Happiness is a Warm Gun

I'll call it guano. Birds at my feeders left several spots on my porch screens, and just as you don't leave guano on a vehicle or your hat you don't leave it on aluminum screening either, for more than a season. The screens are beneath the eaves and rarely washed by rain.

Removing each screen and spray washing each with the hose was too much work. Spray washing the screens while they were in place, from the outside, would force guano inward onto the porch when that was the opposite of the goal. The screen frames are also old and fragile and the screening very delicately sandwiched between their pieces -- can't power-wash. And when the porch walls get wet the paint peels.

Rooting through the garage found me the answer: the old plastic-embedded-with-glitter "Splash" squirtgun, one of two. The pink squirtgun I'd favored got clogged with hard-water residue. This one still worked, and I'd kept it for 10 years thinking someday I might need it, and smack my butt and call me Sally, after filling the squirtgun with warm water I stood inside the porch and with skillful aim squirted water outward through my screens and I was pleased as punch that probably no one else in the county did the exact same thing today.

Nests

 Without screens for 19 days the Divine Cabin looked like a skull, or a jaw without teeth, or eyeless, or simply shabby, conked-out, or abandoned until today I retrieved my new screens from the hardware store (again 3 round trips to bring all 7 panels home; for delivery one must buy $300 of stuff and my total was $284). I've had flu for the last eight days and now bothered only by malaise and cough, decided to shower, dress, go get 'em and see if I felt better.

One last time out on the screen-free porch I had to scrape from beneath a rafter a nest built by a persistent house wren (see photo), a nest loosely woven from moss and dry leaves and grass. Could you build a nest using only your bill and natural materials? I couldn't.

Pulled from the closet some army-green jeans at least 15 years old -- I haven't bought jeans since, they don't flatter me -- and darn, they fit; that was a good omen. When my wooden screens rolled out on a cart they looked lovely and although the frames are 80 years old nothing had been broken. All was just as I had handed it over, except for the new pristine and skillful aluminum screening.

Proceeded to cook and eat the most normal lunch I've had in a week, sit, rest, then attempt to install the screens -- a second huge effort that day, didn't know if it was smart. I did it. Here's a photo taken as the sun slanted across, about 6 p.m. I'll find out tomorrow if I've overstepped my recovery. But now I'll be able to convalesce if I have to on my porch. The divine porch! My nest!

The Old-Timey Screens

The screened porch is 50 percent of the reason I live here, and I'd patched its holes for years but last summer so many that fresh screening is this season's home improvement priority. But I had no idea how. "Old-timey hardware stores will do it," I heard. "Bring 'em in by Thursday," they said at Cotton's Ace, where I learned why my patches never held well, and why critter claws so easily pierced the screens -- they are fiberglass. That means too the screening is not 80 years old although their frames are. I ordered aluminum replacement screening.

In the Tuesday night cold by the light of the lone yellow porch bulb I unhooked seven of the eight screens (the photo shows five) and for the first time pulled them down. Painted, repainted, nailed on, chewed, their varying sizes did not fit into the car so Wednesday I drove three round trips to the store, but it was the first day of spring and I was jubilant and look forward to driving three round trips back.

I'd previously asked the price and thought they'd said .35 per square inch of screen. With 10,007 square inches of screen the total was $3,527 or thereabouts -- shocked, I wondered if perhaps I was mistaken, as I am far more often than I think-- and in fact it's more like .035 per square inch.

The man who did the paperwork (lots) said that the trim holding the screening onto the frame was fragile and might have to be broken to remove the old screens and staples and I said fine, I'd pay as long as the trim was replaced. Oh, did I mention I'm paying? This is my project -- not a necessity but a "lifestyle" choice -- while the landlord contemplates installing new carpeting in the Divine living room and bedroom. It's a more than fair exchange, in my view.  (While they install the carpet I can live on the porch.) You might pout and say "You ought to make them pay at least some," but I appreciate beyond words having a job and being able to restore something so enchanting as the porch, my box seat on nature and the seasons.

