The Plentiful Vintage

Boshe moi, the pollen vortex is frackin' killing me.

March finally showed up on April 1st, and for the past few days April has been trying to shove it out of the way with a vengeance. On one hand, I was finally able to ride my bike two days in a row. On the other hand, I am wheezing like a patient in a TB ward. I hate to think what it would be like without the zyrtek, because even with it, boosted by some diphenhydramine, my mucus membranes are still running overtime on histamine production.

I had the windows open for the first time yesterday. Did I mention I had all the windows except the ones in the front replaced? Back in January, when it was 7 °F outside. Cold as it was, at least I could breathe.

I never did see any crocuses this year, although the daffodils and tulips have sprouted. I'm worried about the two krabapple trees in the front yard. Neither has shown any signs of life yet. They're both a few years old, so it's not like this was their first winter. The branches still seem fairly flexible, so at least there's some moisture in there.

So, this morning I pruned juniper #2 with extreme prejudice, then lopped the carcass into manageable portions and fed it to the evil thicket. The arbor vitae will live till next year, at least, but I still need to trim them back some. Soon.

After a much needed shower, I spent the afternoon and evening making truffles for the Tiptree bake sale at Readercon. Tomorrow I'll make some triple chocolate cookies, as well.

First mow of the year today. It might have happened last weekend, but for the non-functioning of my lawn mower. My old adversary, the Briggs and Stratton two-cycle engine, strikes again. The first time starting in the spring is always an adventure. Normally I can get it to start by spraying a little starter fluid into the cylinder, but my trusty can of starter fluid seems to have gone walkabout. I didn't make it over to Wal-Mart to pick up a new can until yesterday. One spritz and I was good to go. Take that, B&S.

In retrospect, I probably could've waited a few more days. The grass wasn't as high as I thought it was. It's been a really strange spring. March was essentially April in disguise, which has many of the plants in my yard very confused. It's interesting to see which plants have been affected by the warmer temps and which haven't. For example, the grass greened up and grew like crazy during the one week in March when it got up into the seventies, but slowed a lot once the spring temperatures became a little more normal. My crocuses were apparently up in late February, because they were already past their prime before I'd even noticed they'd popped. The cherry tree bloomed in late March, about a month earlier than usual, while the Bradford pear waited until about a week before its usual mid-April to puff out. The forsythia have been golden for a couple of weeks now, while the rhododendrons lagged behind. The daffodils on the south side of the house are mostly gone. The ones on the north side started popping Easter weekend. The tulips, being more mercurial, shall arrive in their own good time. (Actually, the first started to bloom yesterday.)

Up until this weekend, April was April-like, however it got up into the seventies today, and, depending on which weather site you check, we'll be up into the frelling nineties tomorrow. Yikes!

I suspect I may have to buy some tomato plants early this year.

Today is the 4th of July, which means it was time for the 11th annual Casa Machina shrub trimming extravaganza. The spring growth surge is over, and it's time to do some hacking. Of course, I decided to wait until the hottest day of the weekend to do it...

( Shrubs and tomatoes... )

The Machinamobile needed some serious engine repairs, so I've been driving a rental for the past couple of weeks. I got the truck back Thursday, and I returned the Ford Fusion to Enterprise yesterday. Nice car, although it felt weird driving a sedan. OTOH, it had a six cylinder engine, so it had way more zip than I'm used to. It also had a stick shift, so that, along with the zip, took a little getting used to. Of course now I keep reaching for the stick when I want to put the truck in gear. All in all, with the rental on top of the repair bill, it was a very expensive week around these parts. That said, when I first heard the estimate for the repairs, I priced potential replacements. Repairing was a LOT cheaper.

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My riding also suffered a little as a result of not having the truck to tote the bike around with, although I did strap on my old bike rack onto the rental last weekend. The weather was more to blame as, apart from one day last weekend, it stubbornly refuses to warm up much above 50°. Yesterday was gray, cold, and windy, and eventually it rained buckets. Today looks a little more promising, but a glance out my window shows the branches on the Bradford pear whipping around in the wind. Feh.

