Long Lost

Our sign says "No Turnaround" but trucks can't read, and when backing up inch by inch to try to turn around, their tires fump down off the gravel and churn up a track of mud maybe three inches deep. In spring especially. Today while walking the trash can back up the incline I saw something odd in the latest tire track, stopped, recognized it.

I had splurged on a five-piece set of Henckels scissors around 2002, and by 2007 or 2009 had worn out its kitchen shears and flower shears and the other, and lost two including the pair I favored for harvesting herbs. Never again had a set that elegant. It's 10 years later and I notice handles?!?!? in the wave of mud.

Pull 'em out. The herb scissors. I'll be darned. The pivot is dark with rust and corroded, looks like a raisin, but the blades are still keen. Rinsed it, and scrubbed away some of the rust with baking soda. Gave it a little lubricant. Maybe I can replace the pivot.

I'm amazed. Just amazed. Durability.

Worth the Effort

Rain saturated the earth this month and after 10 winters (or more) the 2x6 holding the bluebird box tilted in the softened yellow clay. Despite my many shims, finally it fell and I let it lie there until reminded by an online post that male bluebirds in Missouri start seeking their housing in late February. And I panicked. I need bluebirds.

Only one solution: Quik-Crete concrete. Never tried it before. At the hardware store the smallest bag was 50 pounds. Stunned when it was carted out to the car and I saw 50 pounds of Quik-Crete is no bigger than a party-sized bag of potato chips.

At home I slid the bag out of the back seat onto an old shower curtain and dragged it to the site. Oh my, it really was 50 pounds. Thinking I might have a heart attack I prepared by securing the phone on my person and then opened the garage door so I could crawl into it, shut the door and die there without being eaten by coyotes the same night. Then read the instructions on the bag.

Shoveled most of the water out of the hole. Dug wet mud out until it was two feet wide. Shovel caught on some roots somehow growing through the clay; clipped the roots out. Took breaks, gasping and sweating. Frantically drinking water so as to keep my blood volume. Bluebirds are among the two or three things beautiful enough to die for. Dropped a shovel full of gravel into the hole's very bottom. Unable to figure out how to hold the post upright while pouring, I dragged the trash can into the meadow and leaned it. Now then. Donned breathing mask, gloves, long sleeves and eye protection as the instructions recommended.

The YouTube video guy poured the Quik-Crete directly into the hole, so instead of mixing it and then pouring I wrestled the bag to the lip of the hole, slit it and let the material pour in, fast as possible, face averted from its dust, then poured in water measured into my watering can, meanwhile holding the post upright until the Quik-Crete hardened (mere seconds!) and then fled to the house to shower, leaving tools, bag, mask, etc. in the yard because surely the dust would turn to concrete in my lungs. Relieved to think I would never have to do this again. Now I know why people leave stuff to rust and rot in their yards: They are too exhausted to pick it up.

Fifty pounds of Quik-Crete exactly filled the hole and now it's perfect.

Scrapers Gonna Scrape

Winter came early, with snow on November 8, and then an actual 4 inches of snow in this area this past week. When the snow ceases, the snowplow comes. The plow is a benefit for tenants, and I am grateful because, frankly, I have tried to shovel 100 yards of snow but every time, I failed.

Once, before the snowplow, a 50-pound bag of ice-melting salt was delivered here after a blizzard, left in the middle of the lane in front of my house. I could not move the bag, or even drag it, so I slit it open and carried the salt one shovelful at a time downhill to highway's edge where the most treacherous ice forms. After I did that 20 times, the bag of salt diminished and I dragged it away from the middle of the lane so the car could get out.

The plow is so much better, and the plowman courteous enough (now that I have asked) to clear the space in front of the garage so I can back the car out, but his blade scrapes the last gravel from the non-paved lane, leaving thigh-high drifts of gravel and snow, and soupy mud as the snow melts. I call it the "Slop-o-Rama." In front of the garage it looks like this.

In Search of Spring

Soil at 50 degrees is the minimum for morel mushrooms. Each year about this time, every week I take the soil temp in the woods where they grow; this first time got 54 degrees. But really we can't expect them at this latitude (39N) so early in spring. If you were a morel, would you want to stand in wet 54-degree mud and stay there? Would you even poke your head out if there's still a chance that a freeze might shrivel your delicate tissues? Granted, it's very rich mud, quite satisfactory, but if I were a morel at this time of year there wouldn't be enough sun to coax me out.

So when the rain temporarily ceased, I (who am not a morel) went searching in the universe for other signs of spring, edible and not, and, dog my cats, I found some. The daffodil is not in my yard.

Plenty of brand-new Turkey Tail mushrooms and those brown Japanese wood-ears were growing on downed trees.

I and my neighbor Terri vote that spring should last all year. Yourself?

Muddylicious

Lucky we are to have a man who snowplows our lane, but years of plowing have now entirely scraped the gravel from its unpaved portion -- several hundred yards -- leaving wet clay like mud-colored paint in winter and whenever it rains. No one can leave or enter house or car without splashing mud on pant legs and bootsoles and tracking it all over Creation. Here you see what happens to a just-washed vehicle (fortunately, with four-wheel drive) and how deer and turkey tracks get memorialized. Our lane got a fresh load of gravel about six years ago, and this will be the third year I've been asking the landlord for fresh gravel. It's not a DIY project. Am sending the landlord these photos because polite requests have been ignored. Yes, it could be worse, and it probably will be. Just thank me for sharing, and stock fresh pairs of shoes, socks, and pants for me if you intend to ask me in.

Won't See This Again 'til 2024

Saw several of these strange burrows ringed with cairns of mud balls, a good three inches high, this past summer. They are called "chimneys." Like nothing I'd seen before, but remarkable, very noticeable, and today I find out it's no wonder I hadn't seen them before or since, because they are the homes of the nymphs of the 13-year cicada, whose year it was in 2011. (In late May and June you couldn't take a step outdoors here without feeling them crunch beneath your feet.) Some people confuse these mounds with crayfish "chimneys," but these were located on a hill, under trees, far from any creek beds. When it rains, the cicada nymphs house-clean by pushing mud and mud balls up and out of their dwelling -- pretty good considering they haven't any arms -- and leave them right outside. Good housekeeping. Now I will know what these little mounds of mud balls are when I see them again in 2024.

As The Sun Slowly Sinks into the Mud. . .

I aint complaining! It's the January thaw about three weeks late; 74 degrees today. Holy to hear the rush of water through the property's waterfalls Number 1, 2, and 3 (there are five). Yesterday in the woods, the snow parted to reveal patches of chives on a north-facing slope. To me they are the second real sign of spring. So today, slipping and sliding in inch-deep mud, I harvested some chives and scissored them into a bowl of carrot soup dolloped with yogurt and eaten with homemade rye bread.

Even better news: A bluebird pair has inspected and approved my bluebird box. I saw them this morning for the first time and my heart became a big bouquet of roses.

And at 5:30 p.m., as I turned away from photographing this mango-colored sunset, I saw in the east a big beautiful pearly full moon. What a wonderful world.