R & R & T

I am a workaholic and realized I almost never spend whole days outdoors anymore. So out I go into the mists of October, scaring packs of deer who apparently thought this property was all theirs.

I have now re-engaged with recreation and hobbies. A two-mile walk today on an unexpectedly steep new trail I balanced with a half-hour of leisure in the zero-gravity chair with a pot of hot tea.

I'm taking Russian-language classes and barre classes. The Russian teacher lived four years in Moscow. She says, "Russia is the only country in the world where a poetry reading can fill a stadium." I plan to live on my Social Security in the lovely Silk Road city of Samarkand, Uzbekistan. They all speak Russian, and I'm glad they do, because there's no Uzbek-language classes around here.

Barre classes are ballet-inspired workouts but without the impact. I bought a package of 10 one-hour classes to deliberately invest too much to waste them. One hour in class draws only the most determined and addicted, because barre is torture and whips up those endorphins like, whoo-ee. The regulars -- there are lots! -- are all trim through the middle and have built a genuine booty. That's right, a booty worth writing home about. If I get one, I will post it. Twenty years older than most participants, I sometimes lag but never quit and after three classes am catching on.

Later I'll practice my bongos.

The High Sign

Final days of August, the dog days, are always hot, humid and unnerving -- what, summer is almost over? I lie low, work as little as possible, fix and serve summery lunches on the screened porch: here a favorite salad of shrimp, grapefruit and avocado with mustard-tanged dressing, and a glass of prosecco (sparkling dry wine, not quite champagne) to pay myself for being a good human.

Spooner's frozen custard, located up a steep driveway on a hilltop, is our local version of the famous St. Louis frozen custard called Ted Drewes'. My favorite sundae is called the "109-er" after the highway. One recent evening I went there. I am always alone. No one else is. This way I can concentrate on my ice cream. I order at the window, sit on one of the perforated metal benches and wait in the blanket-warm purple twilight until my sundae is ready and my name is called. Meantime I gaze at the green hills in the distance and up at the stars, slowly emerging like an understanding, and perhaps the moon, and listen to the passing trains. I look for the rabbit in the moon. Summer food, savoring summer -- is there anything better? Can it be late summer already? This August marks my 30th year in Missouri.

It's White-Trash Repair Month

I truly loved July but felt something sad around its edges until I realized it was my beloved house, The Divine Cabin.

After 17 years without interior paint or new carpets or a working fireplace or insulation in the winter, it is, frankly, shabby. Squirrels occupied my screened porch after ripping holes in now-fragile screens worn by decades of weather -- ragged holes too extensive for normal patching. They chewed some of the wooden frames to bits. I couldn't enjoy my porch because squirrels ran around on it, destroying it, and I didn't see what I could do.

The dishwasher fritzed. The essential housekeeping tool, it saves hours of trying to wash and rinse dishes and pots in a sink the size of a salad bowl. When I could't revive it with fervent prayer and fasting, I had to unload it and do dishes in the yard. Fortunately it is summertime. Last time I phoned for dishwasher repair help, in 2014, I was jeered. "Aw, just run a couple cups of C.L.R. through it," drawled the Maytag Repair Man who is supposed to be so lonely. I called again and he made other addle-pated excuses for not coming. I figured he was on drugs. Finally I repaired it myself. This time I knew I would have to repair it again, and the problem is electrical. About which I know nothing except the red wire goes in the red slot.

Some corners and edges never get clean. They should be stripped of paint and refinished. I tried that with a cupboard door and the bathroom door. It took days and I sanded by hand because the garage has no electricity. The paint layers were a history going all the way back to lead paint and I couldn't help but breathe dust and chemicals.

The kitchen floor is the saddest case. It records all the bootheels and gouges laid into it by my husband, who died in 2009. The stained grout in the shower stall is also sad. Call the landlord? I did. They no longer bother with cosmetic improvements. If it's livable, they're not changing it. They also told me, this year for the very first time, I should be cleaning my own gutters and throwing broken tree limbs off the roof. I have never once been on the roof.