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Found out* a piece of neighborhood news I somehow missed when it happened. Apparently someone was storing massive amounts of cocaine and cash in a storage locker just around the corner from me. Huh.

* When he found out where I lived, the kid who drove me home from Enterprise asked me what I thought of the drug raid, to which I replied, "What drug raid?"

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Speaking of the Bradford pear above, it is just about to bloom, as are the rhododendrons and one of the krabappel trees. The forsythia popped out a day or two ago, and there are lots of daffodils on the south side of the house. The daffodils on the northern end of the property are getting close. OTOH, the dogwood and the second crab apple that I planted last September appear to be doing their best impressions of dead sticks. I hope that isn't true, but if it is, at least Lowe's has that one year guarantee on trees. I also started some tomato, squash, etc., plants a couple of weeks ago, and none have sprouted yet. I'll be patient, but I worry that my black thumb has come back with a vengeance.

I rode all three mornings, Saturday and Sunday in Kingston, today up at Blackstone with friends.

I've taken to riding early on Saturdays so that I can do whatever chores I need to do after I ride, rather than before, which leads to tuckered-out rides. Given the forecast, i.e., lovely on Saturday, blistering after that, I did my annual July 4th trimming of the shrubs Saturday afternoon. It was still hot, messy work, but it wasn't baking hot nor terribly humid, so it worked out.

The basic problem is that the previous owner let most the shrubs get too big. The hedge on the north side of the house is perfectly sized, and the shrubs on the south side aren't ridiculous, although perhaps there are too many, but the junipers, yews, and even my beloved small-leaf rhododendrons out front are all my height or better. The yews are tall enough to partially block the view from the windows behind them. I can't really cut them shorter, because the leaves end not far behind the new growth, and because they also got too wide, so the sides the plants that face other plants are completely barren of foliage. All six of them are pretty much hollow.

I don't even like the junipers, as I get a mild allergic reaction if I get scratched by one, and although I don't mind the yews, they're just too damn big. The problem is that if I cut them out of there, I'm left with two rhododendrons that will flower gloriously come spring in front and on top, but not at all on their sides. To do it properly, I probably need to take them out, too. Sigh.

Anyway, after several hours of wielding my electric hedge trimmer as though it were Excalibur against the shrubs that say Ni, they were trimmed for another year. Actually, I got a little over zealous here and there, and there are some definite bare spots where I went a little beyond removing current growth.

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Sunday after the ride* but before it got ridiculously hot, I pulled out the loppers and my camp saw to do battle with the part of the evil thicket that was encroaching on the SE corner of the yard. Spent about an hour working on that, then continued training the tomato plants to their stakes. I have lots on teensy green tomatoes on the way, and even one tiny spaghetti squash so far.

* I rode the now well-adjusted 3-speed, and it worked flawlessly. I'm still surprised, though, at how badly it managed to get itself out of adjustment just hanging from a hook in the attic for the last year or so.

Afterward, I spent some quality time down in the basement organizing and cleaning up matted sawdust. Then I repaired to the a/c in the office to enter utilities and pay stubs for the last nine months into gnuCash. Still much to be done on both projects.

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Today, as previously mentioned, I went for a ride on the Blackstone path with part of the v-ball crew. Apart from Blake, none of them had ever been before, so that was fun. It was blistering hot, which suppressed the usual pack of strollers, pedestrians, and other speed bumps from blocking the path. (I will note, however, that since we were constantly stopping to wait for the slower members of the group to catch up, we often became speed bumps ourselves.) Later we went back to Dale's for a pool party and barbecue which was great fun. Fun fact: wasps will catch crickets and haul them back to their nests for dinner. I know this because the nest in question turned out to be in the tubular steel chaise immediately to my left as I sat talking to Christina, who was sitting in the aforementioned chaise. Fortunately, the wasps turned out to be too stuffed with cricket to do much more than glower at us as Chris noisily vacated the chaise.

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The one tiny silver lining to the temperatures was that it never got particularly humid (31% yesterday, 50-60% today, not Arizona, but neither was it business as usual for the Northeast). Tomorrow it's supposed to be even hotter. Yikes!

