Southbound Train

Where I Live

It is green where I live. Soft, rolling, gentle green. The trees push up to rub against the sky, bend down to caress the earth.

It is lush. Things grow here – flowers, plants, animals, people. The land and the air are nurturing. Life seems to flourish without too much strife.

It isn’t fancy, but it looks nice. It isn’t likely to show up in a magazine or win any awards, but that might be because no one thought to look here for award winning things.

It is well known, but not really – more like a catchphrase than somewhere people really know anything about. I think people would be surprised at what they saw if they bothered to look around.

Where I live is not populated entirely by toothless people who talk about “the dia-bee-tez” or are always “fixin’” to go to the demolition derby in cars painted with the Stars & Bars. Where the media tracks those people down every time they mention my state, I do not know. It is about as representative as showing only movie stars when referring to California. Or only white people, for that matter. Tennesseans have teeth.

They also have concern for their friends, their neighbors and complete strangers who might be in a bad place. I have never seen people take care of each other the way my neighbors do.

Where I live, people talk to me in the grocery store. They wait for an answer to “How are you” before rushing on to talk about themselves. They are polite. They are considerate. They signal.

Where I live, people wave when they pass another car, a walker, a biker – not because they know everyone, but because it is the nice thing to do. (I wave, now, too.)

We are an easy target, I guess. Easy to dismiss, easy to make fun of – a middle state in the South, not so forward thinking, still willing to farm and make money other hard ways, still willing to wear our overalls and sit on our porches. We don’t look so shiny and slick to the movers and shakers, but we live what all the glossy magazines say is so “in.” Simple, local, fresh, community.  Buzzwords, elsewhere. Here - life.

We are not so into the pretension. Social graces, yes. Presenting a good face, yes. Pretention – not so much as you might think for a place that has a steeplechase in the spring and sometimes wears hats and gloves.

Where I live has its problems, too, just like everywhere else. We don’t do everything right here. We need to recycle more and drive less. We need to remember that some people worship a different god but are still good people. We need to open our minds as easily as we open our hearts.

But, damn it, this is where I live, and I love it. And I am proud of it, and fiercely protective, and I don’t care how backwoods you might think we are here, or how “unessential” we might be to the national economy, or how easy it is to dismiss us as just another slice of backwards flyover country – WHEN THE STATE FLOODS, WE ARE NEWS.

Thanks for the apology, Anderson Cooper, but maybe someone could have noticed us drowning out here without a country music star calling it to media attention.

Yes, the rain stopped. And the ground has dried (but not as much as you might think). Life is back to normal, mostly, but we all cringe when we hear thunder, and  the clean up continues and will for a long time. There are still plenty of people out of jobs, out of homes, out of luck. But because we take care of our own, where I live, Nashville will be ok.

Where I live. Y’all may think it is hokey, but I’m pretty proud of it.

Two Years

There is a robin sitting on my bird feeder right now, looking in and chirping with a beak full of dried grass. I’m not sure what she wants from me, but she’s obviously in the throes of nesting. Its that time of year.

I’m nesting too, though with less dried grass. We didn’t travel in March and for the first time in memory I wasn’t chomping at the bit to get to the airport, get on an airplane, head somewhere else. In fact, as we did just that, headed westward last Friday to spend the weekend in California, I squawked and complained about it. I didn’t want to leave, I didn’t want to fly, I just wanted to feather my nest and watch spring explode. I’m amazed at my willingness to just be here, to enjoy the simplest of pleasures  - the birds, the flowers, the way the sunlight falls across my bedroom in the morning.

The honeymoon is officially over, today, but I’m clearly still besotted with Tennessee. Like a bride who still sees Prince Charming in the man snoring on the other pillow in the morning, I might even breathlessly tell you that I like it even more here than I did two years ago. I might even be telling the truth. Two years! It amazes me that we have been here that long; it seems in some ways like just a few months ago that we left LA. A year – I could believe a year. But two seems impossible. I think the first months were a blur - I can hardly count them, and who could blame me? Boxes and meals out don’t really make for a sense of permanence. Last year was our first “full” year, but I spent a great deal of it working and being stressed about working and the other significant chunk travelling, the upshot of which being that I wasn’t present here in Tennessee for as much of it as I could have been. And now this, the unceremonious ending of the honeymoon phase, two years gone, just like that.

This spring is familiar, mild and bloomy, roadsides awash with color and the air scented sweetly in the long evenings. We had a thunderstorm two April 8^ths ago, and I think we could hear thunder tonight (we certainly did last night – the cat was afraid and woke us for reassurance). The neighborhood is dotted with cherry trees in full bloom, and thanks to my initial neighbor envy I now have one of my own. The dogwoods are even blooming, spreading their lacy arms out to the redbuds tricked out in shocking purple – the debutante and the bad girl of the tree set. Springtime is Tennessee at her most seductive.

