Recent bird sightings/hearings

We have an Eastern Screetch-Owl that sits in the trees next to the house. I haven't seen it yet, but it sure is vocal. Starts about sunset. The size of the voice led me to think that the bird is about six feet tall, but according to whatbird.com it's a "small owl". It also tells me I may want to buy a hard hat! Check out the voice recording here:

Eastern Screetch-Owl

And an early-morning visitor to the overhead power/telephone? lines:

Red-tailed hawk

He (or she) was sitting on the wire about level with the kitchen window, all rosy in the rising sunlight.

Found Fury's lead, lost the washing-up liquid

Work has restarted on the deck. Yesterday the basic framework went up, and about half of the beams. I expect to see more progress today.

The living room is very open and bright and you can really get the feel of how it will be when it's all finished. Eventually. One-day-soon-I-hope! Right now, we have no kitchen sink and no washing machine (the plumbing was moved to the new laundry area downstairs, but not the washing machine, and I can't connect it again until all the drywall is finished). Shirley laundromat is open 24 hours a day and has about 500 washers and dryers. Huge.

The cabinets are made of alder. I chose to leave them natural, with no stain, just the protective varnish. They look really nice even though they are still sitting on the floor.

Found the kettle base, lost Fury's lead

Found the base to the kettle: it's covered in drywall dust (and so is the jar of Nescafe) but my caffeine habit can now be fed. When I can find a power socket to plug it into.

Fury's lead has disappeared. I hope it hasn't been built into a wall. Some historical artefact for someone to find generations later. Dog lead, circa 2005, well-stretched, slightly smelly.

Have to go and watch the washing in a laundromat this evening. The laundry area has been created and the plumbing done. However, this meant that the water supply has been disconnected from the washing machine. So I have nowhere to wash either my clothes from my trip or the stuff accumulated while I was gone. So go do laundry, try not to fall asleep, go order washer/dryer for delivery ASAP after Wednesday, try not to fall asleep, go home cut grass try to stay awake, go to bed go to sleep try not to be wide awake at three in the morning...

Back home, Monday morning

Back home after a week in England on business trip. Spent Friday night and Saturday with Mum and sisters and family, was really nice.

Here, the grass has grown (but the deck has not). Need to get lawnmower out later.

Much progress inside the house! The old kitchen has gone, the new cabinets have been delivered, the plumbing has been done in the new kitchen, the lighting has been prepared. Today there are two new guys here working on spackling (i.e., preparing the drywall so that it can be painted), and the electrician has to come back to complete a new circuit in the kitchen.

I am waiting for Karli to wake up and tell me if she knows where the base to the kettle is... I Need Coffee... arrived home at 2.30 a.m. this morning and woke up as usual before 6 a.m. I don't believe in jet lag.

Ready for more demolition--and then some reconstruction

The empty living room and kitchen. All furniture (except Fury's bed) stashed away in the bedrooms. Guys will demo the kitchen walls and all the floors beginnning Monday...

Breakfast

While taking a shower this morning, I looked out of the window... and saw a big hawk zoom past with its large, rodent breakfast dangling long-tailed from its claws.

Hawk the size of a goshawk. I need a better bird book. And a photographic memory.

Fury's adventure

Yesterday evening, I took Fury out for a stroll in the mist. We turned the corner of our street and saw a lady jogging. I thought she had a big dog with her, sandy-coloured, off its lead. Then I realised it was a big deer--and Fury saw it too, and started barking. The deer slowly moved off round the bend in the narrow road, hidden by the reeds. As we approached the corner, I thought I saw its tail disappearing into the property where the burned-down house had been--but no, there it was, standing in the middle of the road where it branches towards the beach.

I thought deer were shy, nervous creatures.

This one stood there watching us, twitching its tall tail. Fury strained at the leash. The deer took a step forward. Fury took a step back. The deer's tail wagged agressively. Fury wanted to play with it.

Thought it would be sensible to turn back and go home. But as I dragged Fury away, there was a German Shepherd and owner coming our way. Didn't want to find out if German Shepard and Fury would be friendly or not... I warned the lady-with-the-dog about the deer, dragged Fury back the way we'd come, walking in between her and the sight of the deer (which was now standing in the gateway of the corner house), and went back home round the block.

Fury was looking for the deer under every blade of grass. It took a while to get back home. Who said having a dog wasn't a workout???

