Into Thick Air

Mornings are a great time to go down to Clam Beach.  It's shady and cool.  There's a big rock to sit on. This view is looking downriver.

The restful thing about the river is there's nothing to be done there.  No weeding, planting, watering or mowing, it's a true gardener's retreat.  The Grand River comes up and goes down when it wants.  It defies even the thought of landscaping along the shore.  Most of these young willows have already been completely underwater this spring.

Here's the view looking upriver. It's beautiful.  Flying overhead are bald eagles and, if I sit quietly for too long, vultures.  "Just resting!" I shout up at them.

Access to the river is through a lot of underbrush.  The happy thing is no poison ivy will grow where it floods.  Here, I'm following Beau, who seems to know the way.

Walking up the sunny, steep hill from the river is not fun when it's humid.  Breathing air that has 85% humidity makes a person gasp like a fish out of water.

My thoughts turned to mountain climbing above the Death Zone, where supplemental oxygen is needed.  That led me to considering that people who work outdoors in the hot, humid summer could really use a solar-powered machine that wrings the water out of the air.  This conditioned air could be supplied by a lightweight tank in a backpack.

On several occasions, I've gotten a touch of heat sickness while gardening on  humid days. No matter how much water I drank, it seemed that my brain couldn't cool down despite copious amounts of sweating.  Now, I avoid getting a poached brain when it's hot and steamy.  I stay out of the sun in the heat of the day, which is from eleven to six.  At those times, I toy with the idea of not being an outdoor person at all.  Perhaps I'll live in a high-rise in the city and have no windows that open.  After a few hours, though, I start to get cabin fever and have to go find a shady spot under a tree and enjoy the breeze.

Yes, a dehumidified air gizmo would be a boon.  All outdoor people would come to rely on them.  Then we would read true adventures of intrepid gardeners who ventured out on humid days without supplemental conditioned air.

Someone should certainly invent such a device, even if Ed Viesturs would never buy one.

A Progressive Dinner

Relocating two possums and one raccoon didn't stop the midnight raids on the strawberry patch, now nearly decimated.

Down at the river, I found these beautiful  fresh freshwater clam shells.  My shoe is in the photo to show scale, not to show off my extra-cute shoelaces on my gardening shoes.

Apparently, the masked diner enjoyed clams on the half shell, eaten alfresco here at the elegant eatery on the Left Bank.

Nearby were these tracks, which I believe are precise directions to the dessert course up at the strawberry patch.  It's sort of like how bees do the dance to show the hive where the best yellow clover is to be found.

Sensing trouble heading my way, I once again wired the banana inside the suet cage inside the Havahart trap.  Not quite Bananes au Rhum, but irresistible, anyway.

This guy was given a complementary Missouri Mid-Continental breakfast of another banana before being escorted to join his cronies some miles away.  Perhaps they will find some wild strawberries in their new habitat.

I trust that I will soon lose my five-star Raccoon Restaurant Rating.  Anyway, they never left a tip.

Alleged Strawberry Thief Apprehended

In local news, a major poaching roundup resulted in the capture of this unidentified suspect last night.  Under custody was this  clever critter, who had eluded earlier attempts to get it behind bars.

In an interview with the tearful trap setter, this reporter learned that it was with great reluctance that she was forced to find a new home for this harmless marsupial.  "The poor little thing was getting carried around like a stuffed toy by my 'coon hound, who practices Catch and Release.  This guy was clever, getting into the trap to fetch the banana and then sitting outside the cage to enjoy it.  He smiled up at the light I shone on him, apparently  glad of my kindness. I had to wire a banana in a suet cage to finally catch him.  This morning, he let me feed him a farewell banana before taking him to join the other possum released a few days ago."

The gardener was prompted to drastic action by a strawberry harvest yesterday of five puny berries.

Roundup Time

Yesterday, on my mowed path above the river, I found big tracks.  Deer and even herons use my path.  Ruling out an enormous elk, I deduced that there is a breach in the fence that ought to be fixed before the entire herd comes calling.

I back-tracked and found the cow had come from upriver, around the fallen tree.  It was rather a brushy course for a cow to navigate.  The tracks didn't cross the mud at the intermittent stream between the river and the house.  She'd gone up the overgrown path to the farthest field.

It wasn't the Far Side Cow, who mysteriously went missing from the herd last year.  She probably wandered up to Iowa, jumping fences as she went.


Unfortunately, the direction the tracks came from indicated this was was not the cow I encountered a few days ago.  Nor was it the cow and two calves  I wrote about a few days before that.  That cow  showed up at the birdbath a few days ago, while I was kneeling in the flower bed there, praying for better fencing for whoever is supposed to be pasturing those bovines.


Beau chased her.  She ran across the front yard, around the side, across the back and up the hills toward the pond.  She is now fenced out of the cow pond and can't reach the river on account of steep banks.  But from these fresh tracks she may have company.

When the grand-kids were here on Saturday, I gave the two youngest ones the game of following the tracks left in the soft ground.  Too easy, they said.