I enjoyed my time in California; no denying that. Being with the people I love was worth leaving my nest, worth the pangs of self-pity that I no longer live in a cosmopolitan place, worth the realization that I am a bad 80’s song and that I do love LA. We were there at the same time last year, and coming back then felt like a 2000 mile wide game of Twister. With a foot in each place and a heart in California, my hands were frantically looking for a place to find balance; I was afraid they might land in Kansas, and then what? I came back to Tennessee last April 8^th and had to ask myself – well, how did I get here? I liked it but it wasn’t mine and I put off the milestone until summer, hoping the dislocation would pass.

Somewhere between last April and this one, mixed in with a soggy summer and a beautiful fall, too much work and house guests galore and making friends and crying over missed ones it did, and Tennessee became home. Not just where I live, a pretty place, a nice house, friendly people – but home. I knew yesterday, as we ran errands and admired spring, that I was where I was meant to be. I’m comfortable. I like it. I miss it when I am gone and still gasp at the beauty of it when I drive to the store for a mundane errand. 

I marvel at my good fortune of landing here, in this neighborhood, this town, this area, this state, even, when there are so many other places I could have ended up.  Leaving LA was painful, harder than I knew at the time and still, sometimes, harder than I want it to be. The nice part of the reflection I am allowing myself today is that I know now that it was worth it, that it was the right choice. We both feel giddy to be home, happy and lighthearted and so pleased with where we are – the dislocation of last year and the anxious knot of two years ago have both gone, melted out of existence with the emergence of the daffodils this spring. Someone else can have those ruby slippers I wished for last year – I’m already where they would take me.

Waiting for the Martins

I’m hoping to become a landlord. There’s a lovely, shiny new birdhouse set up in the garden, positioned with lots of flight path and great potential for flying insects. The white exterior is just what fastidious Purple Martins want, close enough to the house to be sociable but not so close as to be crowded. No overhanging branches or wires that will allow squirrels access. Holes that are Martin sized, perches that are perfect for Martin feet. All the pieces are in place – except for the Martins.

Establishing a new Martin colony is proving more about waiting and hoping than I thought. Somehow, I believed that if I built it they would come, like legendary baseball players sliding through the cornfield. I thought that wanting the Martins and making preparations for them was going to be enough, and that by putting the house up early I’d catch those “early returners” riding north on the first currents of spring. I read the websites and the bird books, opened the required one or two doors on the house and expected to see Martins within a week. I’m still waiting.

We’ve had some false hope – starlings have come to the house twice now, once right away and once just this week. They’re dark, and about the right size, and I get excited that finally, my Martins are here – until I see the yellow beak that no Martin would countenance and I know my hope was wasted. This morning we had starlings inside the house, thrashing about to get in and out because the Martin sized holes really aren’t quite big enough for them. We lowered the pole and tipped the house on its side to encourage them to leave. Leave they did, both of them, in a flurry of feathers and squawking and wrenched wings as they flew off and gave me up close evidence that they were not the birds I was looking for. We closed and locked the doors to keep the marauders out, and still we wait.

I know, logically, that the birds we want, the juveniles who are looking for a new home, won’t be coming until later in the spring – early summer, even. I know that I have to be patient, that good things take time. That we don’t always get what we want right when we want it. That maybe I’ll appreciate my Purple Martins (if when they arrive) that much more. But I’m ready for them! I’m excited at the thought of hosting a colony of birds, counting the eggs and watching the fledglings. I’ll happily make them scrambled eggs and buy freeze dried grubs if the insect buffet is light. I’ll do what I can to make their little birdy hearts sing and give them a good home. Don’t they know that? Can’t they sense that I’m here, with my little bird house and my open field, just waiting for them to nest?

I’m looking for ways to improve my odds now – considering decoys and recorded bird calls. I’m certainly keeping the pesky starlings out of the nest and I’m trying to keep up the hope. I know that as we head into April and then May and then (gulp) June our odds are increasing, just based on numbers. But I worry, a little, when I see that waiting house out there in the middle of the quickly greening garden, worry that it will remain empty, that spring and new life will pass it by and that come fall it will be as it is today, just older and still waiting for a family that never arrived.

Mercurial

Definition of Spring, right? Mercurial? Changeable? Inconstant? Fickle, even? It certainly applies. Most of last week was gloomy and gray and generally down in the dumps. Then Friday was glorious – the daffodils started to bloom and spirits lifted. Saturday was somewhere in the middle – gray, sunny – gray, sunny. Sunday? Wrong term – it was back to rain. No sun in sight. My moods are mirroring the season, and it is driving me nuts – on sunny days I’m balanced, productive, positive. Cloudy ones find me dragging out of bed, plodding through work, sitting dumbly in front of the TV after dinner and generally being a lump. I knew the sun was important to me, but this season is making that terribly obvious.