End of the week--nearly the weekend!

It has been damp, hot and very humid since yesterday morning. Hot fog yesterday afternoon. Some rain. Didn't clear the air, just provided more fuel to the fog farm.

No progress on deck yesterday: major progress on stairs and hallway. We now have a fantastic staircase, open on one side with columns (they support the upstairs floor), a closed underneath (big enough for the bicycles), a nook (that I can decorate nicely), light switches in sensible places (a big improvement!) and a fitting ready for my Egyptian chandelier (will be put up when all the remodelling has been finished, it has a lot of glass!)

Down side: I found another damp problem last night, after it had been raining and the guys had already tidied up and gone home. There is some water getting in "somewhere", it affects the drywall at the base of the rear exterior wall (and obviously has for some time, as the drywall is soft and crumbly). It seems to come from inside another bit of the ground floor that has been walled in behind a closet--it's where the newly-found radiator comes from. Obviously, there's no point fixing the damaged drywall until I know where the moisture is coming from and fix that first. I looked at the exterior wall, no obvious damp spots. My gut feeling is that water is leaking down behind the flat roof of the boiler room and getting in there somewhere.

I set the dehumidifier to work, and it was all feeling dry as a bone within an hour or so--but that is only a temporary measure. I have to find, and fix, this before we go any further. So another job for Frank and team I think!

My head hurts!!!

Reciprocating saws. Sledgehammers. Drills. Nail guns. Hammers. Cell phones. Airplanes. System of a Down. And a phone conference line full of static and very distant voices. My brain hurts!!!

You find the strangest things

The hall, before yesterday, was a rectangular space with a small closet to the right of the front door (next to the door to the garage), a pole holding up the ceiling, and another closet/storage space across the whole of the back wall. This storage space was divided into two: another wall, parallel to the back wall of the house and front of the closet almost divided the space into two (it was supporting the stairs). Behind this wall was the back wall of the house. And at the bottom, the space was boxed in.

Now, the closet wall has been removed. The old stairs have been removed, enabling the demolition of the wall-inside-the-closet. And the boxing-in has gone too.

Guess what's running along the bottom of the outside wall, inside a hall that smelled and felt cold and damp when we first walked in?

A baseboard radiator.

I'm wondering if there was a special reason it had to be hidden inside a box inside a closet inside another closet. (In the picture, the yuckky carpet tiles were the floor of the outer closet, and the pinkish clean tiles were the floor of the inner closet.)

We have no stairs!!!!!

Hole at bottom of picture is where the old stairs were. Hole at top of picture are where the new stairs will go. There's a lot of space down there!

May the demo begin!

Monday 13th (hope that's a lucky 13th!) Today the guys are supposed to arrive with a dumpster (skip), start the demolition, and take delivery of the new stairs.

Tomorrow, Chris is supposed to arrive to start work on the deck.

Wednesday, I may be stranded in this office with no way up or down....

Happy as a bee

The bumblebees, like the butterflies, love coneflowers (echinacea purpurea). The previous owners had planted several purple coneflowers, and I have added one reddish/salmon and one off-white plant. They thrive in the raised garden: the earthy is sandy, drains quickly, and is very sunny.

The magnificent trees...

These are the ones that should be seen. Their canopy is too high for the vines to have done much damage, and their leaves will be red in autumn. A few have turned already.

Undergrowth-clearing checklist

Things I have learned today:

- if you think you're going to throw up, you probably need to go inside, drink some water, and sit down for a few minutes before trying to pull more vines out of trees
- wellies are excellent for stomping dry, dead undergrowth to a pulp
- you are trying to free the tree--not the vine (I had to remind myself of this several times)
- if the vine won't pull free, try another bit--freeing up a small vine may release the big one you've been struggling with
- if you find a branch in the vine, free one vine branch at a time instead of yanking on the whole thing and getting more dead leaves/bark/twigs in your hair/down shirt/inside boots
- close your eyes whenn things start to fall
- when you get to the bottom of it, the tree may only be a framework of dead branches, and the fresh, shiny, alive leaves just those of smilax, wild rose and the most bizarre of all, grape vine.

I have removed most of the vines from the tree immediately behind the pond, but from the house deck it doesn't look any different yet. I still have to stomp down more of the piled undergrowth that Jose cut. It is slowly dying and drying, and should--if the rain holds off--be dry and brittle by next weekend.

