Planting That Big Tree Part 2

How's that for an ungainly silhouette? It's still bound up so it looks like those tall narrow things I pose next to at botanic gardens. Well, this is how I left off, with the tree awaiting planting...
So the next day- because we were all tuckered out from excavating enormous holes (like I could see the Chinese Embassy it was so deep!)- we vowed to get the tree installed in the ground, in it's new home.
I was certain that the tree- all 250 or 300 pounds of it- was going to land on Bob or me but it went swimmingly, thanks to Bob and his masterful engineering abilities. He laid planks sloping down into the hole and used a crowbar and a log and instructed me move what where as he carefully maneuvered the tree down.The next thing you know- hey presto! The tree was safely inserted. Bob even got finess-y about shifting just the right trunk to the front.

I was simply glad to see it planted with neither one of us crushed or dead. Hahaha; ever the optimist!
Next came the fun part.

(Having technical difficulties! Don't ask why the picture
is located over to one side... Just bear with me.) Anyway,
that's Bob tweaking the placement. Once the dirt goes in.
there's no undoing it; this tree is permanent!)

So we shoveled a lot of dirt, tamped it down to eliminate

air pockets, watered it in as we added more dirt and before

you knew it, the tree was happily ensconced in it's new home.

Bob spread it's branches out and then staked it so that it 

would be stable in a windy or wet situation. It was perfect

that we had rain the next day as it eased the tree's 

transition. I keep running outside to see if it's still there 

(it is) as I was so pleased with our new addition. It sure

helps to fill the empty spots left by that tornado- and it's 

a handsome tree at that! Welcome River Birch!

The Biggest Tree We'll Ever Plant

Just be glad that I didn't write the blog I was starting yesterday! A hint: the title was "A Bad Mood". Enough of that! Today was great and my mood matched it because Bob and I bought a tree! That's it, wrapped up looking like some giant dildo and eliciting stares as we drove home.

 I have been researching and shopping for a clump of birches, partly because I have always admired them and partly because we have all this empty space cheerfully provided by that tornado that visited. We needed shade and a feature to partially block our neighbor's house and a focal point. I wanted something jazzy that had several seasons of interest. I really like the very white birches but have been warned that they succumb to all kinds of borers and leaf miners and they're brittle and they break. So I turned up several cultivars of Betula nigra (River birch, more familiarly) with the varieties "Duraheat" (lousy name!) and "Cully's Heritage" being recommended as particularly attractive with extra exfoliating bark- bronzey golden brown that peels to reveal salmon pink and creamy under bark, with foliage that turns vivid yellow in the fall. After many trips and phone calls to nurseries, I found what I was looking for...

It was a lovely day, we took a pleasant drive to one of our favorite nurseries and... they didn't have the size we were looking for, despite it being mentioned on a "specimens list" that had been emailed only the week before. All that was available were gigantic and twice what we were looking at spending. Alas! But another employee at the nursery checked and located one that was about to be "upgraded" and graduated to more expensive status as it had grown so lustily this year. She sold it to us for the lower price (literally like 1/2 the price!) Hooray!!!

They wrapped this cluster up and helped to load it and suddenly it appeared like twice as big as it had. I was shopping for a (hahahaha) five or six foot individual and we got us a ten foot tree at a bargain price and I started thinking, "And now we have to get this sucker home and plant it". I'm certain Bob was having similar thoughts. It just looked bigger and bigger and bigger.
As you can see in the above pictures, it rode home quite happily and we got it off the truck intact- or I should say, BOB got it off the truck with ropes and gently inching it towards the planks he posted at the rear of the truck and slid it down. I dutifully held ropes and pulled on my side but nothing budged; I tried.
But I sent Bob into the house after he wrestled the tree onto the ground. He needed a rest and I could handle the next phase: digging the biggest hole I've ever dug. I have graduated from annuals to perennials to shrubs and bushes and small saplings to trees! (But I assured Bob: this IS the biggest tree we will ever plant.)

And here's my lovely assistant Robin, ideally suited to helping me dig. She did a marvelous job of loosening the soil so that I could shovel it onto the pile.