We got some good work in Saturday, prepping to make hay while the sun shines, or some such Farmer’s Almanac drivel – tilled the entire vegetable garden, treated it with Black Kow fertilizer (call to Bob: hi, we have 500 pounds of shit in the trunk), treated the fruit trees (ambitiously known as the orchard) and I dug up the space for my soon to be cutting garden. I’m so excited to have flowers I can walk out back and cut with abandon. I can’t wait to look out my bedroom window and see waves of color. I sat with a friend last Monday and we poured over flower catalogs, picking out this and that and making sure we had the right balance of color to build bouquets. I tilled under a lot of dirt to make a home for the flowers - because I didn’t have enough garden to weed last summer…

Sometimes I think I’m best at biting off more than I can chew: the vegetable garden was 30x70 last year, and I just added 10 or 15 feet in length so as not to “crowd the corn.”  And then there’s the cutting garden I’ve created -  a whole new space behind the house, wrapping around the tree/bush combo that looms beyond the patio and extending into a sizeable rectangle to the right of it. I’m not going out there with a tape measure – I don’t really want to know how many more square feet of dirt I need to care for this summer. The vegetable garden is already like weeding a 2500 square foot house. My back and legs ache at the thought of bending over to take care of all that dirt, all those plants, all those bloody tenacious weeds. But then I look at the seed catalogs.

Seed catalogs suck me in. They convince me that growing three varieties of squash is perfectly reasonable, that four types of corn will give me the sequential harvest I’m looking for. I love picking the different varieties, looking at last year’s notes on what performed well and what didn’t (and thinking that the longer I garden, the better my histories will be), considering trying new things just because. I have a mental image of myself in a floppy hat collecting beautiful produce from well-manicured rows. This year I’m going to have fewer weeds, because it is the second year for the soil, because I’ve taken better care of it, because I’m going to learn from my mistakes. This year I’m going to manage my drainage and not let the tomatoes and melons drown. This summer I’m going to get the cucumbers trellised early, keep the weeds down early, actually thin my row crops correctly. This is going to be a wonderful gardening summer, unless we have another unusually wet season…

I know March (Spring in general) is the wet time of year here, but this rain, this gray, this damp – I’m afraid it is just a sign of ongoing dampness to come. What if we have another miserably wet summer? What if all my tomatoes drown again, sad twisted black wraiths in a mosquito filled swamp? All the nice garden tools I want, all the special organic fertilizers – what if they are all a waste of money because the summer dumps water rather than sunlight on my garden? And the cutting garden – I have no idea what I’m doing! Just because I managed one scraggly row of zinnias and cosmos last summer doesn’t mean that I’m going to be successful with flowers in bulk. I don’t know if I should plant in rows or scatter the seed randomly or maybe plant in blocks? What if it all dies and looks weedy, or it doesn’t get enough sun, or the cats roll around in it and break the flowers? Then what?

But the sun is shining today. The daffodils are blooming and I read my gardening books and made notes on my seed lists about when to plant what. I’m doing the hard work now, it will pay off in bushels of vegetables and armfuls of flowers later. I’m sure of it – until the clouds come back and the crisp shadows slide into muddy light – and then the garden is sure to fail. C’mon, sun, stay out, because my mood swings are driving ME crazy! I can only imagine how Mike feels.

Spring calling card?

I have three purple and two white so far. Keeping Mike away from them so he doesn't think this is a saffron harvest!

Bird Brained

I think maybe moving here has made my brain soft – I’ve developed a thing for birds. Not that kind of thing. Geez. But still – a thing.  Actually, the bird thing started in Africa, and it was completely unexpected. A safari is about the big five. Giraffes. Hippos. Exotic cats and baboons and baobab trees – not birds. A couple on our safari (who had been to Botswana) started the whole thing. Birds, they told me. Don’t neglect the birds.  My face must have given me away because they insisted. They weren’t “into” birds either, but in Africa…. I mentally filed that advice away as nothing short of bird brained as we bounced down the rutted track into the Ngorongoro Crater and strained my eyes to see if maybe those far off shapes were zebras. We stopped and I leaned over the edge of the truck to point my zoom at those – yes! they were! zebras! when Marvel stopped me. We’ll be so much closer later, she said. Look over there, in the thorn tree. We stopped for the bee eaters.

Bee Eaters? I looked where she pointed and there was a pair of tidily plump birds, backs as green as envy and chests like yellow crayons. A thin black mask extended front and back of the eye and turned into a long curved beak when it reached the end of feathers.  They were sitting closely together and when I pointed my camera at them I saw a smudge of turquoise eye shadow in the black band. Clickclick went the shutter, and again, clickclick and somehow in those fractions of seconds I was won over to the avian side, though it would take a few more days before I realized how totally I’d been converted.

