Wildlife A-Go-Go

Bob and I were having coffee at around 3:00 after attempting to erect fence posts around the vegetable garden. (I say "attempting" because what with the wind and being two partially geometrically challenged artists, squaring the garden proved nearly impossible. Don't ask!) Anyway, we were taking a break when Bob says, Wow, that's the biggest cat I've ever seen" and I look out the kitchen window and see a bobcat casually sauntering directly across our yard. Yikes! I think I was expecting a neighbor's tabby...
I ran upstairs to grab the camera but of course, when I return, the bobcat has disappeared into the swamp. I swear it was wagging its (very stubby) tail.
I've been curious to see exactly what kind of wildlife we have here as many animals are moving back into Connecticut. When I was growing up, we only saw a deer occasionally and a fox rarely. Nowadays deer are absurdly common as are turkeys, coyotes, and bear (even panther sightings are rumored). I have sincerely mixed feelings about all these visitors... I think we have to acknowledge an uneasy co-existence.

The Aliens Have Landed

So I forgot to mention that our stairway is a portal to another dimension. Hey! At 2:30 in the morning, everything looks like a cosmic gateway.
(This special effect on the hallway is courtesy of our lattice work security panel at the top of the stairs.)

Midnight Confession

It's really almost 2:30 in the morning and I can't sleep- probably because of the major rain and wind storm gallumphing across our yard and through our trees. Anyway, it's a really good time for a show and tell post.
This is our hallway:

Pretty bad, right? I don't just share this sort of mess with anyone. Let's face it moving has been a bitch and we have a slew of unopened boxes, unfinished business. I confess that we have been keeping this door shut; out of sight and all that... The rationale is the old, "Gotta build shelves to put the books on which are in the boxes so why open the boxes" but I know that blasted winter jacket of mine is also in there somewhere. Sharing the trove of boxes has prompted many a friend to remark that they have- after ten years!- at least one unopened box somewhere in their house. Guess we can be allowed four months.

Rock Fest

This is a picture of maybe the fourth or fifth wheel barrow load of stones we carted off- and we had just begun to rototill the vegetable garden. (You can see the strip that's turned over is only four feet wide). Every few inches yielded another rock, most sort of small and annoying. I guess we can consider ourselves lucky that we didn't hit ledge. I know, I know; we're gardening in New England and they're a fact or nature.
Here's part of our late afternoon haul: we carted them away for use as fill behind Bob's studio.

The Vegetable Garden Takes Shape

Here I am breaking the sod on our vegetable garden. All kidding aside, I have tremendous renewed respect for our pioneer foremothers and fathers who moved westward and plowed the plains. That and a renewed appreciation for the "Spinal Tap" song "Sex Farm Woman" which I had stuck in my head the whole time we rototilled. (You'd have to go back and watch that again...)
Okay, so I was naive and thought the rototilling would take like two hours and then we'd go around the back of the house and rototill the flower borders. Hahahahahahaha. We worked on this garden for 9:30 in the morning until after 5:30 (by the time we dumped the rocks.) We're exhausted. Don't ask us how big it is; we forgot to measure. But it's plenty big.

Using a rototiller proved to be much harder than I expected. The machine bucked and snorted and coughed rocks all the way around. See my next post for evidence!!

The Ol' "Good Fences Make Good Neighbors" Tactic

We're so happy. We've started our equivalent of the Great Wall of China, albeit a stockade version that is probably not visible form the Moon. I adore fences as I confessed to Bob today. To state the obvious, they do all these amazing things: they cut down on noise and allow you to walk outside wearing terrible, dirty gardening clothing and not have to worry about an immediate critique from the neighbors. You can have coffee at your kitchen table and not feel like you're on display. It helps to keep varmints like deer and coyotes out and varmints like your dog in. The funny thing is that we like the people who live on this side of our house. They're really nice and their kids are great but Bob and I are sometimes in need of space. So we build a fence. We're trying to assure our neighbors that it's not because of them I think tehy understand!
The fence will be another ongoing project. We "inherited" almost 90 feet (of which you see only 32 feet in the photo) and will be adding to it as we can afford to purchase more. Today being a wonderful warm sunny day, we worked at putting up another four sections. We're already reveling in the privacy.

Picture of fence sections that we moved from near Bob's studio.

Fun with Bedding

What to do with that full sized mattress found festering behind the studio building? Jules and I wasted no time in turning it into an impromtu trampoline. It's a foam mattress so it proved especially springy and resilient. Of course, all mattresses when taken out of contrast will eternally remind me of my art installation "Be ReBorn Thru Art" which you may recall featured a mattress repurposed as a big vagina. What fun that was!
Discarded objects (and let's face it: we have a bumper crop of them!) keep appearing. Things like broken cinder blocks and bits of wood and other materials that will decompose are finding their way into the strip of land behind Bob's studio where they become fill. Bob wants to build up the ground level there and make an outside work area.
Other objects- like mattresses and plaid recliners- prove more problematic and have to be chopped up into smaller pieces and stuffed in (millions of) garbage bags and hauled to the dump. It's exhausting just how much stuff was left behind: piles and piles of roof shingles (all bearing exposed nails) and many square miles of carpeting that I offered in a previous posting. (No takers yet!)
I am constantly amazed at how terribly people use their land. Here we live on a truly beautiful piece of earth and essentially it has been treated like a waste heap. I can't help but feel the ground is heaving multiple sighs of relieve that we are cleaning up.

Velvet Rocks

This picture is from several weeks back, but it was so pretty (despite the remains of snow!) that I wanted to put it on our blog. Out behind Bob's studio is an especially broad stretch of our stream where the water slows down and interacts with the moss covered rocks. It feels private and very removed from suburbia. Bob is excited by the different qualities of the rocks; some have odd holes and depressions in them. I'm sure he'll find a beautiful way to use them in at least one sculpture.

Bob says "Looks Huge"

So looking back up at the house from the other side of the stream it really does seem as if we have about thirty acres. Our property continues to amaze me in all its variety. We have an "upland" dry area (where the house is sited), a meadow (or field depending on my mood), a swamp, a stream and the land across the stream that seems to be almost an island. This piece has such a different feel to it: removed, secret, distant. The previous owner left it quite a mess... lots of have sawn trees and sticks lying around. We've begun piling and stacking the downed trees and it will develop into quite a private sanctuary. We have plans to construct a rustic "tea house" in the grove of evergreens.