I still don't know if I will keep this small--about 12 feet high?--tree. It does seem to have some life in it still--a few branches have leaves. But it has been so bent out of shape by the vines over the years, and so starved of light and life by the creepers, that most of the branches are brittle twigs. Some of the brittle twigs are pieces of vine that died there, broken from their roots at some point. They are so wound up with the real tree it's almost impossible to see which is which. Even if the tree buds all over in springtime, it may still look half-dead because of these old, decayed vines.

It is blocking the view of the most magnificent tree (rather, magnificent group of three entwined trees) in the garden. I have learned over the years that just because something is growing in the garden, you don't have to preserve it or fight it forever. If it doesn't work, if it's unhealthy, if it's too close to the house, if it's damaging something else, if you plain just don't like it, then you can move it, remove it, or cut it down to the ground and start again. (I had been struggling for weeks with the impossibly-overgrown cypress that hid the house in Fair Oaks, trying to "prune" its six-inch branches, when Jessie-the-contractor said, "why don't you just pull the things out?". Now there was common sense.)

I'll persevere and clear all the vine around the trunk of the tree. Then stand back and take another look.

Nasty vine=Smilax

Did some research: here is the Nasty Vine, in all its glory. Apparently it does have some good to it: providing cover to small mammals (who in their right mind is going to chase Brer Rabbit into the briar patch) and it is used to make the drink Sarsaparilla.

Wikipedia article on Smilax: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smilax

Garden flowers

There is a pale-pink flower that grows in the reeds here. Its flowers are the size of saucers, and it looks like a cross between an hibiscus and some sort of mallow. Several neighbours have them in their gardens where they make magnificent feature plants.

If I have patience, I am going to wait for the seeds of the one that is growing in "my" reeds, and make some babies for next year.

If I am impatient, I am going to dig it out of the reeds when no-one is looking, and replant it in the garden.

Maybe I can find a seedling instead.

Or maybe--is this the right thing to do?--I can carve a wetlands garden out of the reeds, where the plant is already established, and give it some space all of its own. (Wellies! I knew you would be useful!!!)

(I was right--it is Hibiscus moscheutos, the marsh hibiscus, also called the "rose mallow".)

Sunday, 10.15 a.m.

Didn't sleep well: the heat has returned. Every time I woke up, the cat purred.

Took Fury for a walk by the water early. She is not an early dog; she prefers to sleep until noon, or later. And all afternoon. And all evening. Especially if it's hot. But today, she was ready to go at eight, lively and waiting by the stairs as soon as she heard the rustle of doggie-bags. The water was clear, disturbed only by the wash from a motorboat far out in the channel.

I mowed the lawn this morning; wasn't feeling good, it needed to be done before I ran away inside. "Lawn" is probably not the right word; any purist would condemn it as a field of weeds. But it is green, and lush, and looks good when trimmed down to about three inches. It's a mix of grass, plaintain, lovely clover, marsh weeds and various other growing things. Somehow my lawns are always like this, even this one, that I bought only eight weeks ago--surely I haven't destroyed it in that short amount of time??? I feel envious when I see other peoples' green, pure grass lawns. In Sacramento, I pulled the weeds and reseeded the bare spots several times a year, but still the weeds ruled.

I could use "selective" lawn weedkiller, and reseed, or dig it all up and resod it, but I don't like the poisons and I have more pressing things to spend money on. It looks fine to me for now, and the bees and bugs and butterflies are not complaining one bit.

So I mowed the lawn. I gave in a few weeks ago, and bought an electric mower. Cutting nearly a quarter acre of grass and weeds with a push mower was taking too much time and energy. Finding a decent electric mower in the USA is not as simple as it sounds. I would dearly love a flymo. A hover-mo. My memoriy of Flymos is an easy-to-use, lightweight, go-anywhere tool. (My memory could be generous, it's around twenty years since I used one). You cannot buy Flymos or any kind of hover-mowers in the USA. No-one knows what you are talking about.

In a shop that sells mowers, you'll find one push mower, one electric mower, and about fifty different gas/petrol-powered mowers, ranging from the smallest to the huge almost-a-tractor-take-your-family-for-a-ride monster. Most Americans seem to prefer the noisiest, smelliest, most-polluting mowers they can find, preferably operated by an underpaid immigrant worker who turns up with a bunch of his colleagues with a truck and trailer, and mows, trims, edges and prunes half an acre in half-an-hour.