Of course the ostriches were a great spot, striding along the crater floor with easy speed, giant flouncing dust mops of birds, pink neck and legs making them look like half naked girls in French Maid costumes. The flamingos, too, were a sight, just a smear of dingy pink along the edge of the shoreline, feathers in the offseason color of cream. The Secretary Birds were hard to miss, tall homely girls in black stockings with wide butts and confused looks on their faces. And then there were the guinea hens, roving bands of polka dots that swerved confusedly beneath bushes and bobbed their little blue heads in unison.  But when I got excited about a close up portrait of an all brown Hammerkopf I knew that I had gone over the edge. For the rest of the safari, I was as jazzed about good bird sightings as I was about anything else. The tiny and jeweled malachite Kingfisher, the swooping elegant fishing of the Spoonbill, the Egyptian ducks (heavily into eyeliner), the entire tree full of lemon-lime Lorikeets, even the vultures, one variety in particular looking like an aged and ominous undertaker in a shabby suit. All these I thrilled to (and more!) but nothing quite had the cachet of the famed Lilac Breasted Roller, LBR for short. Our safari friends had seen them in Botswana and were on the lookout – when we finally spotted one, I understood why. The body of the bird is a bit scrawny, but the colors! Miami Vice turquoise on the back of the head and underside of the lower body. A spot of metallic blue on the wing, a rumpled gray head and then the eponymous lilac breast, all in perpetual motion through the sky.

So, yeah. Birds. But that was Africa, vacation, a place with more variety than we can even imagine or take in. Who knew that the avian flu would lodge in my brain and move here to Tennessee? I knew I was in trouble last year when I spotted a pair of bluebirds outside the kitchen window, but the winter proliferation of cardinals has been my undoing. I love them, all cheeky chirps and saucy crest. The black mask and thick beak give them character far beyond their actual intelligence and I’ve set up a feeder right outside my office window so that I can lure them close enough to watch. I’ve made a friend, a vocal boy who sits on the top of the shepherd’s hook and complains about the type of seed I’m providing. He likes to chase off the other comers, too, but he can’t keep them all away, and over the past week I’ve seen house finches, bluebirds, sparrows, mockingbirds and a few others that my trusty pocket guide has failed to identify.

The robins have been flocking all of a sudden, great fat chests glowing warm in the sun that is venturing out from winter. I think there are blackbirds by the creek, but they don’t come close enough for me to be sure. I know I’ve seen a few jays and a few woodpeckers and there are hawks a plenty every time we leave the house, intently hunting from the telephone lines. I think it is only a matter of weeks before my wild turkey shows herself again, and as long as she doesn’t appear feasting on my tulip bulbs, we’ll continue to be friends. I’ve got a house to put up for the purple martins, in hopes of attracting a colony, and I think I heard the finch pecking at my back window last night.

I don’t want to jinx it, but the bird behavior and the sun and the feel of the air are telling me it might (just might) be the beginning of spring. I’ve liked winter, been pleased that it held on tightly to the cold and the snow and the sparkling frost, but I think I’m ready. Ready to work in the earth, sit in the sun, watch the birds and hear them sing. I want to see the bulbs bloom above the dark cold dirt, see the leaves appear on the trees, drink in the sweet smell of growth. As much as I love the cardinal for his flashy winter color in a sea of gray, I’m ready for the sweet spring of a pair of bluebirds.

Indian Food & Applesauce

Since November, cooking has been feast or famine. A friend asked, recently, if we went out to eat a lot, and honestly, the only answer that made sense to me was that we’re cyclical. When work and travel collide, Viking and All Clad get abandoned in favor of oh let’s just go get something. If I’m overwhelmed, cooking is the easiest thing to abandon and between Halloween and Christmas I can’t say that my kitchen saw much love. Then the crowd of Yuletide Cheer arrived in the form of lots of houseguests and my poor kitchen went from abandoned to abused.

I lived in the kitchen – which was fine, actually, as it seemed to be the only room of the house without a guest sleeping in it - and I learned that feeding 13 people is exponentially harder than feeding 8. I have a big kitchen and I inherited my mother’s love of plates but I was scrambling; there never seemed to be enough plates, enough silverware, enough counter space. The fridge was crammed full and I could keep food for only two dinners at a time; Publix and Kroger and Harris Teeter were constant companions. I think the only thing we had enough of were gluhwein mugs collected from many Christmas markets – finally justification for making Mike rinse them out in hotel sinks and lug them home.

Because I’m, um, me I planned menus, printed them and left them on each guest room door. It helped me organize and shop and most importantly it fed my inner Martha. I put out German breakfasts, cooked Austrian and Thai and Italian and then on Christmas Eve I faced the aisles of Publix less than an hour before it closed and hit the wall. I had to buy the supplies for our Christmas Day feast as well as dinner that night and I realized that I had only half an idea of what I needed, I’d never shopped so against the wire before and I was hungry. I called home, reached Mike and threw up the white flag that he and Jon had so thoughtfully supplied the night before. I give, I said. Call for BBQ.