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I didn't go to any particular fireworks display, since a couple of my neighbors put on pretty decent displays in their own backyards. This year Rhode Island rescinded the statewide ban on private possession of fireworks (a state felony). They had been banned in the late seventies after a couple of well-publicized accidents involving children. It didn't help that Connecticut legalized them a couple of years ago, and that there was a store just over the border on 95. Now you can get them in Wal-Mart and even Stop&Shop. The fact that it had been a felony had never actually stopped the displays in the past. They've been going on for the ten years I've lived in this neighborhood, throughout most of the summer.

Ah, circadian rhythms, you are a cruel master. I've been up with the sunrise the past couple of days, my eyes popping open for good somewhere between 5 and 5:30 in the frelling A.M. I've been hitting the sack between 10 and 11, so it hasn't been that bad. I was up at 5:15 this morning, for example. Went into the kitchen, ground some coffee, put water in the coffee maker, dumped the ground coffee into a filter, put the filter in the basket inside the maker, hit the switch, and went over to the computer to read the Sunday funnies. Five minutes later I went back over to pour myself some coffee, and noticed that there were coffee and grounds all over the kitchen counter. I'd completely missed the step of putting the actual coffee pot under the basket, and since the basket couldn't drain, it overflowed.

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The weather continues to be ridiculously chilly and wet. I considered turning the furnace back on one day last week. Doesn't mama nature know it's June? Even yesterday was cool, although the humidity made it feel warmer than it was. Today looks good so far, though. Very sunny.

Last weekend was pretty nice, too. I planted the tomato patch last Saturday. Just four plants, two reds (Better Boy and Beefmaster), a cherry (Patio), and an heirloom yellow (Brandywine), along with a pair of muskmelons. I got the melons and Brandywine at Schartner's, the others at the Depot. The Depot had single plants, as opposed to Schartner's four-packs, so although the price per plant was higher there, the overall cost was lower. The Depot's plants were from a local grower, and much cheaper (less than half the price) than the national brand they (and Wal-Mart and Lowes) also carry. I wanted to try spaghetti squash, but couldn't find any plants. I have some seeds, but I never got around to starting them.

I also hacked back the bush that sprang up from the root system of the Bradford pear that crashed to earth a couple of years ago. I'd originally let it grow in order to replace the lost tree, but then the town planted the new cherry tree in the same location. My next plan was to take the strongest stem and transplant it elsewhere in the yard, but I never got around to it. So the shrub grew. The cherry is doing famously, but the pear was also running riot (you can see it in the background here), and some of the stems were already taller than me. It was starting to crowd the cherry, so clearly something had to be done. So I took the loppers to it, and cut out all the stems but one. That one I'm going to try to move elsewhere. I'm not sure how easy that will be. It's growing out of a twenty year-old root system, so I may not be able to hack it out of there without seriously damaging it, or even be able to do it at all. If I can't do it, it'll have to get lopped, too. We'll see.

Tweeting outside my window at 5:00 in the morning. Stoopid birds...

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Wow, that sure was a short spring. We went from the last remnants of winter on Thursday (high 40's, rainy, windy) to full on summer yesterday (temperatures approaching 80), with even warmer temps due today.

I celebrated by doing the first mow of the season (and was stunned when the mower started up on the second pull), along with some other yardwork. I also swapped out the windows for screens on the storm doors and assembled the garden cart I picked up at the Depot a little while ago. A garden cart is basically a wagon with delusions of grandeur. It does have one feature that I would've killed for back when I was a kid hauling one brother or another around in our Radio Flyer. There's a handle on it that if pulled lets you dump the contents out the back. That would've been handy.

I'd actually gone looking to finally buy a wheel barrow, but as I was looking at the options in the store, I remembered all the times I'd managed to accidentally dump the contents of a wheel barrow after running into an inopportunely placed obstacle. Plus there is still a certain amount of lifting involved when using one, and I'm getting a little too old for that. The cart was in the same ballpark price-wise, and should do nicely for the kinds of toting I need to do around here. It was a bitch to put together, though, relying on very large-headed machine screws to be driven into very tight lock nuts for assembly. I was done by the time I was finished.

