I had a wonderful day. It started with an early morning in the garden, doing the final touches of planting the last bush beans for the summer harvest (the second planting will be in September for a fall/winter harvest). Now all four raised beds are growing something, but the hardest part for me is over and I can now sit back and literally “watch the beans grow”
Kevin helped me out as well, cleaning out the kitchen and making the place quite livable, if it weren’t for our ugly stained carpet I wish I could rip out right now. A clean house is a restful house.
Kevin took a break and called his sister and his mom, both whom I really like and enjoy talking with.
"I can't wait to see you at the wedding!" said Evelynn, his mom.
Oh, the wedding in North Carolina, the same one I'd planned on driving to in late June while Kevin flew there. I planned on meeting him in town and spending the weekend with him and his family and then driving further north to New Jersey to see the rest of the family and friends, before driving back to Chicagoland and then North Dakota before heading south once I made it to central Montana. I had planned on being on the road for a month with the dogs, visiting friends, family and old places I've lived. That is not to be.
That vacation I can no longer afford with the way gasoline prices have risen and continue to rise. In some parts of the country regular unleaded is nearing $4 a gallon.
I didn't have the heart to tell Evelynn that I will most likely not make it to the wedding. One flight ticket will be expensive enough. My main focus is getting this house and garden done.
It got hot fast today, reaching 94F before we left to meet Mom and Bill at the Applebee’s in town at 2pm. The restaurant was surprisingly not too busy and there was only a 15-minute wait. Kevin and I each had one beer while we waited for Mom and Bill.
"Happy Mother's Day!" said Melody, our server, to Mom and me.
Our dinner was quite lovely, and my meal quite delicious. (I ate a chicken Ceasar’s salad with chicken penne pasta; Kevin had steak). Conversation was also quite interesting, as we talked about family, the late summer reunion, and of course politics. Mom and I can never get together and not talk politics.
Mom, as usual, is convinced the World as we know it today will end. Things just don’t look good for a lot of people all across the world and our escalating prices for everything is starting to scare me. (Gasoline prices alone jumped 20 cents in two weeks; prices are now $3.53 for regular unleaded)
We were at Applebee’s for over an hour and didn’t leave until after 3:30pm. Mom’s van had to get jump-started but luckily the battery was just dead and it wasn’t an alternator or starter; a quick visit to Sear’s at the Mall took care of that. While we waited for the van’s battery to get replaced, Kevin looked at stand-alone freezers. He wants to stock up on meats and freezable goods, mentioning all the tomatoes we are going to be canning later this summer after a bumper harvest.
Mom and Bill stopped by the house briefly. It had been a month since she’s seen the place and even she said there’s been so many improvements. Of course there were improvements, I have been working on the house and garden every day, so that after a month the work starts becoming obvious. Even I can see a big difference from when I first started with the back yard and now.
And the work’s finally over. Although I still have a few small projects to complete, tbe big stuff is done. Fertig. Gatoff. Now I have to finish cleaning out the garage and then the other big project will be cleaning out my “office” so that I can sit in my own room and compose essays again, essays I have been creating in my head but ignoring to write down.
I can’t wait to have my office cleaned out and reorganized so that I can spend endless late-hours writing things. I miss writing and do my best writing late at night when only the distant twinkles of the stars overhead provide company.
Before Mom and Bill drove off I was able to give her one of my Sunflower Heliopsis, a bunch flower with yellow-yellow flowers on 2'-stalks. They are pretty flowers but overseed prolifically. I've already transplanted two heliopsis into different areas of the front yard so that yellow doesn't dominate the garden; I want a steady color scheme of red, blues and other colors.
I have many more heliopsis growing around the original mother plant that I may end up pulling out and putting into the compost pile. At least one plant found a new home.
As soon as Mom left for her drive back to Tucson, I drove off to Hunter Canyon to give the dogs their much-awaited walk. As soon as I drove off, Erin called me. I was a block away from the house on a dirt road, and pulled over to talk to her. Had I driven any further I would have lost connection with her since we live in the country.
It was a lovely conversation with her. She sounded happy except that the weather back in Chicagoland was only in the 40s. My comments about my sun-burned shoulders that I got the last two days from bending over in the garden (“My gardener’s tan!”) were just annoying to her. But unlike Erin, although I love the heat I do worry about the excessive heat so early; weather forecasts recently are forecasting an early and excessive heat starting today through monsoon season.
I lost connectivity with Erin and drove off to walk the dogs before it got too dark to feel safe in the foothills with no cell phone connection. It was 6:15pm before I made it to Hunter Canyon, let the dogs out of the van and drove the forest road they have become all too familiar with. They either run ahead of me, sniff and pee along the way, or they run behind me, but they always stop near Kelly Springs to sniff the trash and backpacks that the illegals leave behind.
In fact, there’s been an obvious increase in the trash left behind by illegals. Has Hunter Canyon become the new pick-up point now that the nearby military installation has increased its border patrol?
Just as I approached the end of the “walk” near the initial trailhead off Highway 92, a Border Patrol van pulled off the highway and on the road. The dogs were still behind me catching up to the van and I was slowing down to stop and let them in. I made sure the USBP agent saw my van was empty and just for the dogs. He saw them jump in from the right side door, praised me for having well-behaved dogs, and drove off. If the agent found any illegals after seeing me I hope he had back-up, as he was entering the canyon without back-up.
The sun was low over the mountains and beautiful purplish-red streaks glided across the sky. When I got back to the house I called Carol from the back yard, standing in the darkening yard as I watched the color scheme change in front of me. Shortly after the last sun ray slipped behind the mountain, I went inside as my mouth was dry from talking. I had been outside for over an hour talking to Carol and getting caught up with family news.
I sat up in the living room getting caught up with the day’s news (severe storms across the southern Midwest again, killing 20 people in Oklahoma and Missouri; more deaths from last week’s devasting cyclone in Myanmar that has claimed 28,000 lives; Senator Obama now receiving as many Super Delegates--273-- as Senator Clinton…) when something small and fast darted across the living room.
OMG what was that thing scurrying across the carpet? It looked like a little tan arachnid coming toward me with a purpose. I didn’t want to kill it but I didn’t want it near me, either. Those pinchers looked vicious, too and I didn’t know if it could harm the sleeping dogs nearby, let alone Reina who was, as usual, sleeping on the backrest of the couch.
I quickly got online to compare the thing with “tan scorpions” and quickly found a Positive Identification: a tailless whip scorpion that has pinchers but no stinger. I trapped it in a see-through container and let it go outside near the north fence.
Ten minutes later the thing was back inside the house! Now how did it get back inside with the backdoor now secured? Is this another whipless scorpion looking for its mate, or is it just the same determined arachnid as before? It’s my first encounter with such a critter. I’m just glad I’m no crawling insect around that thing!
The second time I let it go in the front yard, and the critter seemed to want to follow the house and crawl back inside. I did not wait long enough to see if it did.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/05/11/severe.weather/index.html?iref=mpstoryview
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/05/11/campaign.wrap/index.html?iref=mpstoryview
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