It was past dusk on Christmas Eve and in any other place I’ve lived there would be no last minute salvation, but the kindness of strangers in the South is not to be underestimated, and BB’s, though officially closed, picked up the phone and graciously agreed to facilitate my little holiday miracle by waiting for us to arrive. Miti and I frantically grabbed our last items and escaped Publix, only to run into police directing early Christmas Eve service traffic at the largest church in town, a car full of people cruising the Christmas lights on 96 at 20mph and every possible red light between the east and west ends of Franklin. We were punchy and hungry and giggly and maybe a bit frantic but it was fun and I thought Oh! So this is why people like movies about Christmas catastrophes that turn out ok in the end. Oddly enough the nice guy who owns the BBQ place is also a California transplant, here because, like us, he wanted to live in a place where people wait for the answer to a polite question. We piled the pork and ribs and slaw and sauce on top of Miti and headed home, with a quick stop at Kroger because HELLO we forgot bread for stuffing. I proceeded to run into friends in the store, bought way more than just bread and then piled these new items, too, on Miti’s lap. By the time we got home her face was barely visible and I had to airlift dinner off her so she could escape.

The BBQ was good. This is Tennessee so that’s a given, really, but it was nice to feed people without the heat of the stove, to have no dishes to clear in order to play games at the table, to have a clean kitchen when, hours later, I made overnight salad and cinnamon rolls for Christmas morning.  Of course the cooking and the mess and the pots and pans were back the next day but the break was good, and a taste of things to come. Boxing Day we escaped with the Morris family for fancy hamburgers and constant refills on iced tea - the next morning there was a Cracker Barrel breakfast. And then, poof, everyone was gone and we were too, off to Berlin and restaurants and leaving behind a house that still looked like Dec 26 when we got home on January 3.

Last week was a constant steady project, a little bit each day, dismantling the holiday, cleaning the floor, doing the laundry, ironing the linens and putting life back into a reasonable schedule. We managed a run to Trader Joe’s and I sat down and planned dinners and then Sunday there was celery soup and parsnips and enough prime rib to feed us dinner and two lunches. Last night was my first attempt at Indian food, and the conversion of a bag of apples into a nicely spiced sauce that I enjoyed with oatmeal this morning. Tonight is tuna casserole, tomorrow leg of lamb, Thursday posole. There are still some spaces that need cleaning and some errands that need running but as I stirred unfamiliar spices into familiar ingredients last night I felt peacefully, satisfyingly, boring - cooking dinner at home on a winter Monday, no catering needs in sight. I thought I would feel recovered from the holiday swirl once the house was clean, the gifts put away, the last pine needle banished to the vacuum but it turns out all I really needed to do was cook. For two. 

Oh the weather outside is frightful

The cat is sitting in the window, transfixed. He’s hunting the tiny white birdlets fluttering in every direction on the other side of the glass; they are landing so softly on the bushes, sitting so still that he’s sure that if could just… get… out… there… he’d catch them. He’s never seen so many little birds – they just keep coming, piling on top of each other as they land. He looks at me, mrrrows questioningly. Can he go out, please?

But the fire is so delightful

His ample rear is parked on top of the heater vent, the warm air ruffles his fur. His whiskers tremble, part heat, part excitement. I’m warm, too, but I wouldn’t mind a change of scenery, from office to fireside, from laptop to book. I have new things to read post Christmas, and I’ve been itching to curl up with a blanket and words that aren’t my own. A leg warming cat would also be welcome, but he’s intent on the little birds. They’re coming faster now, thicker, and they’ve started to flock in swirling circles. A few larger ones are appearing too, and those seem to swoop tantalizingly close to the eager cat face in the window. He strains to see where they land.

And since we’ve no place to go

The neighborhood is quiet. School was cancelled today, and no one is out. I’ve seen one lone delivery truck (still recovering, no doubt, from the crazy schedule of the holidays, it moved slowly - almost without purpose - past our house). The yard looks still, the driveway whiter and whiter. We’ve got food (even bread and milk, purchased before the hordes descended on the grocery store and wiped the shelves bare of such necessities) and drink, work to do and books to read and no essential errands that need to be run.  The cat took a brief snack break, stomach growling in anticipation of all the succulent bird flesh just outside his pounce, but he’s back on the heater vent, intent. He looks at me again; to make sure I, too, see the flock that is settling onto the front yard. The tail twitches once, stops, his focus returns to the activity outside. The air is thick now, darkened just a bit by the feathers in free fall that seem to appear out of nowhere.  A train whistle blows, lonely and cold.

Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow.

Spring Report #6

Spring Report #5

Spring Report #4

Spring Report #3

Spring Report #2

Northbound, Southbound, whatever...

…. That damn train that runs behind the house needs to be muzzled. We think they are working on the tracks during the day, so the train is running at night. It has an erratic schedule on the best of weeks, and usually I don’t notice it, but all week it has gone by just as I am dropping off to sleep (so somewhere around midnight) and the driver is working hard to make sure he is wide awake. If I hear that damn whistle blow (who came up with that, whistle? It isn’t a whistle, it is a honking horn, loud enough to startle the pigs, make the cat yowl and wake Mike from deep sleep, which is really saying something) ONE MORE TIME at midnight I’m calling the railroad and complaining.

I understand the whistle, or the horn, or whatever we’re going to call it. There are two crossings on either side of our neighborhood that are un-guarded. Each is about a mile from the house, and I do understand that the HORN needs to be sounded to warn the unwary. Both these roads are so lightly travelled during the day, though, that I can’t imagine a steady stream of traffic is tying up the tracks at midnight… A few short honks would do the trick, but I think the driver is hitting the horn at one crossing a mile to the north and leaning on it ALL THE WAY through to the other crossing a mile to the south.