I had already bought, dumped and raked 1000 pounds of rock to make my own path through grass I couldn't find a cutter for. Not normally a DIY sort of person I finally had to tell myself, once again, the old refrain: "Ain't nobody gonna do it for you." And didn't I move here to be self-reliant?

In the coming days I will show you how I did something the hell about it, one item at a time. Today: the porch screen. There's a closeup of some of the ripped screen and frame damage, and also my solution. I patched the holes as well as I could and bolted hardware cloth in place. It looks nowhere near as horrid as I imagined. Measuring, cutting, fitting, finding wood screws and those ring things that go around the wood screws, gluing back as much wood as was salvageable, took an entire day, from cool 7 a.m. to hot 3 p.m. But now I can enjoy the porch.

Jailed Lizard

This lizard, God knows how, ended up trapped between the layers of screen on the porch door's lower half, layers reinforced over time as dogs and squirrels clawed the screen and tore it, inspiring the stapling on of new and stronger barriers. And for several days the lizard hung there, unmoving. It was there so long I thought it must have died with nothing to eat and no water. But in case it needed water, I did trickle some water over the lizard. It stayed as it was.

Surely it is dead, I said to myself, and resigned myself to watching its body dehydrate whenever I sat on the porch.

Then one day -- a full week later -- it had changed position. Could it still be alive?

Consider the lizard, equipped for dry and difficult conditions. It stands to reason that of course it was still alive! But it had no way out.

I pried off a patch of screen about an inch square and attempted to prod the lizard toward it. It reacted, but wouldn't go.

I bet, I said to myself, if I leave it alone it will find its way out after serving eight days in prison. And so it was, the same day.

Zero Gravity Chair

My old tube-framed, woven-plastic folding porch lawn chair finally gave out and I gracefully let it go, taking it to the recycling place, and then, because I spend so much time lounging on the screened porch, sought a new one and saw for sale absolutely nothing like those familiar tube-framed, woven-plastic patio chairs, as hard as I looked. So how to replace the chair I used to work in, doze in, carry to the meadow and sun myself in? That kind simply isn't sold any longer.

Instead, I saw folding "director's" chairs (don't need one) and "zero-gravity" lounge chairs, and there being nothing else, I chose the highest-starred one on Amazon, chose between burgundy and black, and in two days a box half as high as I and three times as wide appears on my porch and has to be dragged into the carpeted living room, where the item won't be scratched in case I want to return it, I'm that skeptical. With the box sliced open, I dump out and unfold a well-wrapped chair ALREADY ASSEMBLED, ready to sit in, a situation so knock-me-over-with-a-feather that in my confusion I actually looked at the instruction sheet, and from it learned how to lock the chair into position with handy little tabs beneath the armrests, and how to attach the utility tray (holding drinks, phones, and right now the tablet I took this photo with). The attached sun-shade is adjustable and folds away, over the chair back. Looks like they came on the market in 2015 and everyone was wise to them but me.

I was curious: What is so zero-gravity about it? Then I got in the chair, stretched it out, and locked it into position with the little pull tabs, and lounged. What a difference from the former chair that like those dreadful wooden "Adirondack"chairs had you seated with knees above butt level, pressuring the lower spine. I've about decided to keep this rather handsome chair as my living-room lounge chair and buy another for the porch. The white dot on the chair back is a reflection from the sun.

Smiling Lizard

I know May is here when a lizard gets trapped on the wrong side of the screened porch and climbs around on the screens all day trying to enter the blue and green world she can see but not get to. I then have a choice: Leave her there ("If it was smart enough to find its way in, it's smart enough to find its way out," Demetrius used to yawn) or help her out, but first, take glamour photos--of this lovely Northern Fence Lizard (Scleporus undulatus hyacinthinus) that seemed to smile as if it had a sense of humor about its predicament. After that I waited until she climbed onto the screen door, then I opened the door and tickled her until she dropped off the screen onto the stoop and went running, and I suddenly thought twice--about its needs, not mine--although it was too late, and said, "Take it easy. Birds can eat you."