Spiders, Ducks And Me

Dang…..where have I been?!  Here!  I’ve been here!  And there are so many things I’ve been wanting to tell you about.  Like the sod that was finally laid and the seeds that were planted to reclaim the pipeline that was replaced in the right-of-way two years ago. 

Of course I baked for them!

We’d had some hot, dry weather before the grass worker bees came out in mid-May but just as they laid the last bit of sod, it started raining.  How perfect is that? we thought.  This whole sod thing couldn’t have happened at a better time.  Now we don’t have to water. 

It rained that day.  And the next.  And the next.  It never stopped raining.  For weeks.  I thought about writing a blog post but it was so cloudy and cold and wet it was just too depressing.  And then one day it actually stopped raining and I sat down at the computer to type, but with with all the wet weather my fingers had grown webs.  I tried, but it was just too hard and took too long to peck out each word with hands that looked like duck feet.  And on top of that, the bottoms of my feet had developed a layer of slimy mold so when I sat at the computer, valiantly attempting to type, my feet kept sliding away from my chair.  I finally just had to give up.  But today I realized my fingers didn’t belong on a duck anymore and I could walk barefoot without sliding across the floor so here I am!

I should tell you about my two week adventure painting the house – all by myself.  (Okay, in complete honesty I painted it all except for the high peaks on the front and back which is Dean's bailywick.  I can't go higher than a step ladder or I'd shake so much I'd spill even more paint than I normally do.)  The first day I'd only been painting 45 minutes when a thunderstorm blew through and I had to frantically grab my paint tray and get off the ladder before I became a lightening rod.  After that I started monitoring the prediction for rain (which changed hourly) so most of the time I knew when to pack it in and get off the ladder before I was either drenched or toasted.  After a few days it finally quit raining but the mosquitoes were so bad instead of becoming soaked with rain I had to soak myself in bug spray.  And THEN, mistakenly thinking I'd overcome the weather and the mosquitoes, the cottonwood trees let loose into a blizzard of white and cotton would drift down and plop into my paint and stick to all the wipes and smears and globs of paint on me.  And the weather prediction doesn't tell you when a breeze is going to come up and blow white fluff into your paint. I'm sure Dean was overcome with guilt and oh so sad that he didn't get to experience that adventure but while I was painting he was sick with a cold and spent his time coughing, blowing, sleeping and/or sitting with his head in his hands and a cold towel on his head……until he finally recovered on the day I finished painting.  Hmmmmm…….  

Maybe I should tell you how I spent two days this week getting the deck ready to stain by scrubbing it on my hands and knees with a stiff bristle brush and my pot scraper ... sweating ... even though I was drenched in soapy water. But instead, I’m going to tell you how, way back before the sky opened up and I mutated into part duck, we turned our water feature into a garden.

Everybody thinks water features are so awesome.  Goldfish swimming in a small pond of water ruffled by the calming sounds of water rippling down a small waterfall, up into the re-circulation pipe, then down the waterfall again – a contemplative sanctuary.  When we first looked at this house we thought our water feature was beautiful and sounded soothing too.  But then we discovered the putrid stink of decayed and rotting leaves and stagnant water we had to clean out every spring.  And we decided to make it a into a garden.

Those leaves are just waiting for snow melt so they can rot and stink and turn to slime.

I thought it would be a simple project.  We could just remove the rocks, move the dirt so we could poke holes in the plastic liner, stick a planter or something in the open space in the cement wall and then add more dirt and plant a garden.  Go ahead.  Don’t hold back.  Laugh til you snort.  I just never learn.  Of course we couldn’t just stick a planter or something in the opening.  We had to break out the cement wall because otherwise it wouldn’t look nice. 

So I suggested … come on ... you're laughing already?  seriously? … I suggested we fill in the hole with cement blocks or those stones you use to build a wall.  It was going to be mostly covered by dirt anyway.  Right?  Or if he felt he had to, Dean could paint it.  Paint a mural on it.  I suggested he put his artistic talent to use.  But no.  Whatever we would use to fill the the opening in the middle of the cement wall to keep the dirt in wouldn’t match the cement wall so it still wouldn’t look nice. So ........ Dean got the sledge hammer and broke it out.  

But guess when he did it?  Come on.  Just guess.  He broke it out AFTER he had sent me squeezing through that bitty opening to pry the staples and nails out of the wood that was holding the piping that went into the pump to recirculate the water for the water feature.  AFTER I crawled through a tiny crevice into a dank, dirty, claustrophobic, spider haven.

I should have eaten more cookies during the basement construction.

Of course, once the wall was out and he laid the stones for the new back wall I made the mistake of telling him it slanted.  To the left.  See it?   What's wrong with me?  Don't I ever learn anything?