I am sometimes tempted to hire Jose and his men to mow my lawns. If it would help someone else to earn a living, if it would fit into my weekly budget, and if it would free my time to work o more interesting garden stuff (like wrestling Nasty Vines out of trees, wheeling barrows and barrows of mulch, and stomping down all the dead undergrowth with my nice new shiny black wellies (bought at a fisherman's shop, not present in local shoe shops), then I might just do it. Maybe. One day. Because even on days like this, when it's too hot and humid to be comfortable and I feel out-of-sorts and headachy, there is still a happy feeling from the last row mown, the edges trimmed, and the scent of freshly-cut herb.

Twenty cubic yards....

If you were wondering what twenty cubic yards of mulch looks like, here it is. To put it into perspective: it's two dumper-truck loads.

I am not going to count how many wheelbarrow-loads equals twenty cubic yards. I don't want to know. It would put me off before I begin.

I do know that it will make one long pathway... and make a few plants happy too.

It smells really, really good.

Saturday morning, the sun is back

Yesterday, I was sure the tree through the office window, and the grasses on the marshes, were turning yellow and red before my eyes, through a prism of falling rain. Today they stand in the sun and are green again... but a hint of yellow and red remains. A hint of October?

Dogs were everywhere this morning. Maybe everyone else's dog did the same as Fury yesterday--hibernated, slept, closed eyes to ignore the rain, refused to go out, not tempted by a rattling lead or the putting-on of shoes and bug spray. She was ready to go this morning, impatient to walk and sniff and get wet (Bay water is not the same as Rain water). We walked to the corner of our street to turn right towards the Bay, and there was lady with her German Shepherd/golden Husky? cross straining at its leash towards us. So I turned us around and we walked the length of our three-home street to take the next street to the Bay. Turned left, and there was the young man with his Boxer. So back we went, and just missed a guy with two big black labs... got to the corner, and there was someone else with his Border Collie. We were just ahead of him and arrived at the corner with the first beach, where the swans sometimes gather with the geese and the egrets--but parked just around the corner was the green covered pickup truck, door open, where the dog that chased Fury and Karli, trailing its owner, travels. This may well have been the first dog we encountered this morning.... so we went back home, and Fury laid and rolled on the street and on my neighbour's lawn, sunbathing, as we chatted in the morning sun.

Nasty Vine

I think the Nasty Vine may be "mile-a-minute" weed, an invader! It has really nasty spines, shiny leaves, and grows right up into, and around, the native trees. If you get lucky, you can pull forty or fifty feet of the stuff down in one go. If you're not lucky, it snaps, leaving it to die and go brown and ugly way out of reach. It's fun seeing the landscape appear to change, though, as you remove it piece-by-piece.

I guess it will be on the list of things to do in the garden every year from now on!

Things to do this weekend

1) Order some mulch and have them deliver it. Costs 10$ a yard more to be delivered but a sight easier than shoveling it onto (little) truck, shovelling it off into a heap at home, then shovelling it into a wheelbarrow. If they deliver it I only have to shovel it onto the wheelbarrow. Last time I had a truckload of mulch delivered, in Sacramento, they put it in the middle of the driveway and within 24 hours it had started to generate so much heat it was steaming... maybe even smoking. (Note to self: be home when they deliver otherwise there will be 20 cubic yards of mulch on the front doorstep).
2) Buy wheelbarrow. Otherwise 20 yards of mulch will remain in place.
3) Find mulch shovel. It's somewhere in the room-with-all-the-stuff-that-hasn't-been-put-away-yet.
4) Buy wellies. Had no need for welly-boots in Sacramento. If it had been raining, it was pointless working in the garden, because it was solid clay: just compacted it more by walking/climbing on it. And it was embarrassing sliding down hillside on rear end with turkeys watching.
5) First find out what wellies are called in New York state. This will help avoid feeling like an idiot when they ask you what the heck you're talking about. Gum boots? Rubber boots? Eraser boots?????? Haven't seen any in Home Depot. Only saw pretty kiddies boots in Target. My feet are too big for those. Maybe at a Bait And Tackle Shop? (Waders would be a good idea seeing the scratches and mosquito bites from yesterday evening. I disentangled about half a ton of the Nasty Vine from a small unidentified-as-yet tree/shrub. That's about 1.5% of the area done.)
6) Find a way of disposing of brush/undergrowth from wooded bit of property. May have to be sneaky.
7) Get busy.

