hacksaw was not the work of an instant. I also found some short lengths of rebar and other rusy metal rods that might work.

The best location to stop the topsoil exodus was diagonal to the garden fence I'd put up earlier. Along a stretched-out string, I pounded the assorted posts at two foot intervals. I installed the aluminum barrier on the uphill side and wired it to the posts. Some of the posts stuck up quite a ways, though. They had the look of Meanies that would poke me in the backside the first chance my back was turned.

What was required was a protective cap of some sort. My son had picked up a big box of clay pots for me at an auction. Upside-down, the pots made great caps, along with some old glass insulators and china bed knobs.

What had started out as a safety precaution took on a life of its own and became a theme. More clay pots went on the tops of the mismatched fence posts. Thus, the various types of fencing that I had used on the periphery of the garden changed from junky to eclectic creations.

Too cute!

The Chain Saw and the Crock-Pot

It's essential for me to plan dinner when I'm going to be doing lumberjack work in the woods. It is a certainty that I'll return to the house with a ferocious appetite. I won't be able to wait while I prepare anything more elaborate than a peanut butter and honey sandwich. The P.B. and H. Sammy isn't the hearty hot meal that I need.

Therefore, before setting out, I fill my trusty Crock-Pot with ingredients for something special. One of my favorites is Arroz con Queso, page 106 in Rival Crock-Pot Cooking.

Returning from my labors, I lift the lid on the slow cooker. As I inhale the delicious aroma, I gratefully ask, "And what has the Little Woman fixed for my supper?"

Chain Saw Grandma

There seems to be some novelty in a woman running a chain saw.  When I bought the current formidable tool, the girl at the farm store checkout said most women were afraid to even touch one.  The people there were staring at me as if I were riding a unicycle.

I didn't mention to her that this was my third chain saw, having worn out the previous ones over the years.  I select one that will not be too heavy for my back.

Why everyone thinks chain saws are guy things is that they are noisy, powerful and dangerous.

In the kitchen, using the electric mixer requires that you not try and lick the beaters while they are running. You just have to be mindful of what you're doing.  If you can make brownies, you can run a chain saw.

My earlier problem with the chain saws was I had a terrible struggle in starting them.  Then my son Chris, who cuts most of the wood for me with his bigger, more powerful saw, showed me how to slip a two by four into the handle and step on it while pulling the cord.  After that, the worst hurdle was over; I could spend many happy hours cutting firewood.

                                                   I am Not a Feller
Although I have cut down small trees with my little chain saw, I'm not a good feller of trees.  I prefer to cut limbs that are already down.  I love to watch Chris, from a safe distance, as he brings down a huge tree.  He cuts up the big parts and I drive them up to the electric log splitter.

                                           Whistler's Mother in the Morning
To ease into an afternoon of running the saw, I eat brunch and knit for at least an hour.  The light is good by the front window then.  I imagine the mailman notices me sitting there in my rocker.  Perhaps he has an image of me as a somewhat sedentary little old lady. 

My granddaughter Carolyn, who is fourteen, loves to tell people that her Grammie knits socks and runs a chain saw.