I thought .............. really .... try and hold it down ...... I thought he could just build up the bottom of the slanted side with some dirt or some kind of flat rock or something and then lay the wall stones on to make it level but of course not.  Duh.  What was I thinking?  He built a small form, mixed up a batch of cement, got out his level and did it the “right way.”  

Then, of course there was a debate about the space between the top of his new wall and the bottom of the deck.  I thought the space looked tacky.  Dean thought the plants he was planning to grow would cover it.  I wanted to build the wall all the way above the bottom of the deck.  Dean did not.  We compromised.  Dean said he will add more rocks to fill in the gaping holes between the top of the wall and the bottom of the deck.  But it can’t be just any rock or it won’t look nice.  He will add rocks that speak to him and are special and will be accepted by all the other rocks or ..........whatever.  I don't even try to understand the rock part of his brain anymore.  

Once the wall was finished I was ready to spread out the dirt, add a boatload of the compost we’d gotten from the dump, and get planting.  But oh, no.  We had bags and bags of wood chips I’d dug out from under our swing and our neighbor said he would take them.

Yep.  Dean laid the stones and I figure in about five years the baby woolly thyme plants will have filled in the sides.

But they were mixed with dirt and we couldn’t give him messy, dirty wood chips.  Oh no, no, no.  We had to sift them so the dirt went into the new garden and our neighbor got nice clean wood chips.  

Finally we spread the dirt, mixed in the compost and waited for it to warm up enough to plant.  And then it started raining and we got busy building the arc and then once it quit raining it stayed cold and cloudy so it isn’t exactly the Garden of Eden out there yet but at least next spring we won’t have to muck out putrid, slimy leaves.  But back when we had to ... gosh those finger webs I grew this year would have really come in handy.

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Spiders, Ducks And Me

Houdini and the Sausage

What did you think would happen to you after you ate your “sister’s” $1,500.00 not-covered-by-insurance hearing aid?  You'd already chewed your way out of your hard-sided dog crate.  And eaten your “mother’s” fund-raising pie.  And eaten all of her hair ties.  And you ate your “brother’s” leggos.  And chewed up your “sisters’” miniature plastic people.  Plus you kept finding new ways to open the back gate latch and escaping.  Your “parents’ were so busy and so tired and yet they still fed you and cared for you and forgave you.  And then … then ……………. you ate Emerson’s hearing aid?!?

Who?  Me?

 And that’s why, a couple of months ago, Angus’s brother, Baxter, came to live with us.  And why we spent most of a day last week setting up the outdoor dog kennel Baxter brought along with him.  We spent half our time driving to town to buy one size of rubber mat at Tractor Supply and then driving to Big R to buy another size only to discover the Big R’s pad cost waaaaaaay more than we wanted to pay which meant we had to drive home to re-measure and recalculate and by the time Dean had come up with a new plan he was hungry so we had to take a lunch break.  Then we drove back to Tractor Supply to return the pad we’d purchased earlier and bought two different ones, after which we drove to Home Depot and bought 10 paving stones.  And then, finally, we drove home.  We hitched up the cart to the John Deere, loaded the mats and stones, drove them over to where we wanted the kennel, carefully placed the mats on the grass, laid the paving stones in the area the rubber mats didn’t cover, set the kennel on top and ta da! we were finished!  

Nope.  That would have been the good enough way.  That would not have been the RIGHT way.  Oh, no.  And we always do things the right way.  Oh sure, we did carefully place the paving stones and the cumbersome, super heavy mats on the grass.  But then Dean meticulously cut the ground around the edge of the mats and stones with his utility knife so we’d know the EXACT boundary.  THEN, we picked up the super heavy cumbersome rubber mats, carefully lifted the paving stones, set them aside, and dug up the grass.  And smoothed the edges.  And leveled the ground.  And THEN, 

 

once again, we very precisely laid the super cumbersome, heavy rubber mats and the paving stones into the edged, scraped and leveled area.  And then and only then, did we …. FINALLY ….. carry over the dog kennel and set it down.  And it fit perfectly.  I mumbled “you were right,” and Dean barely gloated. 

So now, after two months, the dogs can be safely outside when we don’t want to play the odds and leave them alone in the house.  Not that they haven't been free range in the house many times before. Baxter had been over here to play with Angus most days of the week anyway so having him full time hasn’t really made a huge difference.  We were already used to the furniture-shifting wrestling matches and fur rising up like fog from a lake when we walked through the house.  The cats were somewhat hesitant at first but they have gradually adjusted.  I don’t worry about their panicked sprints through the house when Baxter chases them because it’s the only exercise they get and the vet did tell me they need to get exercise somehow.  