The pile got even bigger than that! Bob is going to finish the hole tomorrow and then we're going to plant. I'll post additional pictures of that Herculean task. But in the meantime, take a look at the detail of this bark. This particular clump is nice, too, as it has four trunks and will create a really remarkable presence in the vast empty wilderness left by the tornadoes destruction. Why, it will probably look like it was always here. Let's see if our friends notice it the next time they visit!

Crazy Town!

A fair warning: for those of you who don't want to read an incoherent and obscure rant, just look at the pretty flowers and leave. (They are, by the way, all zinnias plucked from our cut flower area of the vegetable garden. Don't know why the colors got sort of dark; I think I was a bit late in photographing them and they are darkening with age. Then I manipulated the boring background.)
So nothing to report except... Fear! Unhinged! Fire and Fury! Lodestar! Collusion/No Collusion! Witch hunt! Lyin' New York Times! Lyin Ted Cruz! Lyin' Hillary! Hoax! Fake news!
Anonymous! I am the Resistance! WTF! Again: WTF! And I like that a new parlour game was invented: name the anonymous White House staff person responsible for the Op ED.
So, hi! I'm having an average week in an average year and lovin' it. I guess you have to go with it or lose your mind. I will leave it to others to determine whether I've lost my mind or not but welcome to Crazy Town! Are we supposed to feel relief that a few individuals in the administration see themselves as "adults" and voices of reason? That does little to reassure me. I do feel like we're being driven off a cliff and I didn't ask to go along on that ride.
I know, I know... this is the messy tirade that I threatened but I was on the verge of explosion and this blog posting was my safety valve to blow off steam before I went super nova. And I could go on and on and on. But I'll spare you and stop here. I will do better next time. I promise.*

* You want to know what would make me feel even better? Waking up and discovering this was all a really bad dream. Not gonna happen, is it?

A Bee in My Bonnet

While I may be referring to "bees in my bonnet" metaphorically- like I do have crazy things buzzing around mentally and emotionally and socially and politically, I'll put those temporarily on hold and discuss the REAL bees.

Case in point is our hummingbird feeder where our beloved hummingbirds gorge themselves at this time of year, in preparation for their long flight south for the winter months. However, instead of hummers, we have attracted hundreds of deranged and suicidal honey bees. These bees have a million flower choices to pick from but have somehow, in a misguided and fatal mission, decided to main line sugar water. They can't get enough: some of them actually squeeze themselves into the tiny holes provided for hummingbird beaks and then they drown. This is doubly terrible as the honeybees- pollinators that we are more than happy to draw to our garden and help make our local honey- are dying in our feeder in crazy numbers. And worse, my friends the hummingbirds are unable to dine at the feeder because of all the swarming bees! I can't win!

In disgust, I took down the feeder and cleaned it and have stored it for the season...

And on another even less appealing note, Bob calls my attention to the gigantic hornets nest (Or wasp nest?) that is being duly constructed outside my studio window. Who knew? I've had that window cracked open and have walked directly beneath that huge hive with nary a problem, blissfully unawares of the hundreds (perhaps thousands!) of wasps building a megalopolis above my head! Not much you can do about that until cold weather comes except be careful and don't go poking any long sticks into it! There are plenty of other places to go looking for trouble!

Enough! Enough!

On my way out the door to work this morning, there was a gigantic swooooosh! noise which startled Bob and me and Robin. We glanced out the back door but saw nothing and figured it was probably the town crew as they're delivering dump trucks full of gravel to the excavation at the end of our road. I didn't think any more about it.
But about an hour later, Bob called me at work to explain that he had figured out the noise. As if we hadn't had enough tree damage, the second half of a giant oak that had been damaged in the tornado (remember that episode) let loose. That was the giant swoooshing sound.

The final punchline to this new and updated disaster is that the tree catapulted earthward crushing another section of our fence and landing smack in the middle of my Shade Garden. This is the very Shade Garden that I strolled by yesterday- while swatting gnats and mosquitoes away- admiring just how nice it was and thinking how lucky that at least one part of our property had been spared in the tornado! Hahahaha! The joke is on me!
So Bob sprang into action and sawed up most of the large pieces before I got home so that we could correctly assess the extent of the devastation.  Here's Robin looking for bodies: (You will notice the bent and mutilated fence behind Robin. Bob straightened it so Robin can't escape but it's nicely twisted!)