Two miles of earsplitting horn in the middle of the night gets old, train guy. And I guarantee you that the one little dinky farm road in the middle – the one right opposite our house with the rusty gate and lock that has clearly rusted shut? Yeah, no one is crossing the tracks on a tractor right there. Especially not at midnight.  That extra burst of sound you like to lay on for the benefit of that potential farmer? Pretty unnecessary. So lay off the horn, already. It isn’t like it is as cool as the mournful hoooooonk of the Monorail. And until it is, SHUT IT.

Septic System Facts (learned the hard way)

• They lurk underground
• Nothing, but nothing, should be put in them other than, well, yeah (try explaining that to guests)
• When they start to get backed up, all the pipes in the house make scary gurgling noises
• Pumps are a necessary component in the whole solids/liquids/3 tank system
• All the gentle, non chemical cleaners in the world can’t prevent a blockage if the pump isn’t working
• Pumps that were NEVER CONNECTED TO THE ELECTRICAL SYSTEM by your home builder don’t (go figure) pump
• A septic system that has no pump working on it for an entire year gets backed up
• See above about scary gurgling noises
• Plumbers who say “I have never seen this in my career” when referring to your lack of a powered septic pump are going to leave a bill that you do not want to pay
• Opening the covers to the septic system and peering inside exposes one to a rather unpleasant smell
• The “unpleasant smell” is really worse than unpleasant and leans more toward violently putrid
• Waste inside clogged septic systems forms something referred to as a “raft” but not one you’d like to float on
• The “raft” is probably the source of the putrid smell
• Water escaping from under said “raft” forms a geyser, but not one you want in your vacation photos
• I never knew I would be so happy to see a toilet bowl fill or a sink drain normally
• I prefer city maintained sewers

That is all.

Happy Halloween!

We're headed next door for trick or treating, but the porch is ready. All that spiderweb will glow under a blacklight once it is dark. Bring on the witches!

Six Months Ago

 Six months ago today, we hadn’t even been here a week. Our stuff was still in boxes, and I’m pretty sure that we were still using the travel toiletries we’d crossed the country with. I was working from a tiny space I’d carved out of the boxes in the kitchen – the kitchen itself was more of a storage area than a place where food was prepared . The yard was wild with spring growth and we had nary a blade to cut it, the John Deere being merely a twinkle in Mike’s eye. In a practical sense, I felt that we’d be living out of boxes forever. Emotionally, I wasn’t sure what was happening.

Six months ago today, we were dealing with the loss of Sidney, who predated our marriage by more almost two years. He’d enjoyed the cross country drive, but small dog old age got the better of him before we’d even begun to settle in. In considering the shock of losing him, I had to also consider that he was eleven, and how could we possibly have been living together that long? Weren’t we just out of college, still?

Six months ago today, the reality of just how far we were from friends and family hadn’t really sunk in. As constant travelers, being away wasn’t anything new to us. It certainly didn’t feel permanent, here, and anyway, people were coming. It wouldn’t be until after I’d put a number of people on airplanes and driven home in silent tears that I would realize just how far we were.

Six months ago today, we were explaining to the crazy frozen meat shipper that no, we didn’t have a forklift, and no, we didn’t know anyone we could borrow one from, and in fact, we really didn’t know anyone at all. The immensity of that not knowing was strange. Really, there was no one we could call, save our realtor, who was likely sick of our calls anyway. Having lived in California all of our lives, we just weren’t used to the idea that there was no one in a ‘hop in the car’ distance that we knew, or that knew us. We were invisible, undefined and unknown.

I realize that all this sounds bad in the retelling. Really (with the exception of little Bids) it wasn’t. There was a lot of liberation in being somewhere completely new, of being completely anonymous. We had the space to focus on us, to enjoy each other’s company and explore this new place together. It has been fun to develop the yard, to plant trees and drag the hoses around to keep them watered, to eat pesto from our own garden and enjoy the surprise luxury of hastily planted melons. The box part of the unpacking wasn’t fun, but seeing the house come together has been.  Even better has been getting live in the house, really sitting at the kitchen counter drinking with friends rather than talking about it, having a glass of wine on the screened porch and counting fireflies. We’re nesting, and we’re doing it together in a way that we haven’t in the past.

We know our way around now, but there is still so much to learn. Watching the seasons change is fascinating for Californians – it seems that every week there is some new thing – this week we’ve been seeing huge furry caterpillars inching their way along the drive. We’ve slowed down enough that we notice the caterpillars. Six months ago, I don’t know that we would have. I started this adventure willing myself to pay attention to the small things, and with six months of practice it’s become a habit.
We’re meeting people, too. If we walk in the neighborhood, we run into people to stop and talk to who know our names. Last night we stood on our neighbor’s porch and chatted for a long time, and two nights before that we had people over for dinner, people we knew really not at all but who turned out to be great dinner companions.

