There's a Garden Under There Somewhere!

I started cleaning up the garden this afternoon. So late in the season! Sometimes, by the very beginning of March, all the beds are raked and expectant. However, this winter will not leave and it's late. I got two beds cleaned; perennials and tall grasses cut down, leaves removed... just a rough, first clean up. It was overcast and not especially warm, but I needed to be outside.

Here's the initial tarp filling up. That's the hard part, dragging it all away into the woods. Somethings can be composted, but this debris is full of sticks and grasses and tough oak leaves. they take a while to break down. It's better to just dispose of them in the woods.

Maggie looked unimpressed but Robin was eager to jump into the middle of my leaf piles and chew on twigs. Very helpful! It's hard to believe that we have had Robin the Good in our lives for a little over two years. She's still really hard to photograph; as I lift the camera thinking she looks particularly cute, she immediately moves her head...

And what's that white stuff? I am ignoring the right hand side of the garden. The glacier is receding  but there's still too much snow for my liking. I'm ignoring it! But wait! There's more!

It's going to be a while before I get to clean up the Long Border. It's still buried. But I have plenty to do on the left side of the yard. And there are tulips emerging! And daffodils! There will be a garden after all!.

Constant Consternation

I have been having many-so very many!- WTF moments lately. Just as I think I have ripened into a fairly unflappable semi-adult 61 year old, something else happens to make me exclaim, "What the Fuck"?!!?!?
Take this week for example. The Orange Menace, who masquerades as something called "The President" continues to provide so many WTF episodes that it's causing my head to spin completely around ala Regan in "The Exorcist". Firings, subpoenas... WTF!??!
And the weather? Does this sound like the first day of Spring?!?! We're expecting our fourth (FOURTH!??!?) Nor'easter in three weeks?!?!? WTF!?!?
I experienced a personal WTF moment after I had a flat tire.  Allegedly, you can't replace only one tire on the Subaru; because of all wheel drive, it is strongly "suggested" that you replace all four tires.  Each tire was quoted somewhere around $140. But it occurs to me that the Subaru has 234000 miles on it, leaks oil and smells like gas... Really? Isn't that throwing good money after bad? WTF!?!
I guess I should believe anything that comes my way, but I still keep reeling. That's why I embarked on the above piece, suitably exclaiming WTF!??! I think it expresses what many of us have been feeling.
Me? I want warm sunny weather outside my house and calm inside the White House!

A Trip to Hell- and (Fortunately!) Back

Saturday was the last day for my one person show in NYC and therefore the final day we needed to make our way into "The City" to sit the show and "meet n greet n grip n grin". The weather was predicted to be cool but with no precipitation in sight. That was heartening because, as I have reported, each Saturday past presented some variation on sleet/snow/fog/heavy rain. Driving home from the train station was challenging.
So off we went to the train station. We arrived in the famous twenty acre parking lot early (good driving conditions, low traffic) and we began the long walk to the actual station.
A woman immediately flagged us and asked whether we had a shovel as her Prius was frozen into a snow bank. We didn't but offered to try and push her out but it was apparent that real digging was needed. Her niece was on the way with a snow shovel. (Word to the wise: Triple AAA doesn't offer snow help; who knew!)
We continued on our way and were flagged down by another woman who said the trains were not running south of the station because of power outages on the line due to Wednesday's snow event. We were faced with a choice: take a bus- provided free by Metro North- to Golden's Bridge (about 20 minutes south) or drive. Timing was important as the drive could potentially be accomplished and the train met without loosing time.
We jumped back into the truck, Bob put it in reverse and VVVVVViiiiiZZZZZZZZ!! The truck spun on the packed snow and ice and refused to move. We tried everything: a blanket under the rear tires, a large sheet of plywood under the tires, a helpful fellow NYC-bound commuter who actually volunteered to try and push the truck. Nothing worked. I thought- for one insane second- of asking Bob if he had his camera handy to take a few pictures*... but NO! Neither one of us was in the mood for pictures or levity and I wondered how we had been magically transported back to some gulag in Siberia. What about my brilliant art world debut?!??! We needed to get to NYC!
Finally,  Bob began whaling away at the ice with the truck jack and I used a claw hammer thing and the stuck Prius woman's niece arrived and lent us a snow shovel and a bag of kitty litter. We were cold and wet and pretty miserable... but the truck sailed backwards and we were free.
I guess we can thank the god's on high that we hadn't decided to simply jump on the bus because we would have arrived back at the dark and colder parking lot late at night to discover a stuck truck. We drove to the end of the parking lot closer to the station- where the pavement was clear and there was no chance of getting stuck- and decided the best option was to be bused to Golden's Bridge for the next train service. We were assured there would be a bus meeting every returning train. The metro employees were very helpful and accommodating and apologetic. What else could possibly go wrong?
How about a very weird bus trip? The bus was warm as we waited to depart, but I was troubled when I thought I overheard the bus driver asking directions to the train station. No, I thought, I must be wrong. They must have GPS. But the bus driver embarked on a circuitous and bizarre back roads ride to the next station. Even that seemed sort of understandable as maybe that was the fastest way to Brewster?  When the driver got on the highway, I sighed a deep breath of relief... until he got off the highway too soon and despite staring straight at a sign with an arrow clearly pointing left to our destination, he turned right. I was not alone (there were at least fifty people on that bus) in groaning. Turning the bus around, we somehow staggered into the train station and boarded the train. We were now really late and it seemed like a particularly idiotic episode of the twilight zone.
I will not continue to bore you with the fact that we then sat and waited for another fifteen minutes for another (probably lost) bus to arrive and make the connection. Yes, we made it to NYC and of course there was more construction on the downtown local subway so we had to get off and walk further to the gallery. Really? At that point, I was thoroughly through with public transportation!
Fortunately, despite extreme lateness and circumstances very beyond our control, the truncated day went well, and people- significant people!- showed up. I tried my best to seem unflappable and as if live was just great and things had gone oh-so-smoothly. I think I was successful?
And we took my show down. And we made the train (and bus) back to the truck- which started up and moved just fine on dry pavement.
There were at least 75 times on Saturday that I felt like throwing up my hands and saying, "Really? Why is this so fucking hard?" Is the universe trying to... what? Test me? Kill me? But I will recommend that artists are made of sterner stuff. We persist!