When Baxter first arrived I cringed a bit when I thought about what the dog food bill would be but Angus, aka The Sausage, is now on a diet so we haven’t had to buy all that much extra dog food after all.  What’s really increased is the dog poop cleanup which, between the two of them, is always a treasure hunt.  So far the fully intact four-inch square of bright red cloth I used (not anymore!) to clean my iPad screen mashed in Baxter’s poop pile has topped the small blue plastic foot nestled in Angus’s poop.  I did notice this morning, though, that I’m missing a bright green footie …. THAT could brighten tomorrow’s walk!

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Houdini and the Sausage

Tongue Tied By Beauty

“This isn’t the way I thought retirement would go,” Dean said.  As I bent down to throw another humongous chunk of cement over the bank, making sure I threw it exactly between those two trees and far enough that it lands on the bank, but not so far it lands or rolls into the water, I was thinking I wasn’t going to tell him that those two trees now had areas of missing bark and that somehow chunks of cement had gotten into the creek. But when I wasn’t thinking that, I was thinking I agreed with him and that we needed a break from the yard projects that seemed to have taken over our lives.  So we did.  Take a break.  We ignored our aching joints, stiff backs, swollen fingers and throbbing feet and took Emerson to the Tongue River Canyon for a day of hiking. 

The grass was tender and lush and the boys took advantage of it to do some grazing, which I know 

from Googling they eat for one of three reasons:  1. they need some fiber, 2. they just enjoy the taste of tender grass, or 3. (and most likely) they think it’s fun to gag and run straight for my area rug where, just as I get my arms around them and start dragging them toward the wood floor, they barf up a pile of bile and long-slimy grass blades. 

When they weren’t foraging they were sniffing, snorting, drooling and enjoying any water we came across.

It was a pleasant surprise to discover that all the cement hurling, compost digging, dirt turning, stone lifting, stooping, bending and twisting we’d been doing over the last weeks had made my body stronger which made it easier to crouch down (and even back up!) to take photos of all the different wildflowers and unique displays of nature.  

I’d really hoped my photos would entice the nature/flower-loving friends we’ve known since high school to come out

and experience the wonders of Wyoming (and see us!) but my photographic talent (or lack of) was

 hampered by the fact that I had no idea how sharp, or even what, was in the viewfinder of my

camera.  I could have easily remedied that problem, but hiking with reading glasses just seemed so, oh, I don’t know, old. 

Photo credit to Emerson -- oh, to have young eyes again ....

After I got home and realized most of the photos I’d taken were blurry, I decided next time I’d just suck it up and wear them.

Squirrel banquet hall

If I’d been wearing them I would have been able to see what I zoomed in to instead of needing to get up close and lean back to get the “perfect” shot.  That way I wouldn’t have ended up like a turtle on its back when my water-bottle-filled backpack pulled me over, which was much more humiliating than wearing reading glasses on a hiking trail. 

 Dean, who I’ve apparently ruined by making him “wait while I just take a quick photo,” of course couldn’t help me up until he’d made me “wait while I just take a quick photo.”

The culprit

We’d hiked the Tongue River Canyon Trail a few times in the last couple of years but had never made it as far as the meadow area.  If you ever want to push yourself a bit farther and a bit harder than you initially planned on, take a 11 ½ -year old hiking with you.  “I’m pretty sure we can go 

farther,” Emerson would say.  And farther we’d go.  This time we made it to the meadow.   And next time ...  next time we’ll hike to the meadow and beyond!

The hike out took half as long as the hike in.  Partly because more of it was downhill, but mostly because Emerson spent her time talking on her rock phone and the more she talked the faster she walked.  She obviously got much better reception than my cell phone.  Mine said “searching” the whole way out but Emerson made multiple calls to friends and family. 

“Hi Mom.  Nana and Papa thought we should have ice cream after we get back.  What do you think?  Yeah.  I think it’s a good idea too cuz it’s free ice cream.  What’s Dad doing?  Is he playing the drums in his underwear again?  Okay, I gotta go.  I need to call Nolan.  Bye.”

“Hi Nolan’s Mom….Mrs. McCready.  Is Nolan there?  Okay, thanks.  Oh, hi Nolan.  I’m just hiking with my Nana and Papa.  Oh, wait, sorry.  Hold on.  ‘What Papa?  Okay.  I’m just talking to Nolan.’  Nolan?  Sorry.  My papa was just asking me a question.  Oh, we're just hiking and then we’re going to get ice cream when we get back.”

She talked ….

And talked …

And talked. 

Her phone lost its charge just as we reached the car.  Or imagine it did because it was very quiet in the backseat on the ride home.  The dogs were sacked out in the back dreaming of the next time they’d get to graze on grass, Emerson was reading the last chapter of a book and maybe trying to decide which sprinkles she’d be putting on her ice cream.  I don’t know for sure but I wouldn’t be surprised if Dean was trying to figure out how he could talk me out of the next project I suggest.   And I was wondering if, once we got home, I’d have time to suck down a couple of Ibuprophen before I had to run for the dog barf cleaning solution.

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Tongue Tied By Beauty