Six months ago today, I wouldn’t have had any idea what today would look like. I didn’t know how much I would appreciate the way fallen leaves swirl behind a car on a country road, or how much I enjoy seeing the local whistle pig fattening up for hibernation. I didn’t know that I’d be spending Halloween with my neighbors, who I like very much, and I didn’t know that  I would have met enough people to have a small cocktail party. I didn’t know how much I liked the afternoon light in the living room, or the quiet stillness of the house in the morning. I didn’t know that as much as I miss people in California, I wouldn’t be missing California itself, that six months of time would be enough to feel (most of the time, at least) like I lived here.  A year ago today, all of this was beyond my imagining, so different of a place was I in then. And two years ago today we were camping out in Castellina, plotting how we could move there. Move we’ve done … not there (not yet) but closer, closer, in so many ways. And now we’re here, today, now, making cheese and baking bread and looking forward to sweater weather, learning to live somewhere different, and liking it.

We’ve come a long way.

(photos of the house, then and now, are in the Ponteuf's Burrow album, over on the left side of the blog)

If only I had a table...

The house came with light fixtures that wavered between nice and, well, not me. The chandelier in the dining room was greatly improved by changing the tiny faux tapestry shades to these larger, far more elegant silk pagoda do-hickies, and I'm much happer. I'd be even happier if my hard won (and for a great deal) Restoration Hardware Parsons Chairs (no relation to Parsons, or Parsons Brinkerhoff, for that matter) in goldenrod were actually sitting around a table, the cherry surface of which will be ever so delicately lit by these shades. Alas, it is not yet to be, and the chairs are waiting under plastic for their prince.

Majestic Yellow

Ah, glorious new Kitchen Aid mixer, how I love you, with your larger bowl, slightly more powerful motor, improved splatter shield and beaming yellow countenance. You coordinate so beautifully with the kitchen and I promise to care for you, in cake batter and in frosting, in mashed potatos and in bread dough, so long as we both shall cook.

Thirsty?

I've always liked advertising art (those that knew me in the CMC days will remember the wall of absolut ads) but it can walk the line of tacky when hung anywhere but, um, a college dorm. Quite pleased, was I, then, to find real old soda signs in the antique store. With a bit of rust and some scratches, they become bona fide relics and totally cool to hang in the kitchen. Plus, I really like camels.

It’s a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow

I didn’t want a new house. When I thought about moving, I always pictured us in a leafy, in-the-city neighborhood, fitting ourselves into an early 1900s house with hidden secrets, odd bathrooms that were fitted in long after the house was built and storage problems. I like the character of old houses, I like wondering about who lived there and what happened in each room. I like the permanence of them, and the mellow grace they acquire as the trees in the front grow taller and the wood on the floor mellows. I’ve always had a daydream of living in a Norman Rockwell neighborhood, with a front porch and a screen door and a little picket fenced yard. I was willing to take less space and more hassle to fulfill that daydream … but in this case, more practical minds (read: Mike) prevailed. Our last house was built in 1946; I was hoping to buy its gracious elderly aunt. Instead, I’m living in its modern, New South grandchild.

Sixty years makes a big difference – and not just in the square footage. These new windows open easily and shut firmly; this new house is airtight, and the temperature inside is constant. I miss the look of the old wood paned beasts from LA, but I so enjoy the lower levels of dust that I’m not complaining. The garage is big enough for us to pull in AND get out of our cars without interesting yoga moves, and we never had to worry about where the John Deere would live – it fits in front of my car. The laundry is in its own room, IN the house, and my days of walking in and out of the garage and having to back a car out to wash clothes are blissfully in the past. Mike is thrilled that hanging art no longer involves drilling into plaster and hoping like hell that the first hole is right, because taking it out will create a crater. My kitchen could probably hold three of my old kitchen, and you won’t hear me complaining about that either. Ahh, progress.

Before we go spinning off to the modern and convenient future, though, I must succumb to my inner luddite contrarian and look out the windows, where I am dutifully reminded that all the wireless networks and linen closets in the world can’t replace established gardens; virtual picket fences do not a charming front yard make. New houses, for all their interior goodness, tend to look like they’ve been plunked down on a stretch of open space, with none of the gracious permanence that trees lend. Our house was a year old when we bought it, and its landscape is, correspondingly, just learning to walk. There are beds in front, and there certainly is a lawn to mow (albeit a disturbingly weedy lawn). There’s even a deck sticking off the back, with steps down to… well, to nothing, more or less. With two acres, I don’t expect every area to be manicured, but I really dislike that the areas around the house look raw. Enter, stage right, Zach & Calvin & Angie. Enter, stage left, my checkbook. Lather, rinse, repeat.