Other entertainment that I offered during their overnight stay was to help bait the trap with a banana to catch the big possum.

Instead, we caught a big raccoon, which was just as fun.  They all went with me in the car to release the critter.  There is no end to nature activities at Grammie's.

More Roundup!

Just before a nice gentle rain, I got these tomato plants and three pepper plants settled in at the remote garden.  The poison ivy wants to grow along the fence there, where it was so happily established until I showed up with my spray bottle and a nasty glint in my eye.

My ongoing campaign to keep the poison ivy from taking over the entire place continues.  Even though the scary stuff will keep me out of the woods until a hard frost,  am determined to not have it grow up my lawn chair.

In the patches were it is standing alone, it is already over five feet tall.  It offers delicate white berries for birds, who then obligingly drop the seeds along fences.  Never eradicated, it can be kept somewhat in check by repeated applications of Roundup.

Towering high over the path to the river is this mostly dead willow tree.  Those are not tree leaves, they are poison ivy.

So far this season, I haven't gotten any outbreaks of poison ivy, but just looking at it gives me an itchy trigger finger.

Oh! Possum

When I first moved here, the raccoons were bold, coming out in the daytime and showing up on the decks at night. I didn't have a dog then. Those raccoons were obviously used to having the run of the place. Perhaps they were a factor in the former owners moving away.

By the way, smacking a raccoon with a wet mop does nothing to change their outlook.

Chris brought me a Havahart trap. He told me to spread a bed of grass inside and put a single egg on it. Using that method, I dispatched thirteen of them that first summer.

 The grandkids got to see them up close and watch them run away when I released the trap door some miles away, far from other houses. Occasionally, there would be a possum in the trap. Since they are useful critters, eating bugs, I let them go.

After the coon hound came, it must have wiped the little smirks off those raccoons' faces. Even so, I kept setting the traps and did catch some.

Several times, Beau got one of the possums and brought it up to the yard. After a while, it would recover and wander off.

What inflation means to possums is last winter, when sunflower seeds shot up to over thirty dollars for a fifty pound bag, I had to withdraw my patronage from the birds. That left no seeds to clean up under the feeder. I thought I would be seeing the last of those dear possums.

Which was just as well, because last spring the strawberries started vanishing. There was a little possum path through the fence into the garden. One small possum came through it when I was finishing up at dusk. Not just a few berries were eaten, judging by the seed-filled droppings all over the yard. The little gluttons.

This spring, I forgot and left the cat food out on the back deck and found they had not moved away, after all. The sliding door was open. Beau charged the pet-proof screen, knocking it off the track. Dog and possum ran off into the night.

After that, it appeared there were two different possums, one bigger, that came up on the deck after dark. That set off Beau's loud barking that they completely ignored. Maybe possums have developed fearlessness on account of being unconscious when huge jaws grabbed them and carried them off. They probably think, "How'd I get here?" and then give it no more thought.

Alas, we came to a parting of the ways. With lots of green strawberries coming on, I made a decision. It would have been different if they had helped in any way to plant, weed, mulch, cover against frost or pick the berries. It was very much Little Red Hen of me, but I got out the trap. Also, I was was getting really tired of being awakened at night by Beau's deafening bark.

For about a week, I didn't catch anything. Then I added an over-ripe banana, sliced lengthwise in an attractive setting of green grass.

So, this is the smaller of the two possums. Obviously, the cat is used to seeing it around. The possum was very calm in the car and we said our good-byes five miles from here, at an undisclosed location.

Who could not love this face? Anyway, I hope there are only two of them. I'll need to go get some more bananas.

Lifelike Lawn Art

The cows haven't been on my side of the road for very long. They are in a lush field of grass and clover, with a lovely pond surrounded by shady trees.

True to form, they waited until the ground was nice and soft from gentle rains so they could leave deep tracks. There was also another calf that followed them, leaving the birdbath reeling as it ran past. Cows aren't especially interesting but they do leave a lasting impression. Thank goodness that I fenced the garden. The day they moved back into the field, I went up and fixed the gate on the remote garden. I knew the cows would be out before long. It isn't much of a gate but should keep those big critters out.

Not wishing to sound like a big whiny crybaby, but busting sod has proved to be a lot of hard work. First, I mowed, then scalped, then dug up the small tree stumps.

Then I hopped on the shovel and loosened the thick mat of grass roots. It was the only time I wished I weighed more. Before the soil could get too dry, I carried Tillie up there and bounced it over the ground. The Mantis has plenty of horsepower but not much weight. My big Troy-Built has heft but is a bear to turn at the end of the row. Tillie was actually fine for the job, but it was a bit like hanging on to a bucking bronco, not that I ever have.

This went on for several days. I picked out grass clumps and poison ivy vines and made a new compost heap in the fence corner. Finally, it started to look good. Beau thought I went to all that trouble so he could be comfortable in the dirt.

Only two-thirds more to do, but a few days of rain have halted the project and given me and my arms a chance to rest up for the next assault.