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I still need to do a couple of chores out there. I need to fill in the deep rut left in the lawn by the corner of the driveway when the kind snowplow driver plowed out the end of my driveway back in December. There are also still some ruts near it from when the septic truck drove over the lawn last year.

I also need to do something about a dead rhododendron. I have a line of shrubs along one side of the yard, alternating forsythias and small-leafed rhododendrons. The forsythia are three years old now, and doing splendidly. The rhododendrons are at least five years old, and aren't. They're barely bigger than when I planted them. One of them is totally dead. What's weird about it is that it was murdered rather than being a natural death. All the remaining branches were clipped below the leaves somehow, as if someone ran it over with a lawnmower. I know I didn't run it over. I'm pretty sure that C next door, who is way more into gardening than I am, would've told me if she'd accidentally hit it with the lawn tractor. That leaves either her boyfriend's kid, who occasionally does her lawn, or bunnies unknown. But if it was a bunny, why just that one and not the others. And my experience is that bunnies don't eat wooden stems, just leaves.

Anyway, I have one rhododendron that I planted near the flower bed at the head of the drive that's done even worse over the years than the others (albeit without dying), and this gives me the opportunity to move it to the ex-rhododendron's location. Today should be a good day for that.

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I also want to go for a ride. The weather's been so lousy that I haven't gotten out much at all. I did get out Friday, and swallowed my first bug of the season. Today I'm thinking about driving up to Blackstone for a ride before the thunder storms roll in.

So, I have new loppers, although not the ones I really wanted. The ones I had were pretty compact for loppers, only 18" long or so, similar to these. They were light, and in a pinch I could manage them one-handed. They also used Fiskars' "3X" gearing system for added leverage, which was a feature I liked. That's what I was looking for when I set out to get the new pair. Except no one had them. Not Wal-Mart; not the Depot; not Lowes. Oh, they all carried Fiskars, but only in the 27" size. (Wal-Mart did have these, but it was an anvil model, versus the bypass type (which are more like scissors), and they were made out of plastic rather than metal. No sale. BJ's had the Lop and Saw model, which were close to what I wanted, but I already have a saw, and they were way more expensive than plain old loppers. Amazon had the ones I wanted, but they would take awhile to get here. Then I noticed something on the Fiskars site. They have a lifetime warranty. It turns out I may be able to get mine replaced under warranty. That would be nice.

Meanwhile, however, I still needed a pair for right now. Knowing that I may be getting my smaller pair replaced, I went ahead and got a 27" pair at Lowes. They are heavier and more tiring to use than my old ones, but on the other hand, I can lop higher branches with them. They certainly work. Now I just need to contact Fiskars about the other pair.

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I have lots of crocuses already, even out by the cherry tree. Last year the cherry tree crocuses didn't start popping until the second week of April. That seems odd, because it hasn't exactly been warm this month.

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Today is my annual journey to Connecticut to eat ribs, drink beer, watch college basketball, and talk baseball, which makes it possibly the best day of the year ever.

Nice day, but I didn't ride. I did ride last night, and my legs are a little sore. Instead I decided to finally do something about mulching the forsythia and small-leafed rhododendrons I planted some years back. Of course, it would've been way easier to do it then, when there was a freshly dug circle around each new planting, but I didn't.

I got a couple of bags of bark mulch last fall, some of which got spread over the new tulip bed, but there was still a bag and a half left. Since I didn't have a nice neat hole to fill, I was worried that the bark would look really sloppy if I just heaped it around the plants. The solution was to buy some of that plastic lawn edging stuff, out of which I made a ring about 2½' in diameter and 4" high. Open the ring, wrap it around a shrub, close the circle, and stuff it with mulch the way you'd spoon batter into a cake pan. The shrubs are still small enough that once the mulch was in I could just lift the ring up leaving a perfect circular pile of mulch behind. Genius!

Only problem is I ran out of mulch. Another bag should do it. I just have no idea when I'm going to do it, given that I'm heading for Jersey Friday night.