* The above picture is of a miniature metal truck stuck in snow on the top of the horse barn. Symbolic but not as painful as the actual full-size stuck F 150!

Will This Winter Never End?!

We were eating breakfast, happy to have survived the Stormageddeon or Snow-pocalypse or Bombacyclone Megawetsnowiliciousness, when the phone rang. Bob was informed that the steel delivery truck was at the end of the driveway but his steel couldn't be delivered because there was a tree down. Bob went out to investigate and returned to tell me that two trees were down, all carefully coated in heavy wet snow.

This is the other side. Equally blocked! The steel (unfortunately) took a return ride back to Bridgeport, to be delivered on another day and Bob went to work with the chain saw.

This is the other, smaller cherry tree that cracked. It's sort of too bad as this one had a decorative sweep over the driveway and Bob liked it. This one cleaned up quickly as it wasn't all choked with vines and snow like the above cedar tree.
We were busily sawing and lopping (I chopped up the entangled vines and hauled limbs away) when our neighbor Meghan made a guest appearance and went to work helping drag debris off the driveway. She's been a really good friend in times of need- like when we first moved in and had major ice dams on our roof, causing leaking and general havoc. She pitched right in and held the ladder and called her father, who worked for the utility company to find out what we should do. Meghan called her father again today (and he's in Arizona where it's 85 degrees...) to ask about a branch that is (still) hung up in a tree at the side of the driveway. He said be careful. We're not going to mess with that and will call the utility company.
In the meantime we- maybe surprisingly- still have power and I was able to drive out to the store after lunch. It was slushy but passable and the road were clear. Several people have mentioned that we may get another storm on Monday next week. Where is spring?!?!?

Swell!

 OOops! That title makes my post sound like another tick tale: but it's not. I promised a nice blog posting and I am delivering. Here is a story of nascent, burgeoning spring! The buds are swelling...
Take, for example, my friends the lilacs. I planted a whole array of lilacs- offsets of Mommy's plants that have been healed in by the horse barn for ages, a few I purchase marked down at big box stores- and even one (full price) that just caught my fancy. They now have a permanent home with presents from family and friends (thanks Beatrice! thanks Bob S.!) I have "Primrose", "Red Wine", "President Grevy" and "Pochahontas", to name a few; I can hardly wait to see who blooms. (Secretly, I'll be happy with just green leaves at this point. Everything is that brown and tan and grey of late winter.)

But in the meantime, just the simple fact that these beautiful buds are erupting and creating heightened expectations for a spectacular spring are buoying me through these last brutal end of winter storms. We're supposed to have another "snow event" on Tuesday night and I'm not looking forward to it. At least the days are longer and it's not so cold- in the forties as opposed to the teens.

It's so exciting! I know there's a few fragrant blooms in tips. And all that hard work of excavating rocks and poison ivy (and getting a couple of nasty cases of poison ivy!) paid off. The lilacs all made it through the winter and seem ready to explode. I'm cheering them on!

Tick Tock!

Yeeeech! So much for a cold winter killing off the ticks! I had just been warned by a friend (hello Louise!) about another friend (hello Roberta!) having pulled an engorged dog tick off of her cat, when I felt a large grape-like appendage on Robin the Good's neck. TICK!
There it is in all of it's canine blood distended glory! And that wasn't the only one... I found two more.
In case that first picture didn't disgust and horrify you quite enough, here's another view:

Who thought these vile vampires up? Nature has some pretty weird inventions. I immediately applied this year's first application of Frontline to Robin's neck. It doesn't kill all the ticks, but it seems to slow them down and prevent them from becoming, well... the size of grapefruit!
And despite the dire predictions of a Nor'easter on our weather horizon, there are many signs that the clock is ticking and spring is coming. Tick tock!

Oh and I promise that my next post contains nicer images. Trust me.