Silver

Drove to Riverhead this evening: took a walk alongside the Peconic River. Calm water, a few boats, carved wood; people feeding ducks, a family of swans, three grey cygnets, mother swan with a label round her neck, numbered.

As I watched the brown water was silver, and the silver was fish.

A million small, silver fish, synchronised swimming, a swarm of fish, a flock of fish, all flowing, all moving in one body; a huge ribbon of single-direction fish; a dream of fish, almost there, almost not there at all. I thought it was imagination, but they came back, again and again, just below a veil of water.

I asked a fisherman what they were--he said snapper, baby blue fish, as he removed a three-pronged hook from the mouth of one of the million, and gently placed it back in the water.

The fish were jumping out of the water. The water was so full of fish it was overflowing.

Next week, the fisherman said, they'll be twice as big.

Ibis?

As well as the white egrets of various shapes and sizes--I haven't yet been able to distinguish baby big egrets from small adult egrets -- there are large wading birds that look black from a distance. They are not herons: I think they are ibis. Glossy Ibis are often seen on Long Island. I saw three fly past one day, long curving beaks leading the way. The only photos I've managed so far show them as black long-necked dots next to white long-necked dots. Will keep trying.

Ibis reminds me of Isis; Egypt and Bob Dylan.

So much I want to do

As I can now get to the back of the property relatively easily, I can now see the potential there. There are beautiful native trees and bushes, choked by an overgrowth of brambles and vines and wild (or feral?) roses. It has to be cleared by hand, disentangling everything, freeing the "good" from the "weeds"--and without violating the wetlands rules. Some leaves on one of the trees are already turning a brilliant, violent red. I don't know what the tree is. I have to find out.

I have to cover the pathways that Jose cut for me--bare weedblock fabric can't stay in place by itself, the sun will damage it. I want to make wooden pathways from the old deck when it's removed, but the removal and rebuilding is apparently delayed, again (blame it on the thunderstorms???) I can order woodchip in bulk and use that. Need to buy a wheelbarrow, left the old one, broken, in Sacramento. Need to buy some wellies. Green or black, not pink like Karli's. Or maybe red. I could do red wellies. That would be cool.

How big a heap of woodchip is 20 cubic yards??? That's the smallest they will deliver.

It was raining gently during the night, then around 7 a.m. the thunderstorm started. Lots of rain. The road is a river again. Grey skies, soft.

I have been reading Monty Don again. The man is an inspiration. Just because someone is on television--a celebrity?--doesn't mean they don't have their own challenges and heartbreaks.

Go garden. It is a healing process.

Misty morning

The seagulls--giant, black-backed gulls--were having a shouting festival this morning. Sitting on the roof of the house next to the channel; wheeling in the sky; perching on the telegraph poles. And yelling. Usually they sit on the poles and just chunter if you walk past, but today, they were very loud.

The marshes were covered in mist, they egrets have moved on.

Whether weather

Today the weather is changeful. At daybreak, the skies were warm, damp grey, threatening rain or thunder or both. Walking the dog by the edge of the Bay, the air was heavy but playful. Little waves raced by on the low water; my drying hair must have looked like a wig borrowed from a scarecrow after two winters in Leicestershire. Now, a few hours later, the sun hides behind thin cloud but warms the wind that is playing with the reeds and the trees and the wind-chimes. The marshes are sheltering an extended family of about thirty egrets of various shapes and sizes. They sit in a spread-out group around one of the tidal pools, and every so often move to another pool, then another.

Clearing a way

Louise and Rory went back to England on Friday. We miss them!!! While they were here, Jose and one of his guys worked all day clearing 3 feet all around the cultivated part of the property--around the raised lawn area, and around the front lawn. Then I put down weedblock fabric on half of it (ran out of energy/time for the rest of it this weekend), and started to make a border garden on the right-hand side of the driveway (before the vines and weeds come back).

The deer now think they have a clear pathway from their hideout to the hostas. I'm waiting to see if delphiniums and bee balm are merely deer food too. (Delphiniums were just slug food in Sacramento and they were well over by now, if they survived at all.)