Fortunately, while there is crushed foliage and general chaos, none of the rhododendrons or oak leaf hydrangea were totaled: just wrecked enough that they'll look awful for the rest of the season. And there are plenty more twigs/sticks/branches/leaves to pick up! Oh joy! Just what I wanted to do! More clean up! (And don't even ask about the leafy juicy things like hostas...)

I'm not kidding: I didn't need more restoration work! This part of the garden had been my solace after the other parts spent the early summer being cleaned and returned to "normal". I guess I have to be grateful that Bob or Robin or I weren't standing underneath when that half a tree let go. But can we please have an end to tree destruction?!?!!?

Off To A Party

Okay! Okay! I promise to not rant about politics for this blog post. (But it was a good week! Manafort... guilty! Cohen... confessing! McGahan... squealing! Others close to The Orange Menace... freakin' flipping! Yay team!!) So instead of political spewings, I'm posting an innocuous picture of the (almost) finished hole in the wall.
Yes, it needs a bit more sanding and another coat of paint but I've already got my Foo dog happily smelling the posies. See how useful and attractive a hole in the wall can be?!?? It's amazing how a detail like this can fix up the entire space. Bob and I shoved our bureaus around a bit and the room looks bigger and more commodious. More room to put stuff!
The weather has decided to become more pleasant and allow for otherwise impossible activities like mowing the lawn and weeding. Let's face it, it's been miserably hot and humid. When I tried to work in my studio, I wound up with  minute collage bits and fabric scraps stuck to my sweaty arms. I'll have to take a picture of the gigantic hornets nest that has been constructed just outside one of my studio windows. Bob pointed out that that window was open and I might be entertaining "visitors" soon. So far the wasps or hornets haven't bothered me but I've shut that window and am steering clear of that corner when outside!

And in place of our dear friend Tilda Swinton, we now have a birthday balloon living in the bathroom downstairs. It does look quite festive in there, with the Xmas lights, miniature cocktail umbrellas and the smiley balloon... which reminds me: we're off to a party right now!

Russian Roulette

Another one of my periodic posts in which the picture would seem to have little to do with my topic or the direction of my thoughts. This is a picture I was given at work (because they were going to toss it out) and I liked it: I think it's Shangri-La... a place I'd love to transport myself, Bob, Robin the Good and Maggie the Mexican Pony to. (And a few hundred close family members and friends.)
Maybe Shangri-La is a good place to head, what with the stunningly abysmal state of affairs here in America. Just think- the "truth isn't truth" (thanks Rudy Giuliani!) just like it's kissing cousin in linguistic and moral turpitude, "alternative facts" (thanks Kellyanne Conway!). Why do rethuglicans always play so fast and loose with the English language?
Those of you reading this that actually know me know that I am not shy about my dismay at the current occupant of the White House. There is little that I can add that hasn't already been said, including repeating the mantra that the conservative's beloved Ronald Reagan is probably rolling over (and over and over) in his grave with all the embracing of Russia and it's feckless leader. A little "Evil Empire", anyone? Or are their memories so faulty?
I realize that conservatives and rethuglicans are embracing Their Dear Leader because he's delivering on so many of their pet projects: fewer regulations, gigantic tax cuts for the already rich, dismantling health care, destroying the environment, stacking the Supreme Court with conservative activist judges... I could go on but I'd probably sick up all over my keyboard. The rethuglicans are apparently willing to assume the despicable posture of spineless, smirking sycophants. Where does it end? I cringe when craven mouth pieces (I'm thinking Paul Ryan or Mitch McConnell) slink out and say something like, "Oh don't pay any attention to the tweets". Talk about enablers! Or toadies like Devin Nunes echoing "witch hunt, witch hunt!" despite indictments and grand juries.
Hopefully, something will end this current situation (nonviolently), be it (in no particular order) the emoluments clause, The Mueller Investigation, those unreleased tax returns, Stormy Daniels, Michael Cohen, Omarosa, health code violations at Mar-A-Lago, Karen McDougal, the stupidity of certain off spring, pee pee tapes, Paul Manafort, Marina Butina and the NRA, Don McGahn etc etc. Every day brings more dirt and allegations and weirder behaviors and appearances by the living dead (there's Rudy Giuliani again!) Russian roulette indeed!
I never thought I'd say this, but I'm downright nostalgic for old-school rethuglicans!