We’ve been talking to landscape and stone people for about a month, and they’ve run the gamut from professional and not exciting to young and unorganized to failing to call us back with a bid to just plain interesting. The guys we chose, Zach & Calvin, not only do beautiful stonework, but they seem to know everyone in town, have done all sorts of interesting things and are just plain fun to talk to. They’ve been in charge of the stone, and Angie is in charge of the trees, and I’m learning as much as I can about growing things here every time I talk to her. I ruined a pair of shoes walking around the tree lot in the mud, but she helped us pick trees and told us which ones to avoid (regardless of popularity) and what would really grow here. This is such different climate that I’m going to be learning as I go, so it is nice to talk to someone who really knows and is happy to share.

The flagstone patio off the deck was step one, a giant puddle of stone that seemed to grow every time we discussed it. It took Zach and Calvin about a week to create, and I loved going out in the mornings to chat with them as it moved from roped off green area to poured cement (there was a cement truck! In my back yard! I think I was instantly transformed into a 5 year old boy from the excitement!) and finally to laid stone. We moved the patio furniture and the Pig down last Friday and it feels good to have an outdoor space that is ours- no longer does the deck step down to nothing. Trees are coming next – last night Angie stopped by to flag the spots for the magnolia, the redbuds, the dogwoods, the tulip tree, the fruit trees, the Japanese cherry AND the Japanese maple – and the lilacs! I think that by the time I get back from LA, I’ll be coming home to a place with a little more tree-lent permanence, and a few less bare walls meeting bare earth. Now that’s progress.

the beginning

the middle

the end (full set of photos in the Ponteuf Burrow album)

Take THAT Calico Curtains

Custom curtains? Are expensive. And take 10(ish) weeks to be made and delivered. And HONESTLY, that's just a bit much for me. So after "panel hunt 2008" with my mom, and the huge amount of curtains that came through the house and were hung and discarded and returned, these were THE ONES but they weren't hung in a "custom" way. An evening with stitch witchery and the iron, however, and wa-lah! I'm feeling rather chuffed about the whole thing.

It still begins with a "B"

but at least it is a "bunny" and not a bird... My mom bought me this guy when she was here, and the photo doesn't do his green bark fur justice. It does show off the great old lard can and metal flower basket from one of our antique shopping excursions, though.

Ahh, more birds

These I didn't buy, I promise! They were a last-house housewarming gift from Claudia, who always could find the most charming things. I've always liked this family of chickens, but they never had a proper home until now, when they hold down the old cookbooks I'm collecting against my better judgement.

 

Ziggy

I know I must be getting bird crazy when I start buying art, but I couldn't resist this guy. The artist, Vicki Sawyer, is local, and she puts hats on birds (I really like the idea of hats on birds) and names them. King Cardinal here is Ziggy. He's since moved to our bedroom, and the more I look at him the more I like him. Resisting more bird paintings may be hard...

It's a Good Thing....

For an OCD…

Anal Retentive…

Hoarding…

Alcoholic…

…to have created a new, accessible, color coded spice drawer, organized a special drawer just for prep bowls, unpacked all the matching canned goods and set up the bar. Especially the bar, as the unpacking of boxes packed by people with a complete lack of organization (or spelling skillz) is beginning to grate on me.

Still and all, progress is being made. The kitchen and laundry room are basically complete. The screened porch is useable. The living room is set up and the table is only marginally a dumping ground for items without homes. Our bedroom is taking shape, and the closet gets a little better every day. I did the master bath right at the beginning, I don’t know why, but I do appreciate showering and brushing my teeth in relative calm. The dining room has been stripped of its forest of alcohol boxes as the aforepraised bar is complete and the wine is sorted and waiting for delivery of a 150 bottle containment unit. The Geepers are sharing the room with just the art these days, so I guess I can get my antique sideboard scheduled for delivery. Oddly, the garage is mostly unpacked.

Upstairs (where I don’t go) Mike’s office is looking pretty good, and the movie room would be great if we had furniture in it. The guest room and bathroom are functional but still harboring a few boxes. We’re not talking about the attic storage, and for purposes of sanity, my office does.not.exist. My mom comes in 7 days and counting, and if I don’t want her to be horrified, I’d better get to it. The Jones in me, however, is pointing out that the bar? It is set up and needs to be broken in.

He also bought a weed whacker

Two acres? Is a lot of space. And the mowing is going to take some serious time. I think the upfront work is going to be the worst, just to catch the yard up after who knows how many months of neglect, but the weed whacking is harder than just riding the mower around, and I did a good chunk of it, thereby earning a nice soak in my giant whirlpool tub. I was covered in grass flecks after an hour of grass shredding, but in a satisfying way – I’m looking forward to keeping up this yard. I know that Bob is laughing right now, and certain people think I should have “outsourced” but I like the satisfaction of looking out the window and knowing that I made the manicure happen. I’m excited to plant the sort of things that didn’t grow in California: lilacs, dogwoods, hostas, bulbs. My front yard is calling for some flowers, and the back 40 is getting a nice selection of blackberry, raspberry and blueberry bushes planted this weekend. Oh, and I have ferns!

In case you were wondering about my new fancy office...

This is it:

And this is the view the other way: