ISN'T IT IRONIC?

 

(Borrowed from the New Yorker cartoon archives.)

Maybe November and December have this effect, all those dim days and long dark evenings, but it gets you to thinking, ruminating.  Bear with me.

 ~

 

 

Now, right now, in case you haven't noticed, but of course you did, we can access everything–everything– in the digital world.  We know so much!  It’s all there!  For the taking. And it's free!  Most of it, anyway. Look it up.  We can express ourselves.  I'm doing that right here, actually. 

 

But can we stop loudly expressing every single opinion we have on all of it?

 

There is exciting new data available about almost everything around us. Take early humans, for instance: the complexity of earlier ages are being examined with new tools, and found to be far more interesting than we used to imagine.  Neanderthals were not hulking dim-witted pre-humanoids after all.  They had some kind of social norms, rituals, behaviors we are still working to interpret.  There are even more types of humanoids.  Dates for the development of societies, growth of towns, building of houses, forms of governing, are being pushed further and further back in time, and on a regular basis.  Understanding of diseases (sure, even Covid), the microscopic, the atomic, the cosmos, are yielding more secrets than even we uncovered as recently as ten or twenty years ago.   We know more about animal behavior.  Some laws even reflect that new knowledge. I could go on.

It was always the plan

To put the world in your hand

Hahaha

        Lyrics from  "Welcome to the Internet" from the album "Inside" by Bo Burnham

But are we any smarter because of it?

 

What happens in this country is usually reflected in what is happening everywhere else on the planet.  No surprise.  We’re all in this together, after all. But, honestly, nothing  is looking especially great.  I used to think we were really “getting it” with regard to all kinds of issues, mitigating pollution, for example.  We’re all recycling, aren’t we?  Even though it’s actually aspirational recycling.  We hope it’s working but we aren’t anywhere near certain it really is.  It's disappointing.  Every May there are groups organized in every town around here to pick up the trash dropped in ditches along the road the previous year.  All too many bags are full.  So if we’re not doing so great, what about elsewhere?  Not great.  I’ve looked at a hillside at a beautiful Buddhist monastery overlooking the Mekong River in Cambodia that was serving as a dump, all the junk tossed over the wall and down the hill, out of sight, out of mind. Old tires and whatnot along major roads in Russia, all of which is shrugged at helplessly. This is especially pronounced in failed states like Bosnia and parts of Croatia where it seems stuff is tossed into the woods to spite...what? Who?  Others!  Projects are planned in Chile that threaten areas of great beauty.  Ive seen logs piled in giant heaps taken from the Amazon.(and that was way upriver, with a thousand miles still to go.)  Even in Australia I watched plastic bags stuck onto tree lilmbs, waving like flags as they blew in the wind. At home, meanwhile, we can all see the burnt forests in California, pictures of coal sludge threatening wetlands, land drying up, and...you know, it goes on.

 

With new information about animal behavior we have a growing understanding of migration patterns, the effects of forest fragmentation, reproduction, evolution.  But who needs to go further than this state?  Leg-hold traps are still being used here for trapping.  (You might wonder why anyone is still trapping animals anyway, given that no one–almost no one–wears fur these days. Is trapping now the province of taxidermists?  Makes you wonder.)  Coyotes can be hunted in any manner, at any time, day or night, 365 days a year, tossed in ditches.  Bears can still be hunted with hounds wearing radio collars–not exactly your bear hounding of the 1700’s or 1800’s anymore when the hunters could wear themselves out chasing their dogs on foot.  Not that that period was some Golden Age of Hounding.  So much for our wildlife here in Vermont.  

 

 Are we getting simultaneously more filled with data and, yet, stupider?

 

 Hard to know, frankly.

Could I interest you in everything?

All of the time

A bit of everything

All of the time

Apathy's a tragedy

And boredom is a crime

Anything and everything

All of the time

Lyrics from "Welcome to the Internet" by Bo Burnham on the album "Inside."

 

 

I was listening to NPR/VPR the other day, and happened to catch a program where they were talking about the deep discouragement that environmental activists and researchers sometimes–sadly, often–feel.  It can get bad enough to cause burnout, depression.  Maybe I’m super susceptible to this kind of thing, but while I was listening I began to feel really sad, discouraged.  I felt that way for much of that day. But at night I decided to watch a NOVA show about black holes and another that followed about the origin of the universe.  I was captivated.  It was exciting.  Work of the past several years have revealed so much that hadn’t been known before. (Not that I understood it all.) But hey, I thought, everything is bigger than I had been feeling.  There was so much fascinating stuff to think about and ponder.  I felt much better.  

Is science supposed to save us, make everything right?  Hah!  Half the world doesn’t even believe in science.

I have no idea.  I haven't even mentioned the human component, but I could reference the fact that the many of the same anti-vaccers who don't want the government "messing with their bodies," or "telling them what to do," support laws that have the government messing with women's bodies (presumably other people's bodies!) creating laws prohibiting abortion. There is a certain irony about it all, you have to admit.

~

Instead— Let us celebrate the dark days of early winter! 

 

Winter is icumen in,

Lhude sing Goddamm,

Raineth drop and staineth slop.

And how the wind doth ramm!

Sing: Goddamm.

 

Skiddeth bus and sloppeth us.

An ague hath my ham.

Freezeth river, turneth liver,

Damm you; Sing; Goddamm.

 

Goddamm, Goddamm, ‘tis why I am Goddamm.

So ‘gainst the winter’s balm.

 

Sing Goddamm, damm, sing goddamm

 

 

Ezra Pound

Or maybe it will snow. 

STRANGE THINGS

THREE KINDA STRANGE THINGS... 

Well, it did happen to be Halloween as I wrote this...

1.  ODD

It's been a warm fall.  The first frost happened barely a week ago, the second frost shortly thereafter. The trees seem a little out of whack. It seemed it was every tree for itself.  Not the ordinary "let' s get all bright and yellow and red together."  I realize this wasn't true absolutely everywhere, as  I did pass through the White Mountains of New Hampshire where, even at high altitudes, as late as the 15th, it looked beautiful while trees around here were just sort of washed out.

Admittedly it did look quite colorful right here.  However....

...this was distinctly not early October, and not even mid-October, but just before the first of November.  Peak foliage here is normally––if there is still a "normal"––anytime from around October 10th to the 18th.   At higher altitudes the peak date may be as early as the 8th or 10th of October.  Maybe the trees figured, dull as they'd been all the rest of the season, they'd better shape up and get color before their leaves get blown away.   Nearby trees were already deep into November mode, leafless.

This maple seemed to signal fall was all over for much of October, vaguely yellowish, and then to my surprise it took on vibrant red and orange.  On Halloween, October 31st, it was the only tree around that has vivid coloring.  This is odd.

At the very same time the apple trees, following their own calendar, are still completely green. The apples are now overripe, and look more like giant plums.

Besides the foliage there was this unusual scene.

It looks as if the little bridge could wash away.

An unusual occurrence on Halloween.  This pond never flooded this much before, not even as a result of hurricane Irene when much of Vermont flooded.  The ground was already wet when the rain began, and probably couldn't hold much more water.  Good thing the muskrats abandoned their tunnels two years ago, or the holes in the lawn would be much worse,  Still, one of their old tunnels that I'd filled in became a little creek.

 

2.  WEIRD AND CREEPY

These two laughing ladies are wearing actual fur hats that they made out of animals trapped in Vermont.  (The trapping season begins November 1 and allows leghold traps.)  They have a business nearby called Otterway Fur Millinery (https://www.otterwayfur.com).  

The following is from their website, in answer the posed question, "Why wear fur?"

"We humans are a keystone species; we are dominant, the top predator. We can and do make other species extinct. We have intelligence and therefore a responsibility. Fur bearing animals are part of the life cycle. All that lives, dies. Nature has the right to exist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles and its processes in evolution.

Trapping is the controlled harvest of wild fur bearing animals to maintain healthy populations within the carrying capacity of the environment. Trappers conserve wildlife and preserve our outdoor heritage for future generations. Gratitude and respect are a practice of ethical trappers.

Fur is free-range, sustainable, renewable, and warmer than petroleum-based plastic and acetone derived faux fur."

I find it especially creepy when words like “free-range,” “sustainable,” “renewable” and the oxymoronic “trappers conserve wildlife” are thrown out to the public, maybe to make themselves feel good, or worse, to signal imagined compliance with wildlife ethics to would-be customers.  Sad.  Environmentally decorated gobbledygook.  Eco-decor!

Code words are everywhere lately, faux non-racism, faux non-discrimination, faux ecology.  Alas.

3.  SCARY

I was rummaging around in a drawer a few days ago and came upon a ring that my grandfather, a jeweler, had made for my grandmother.  I'd forgotten about it.  It's been in this drawer for thirty years.  Maybe longer.    

My grandfather studied jewelry making when he was young, and lived in southern Germany, in or near the town of Pforzheim, a town that was then, and still is to some extent, a center of jewelry manufacture.  It's near the city of Stuttgart, and not terribly far from Munich.  It was the 1920's.  My grandfather came from a family of seven brothers of which he was the youngest.  The brothers apparently* vied with one another for money and position, and he was squeezed out. By the time he became an adult, times were bad economically and restless politically.  Not a good time for jewelry.  He married and had two children, but their future was not promising.  He decided he needed to find out if he could succeed in America, and so he traveled alone to New York, to suss it out.  He either found a job or had confidence that he would.  After a short time he returned to Germany, perhaps hoping against hope that things had improved, perhaps to check out whether or not his family would be willing to make a big move.  While he was there he attended one of Hitler's speeches that he was often making in that part of the country.  Uh, oh, this doesn't bode well, and ihe decided to leave.  He took his family and came to New York City where he worked as a jeweler, or maybe returned to a job he'd found earlier. He must have have been good at it, because as he ended up making particularly high-end jewelry.  

Some of his work, maybe a lot of it, was for the firm of Harry Winston. One stone he worked on was the famous Hope Diamond.  One night he put it in the pocket where he often carried diamonds, probably folded in the complex style jewelers still use today.  He went home to Queens the usual way, on the subway, with the Hope Diamond, because he wanted to show it to his family.

Was he uneasy on that trip home? Or on the return trip?  Was he frightened?  Even for a minute?  If something had happened it would have had tremendous repercussions.  How could he not be worried?

I remember him warmly, though I knew him when I was very young for only  a short time. (He died of a heart attack in 1950.)  I remember he had a calm and welcoming manner.  But this had to have been a scary moment. How could it not be? 

 

History, of course, reveals that he made it back to Manhattan safely, the diamond secure in his pocket. Harry Winston gave the Hope Diamond to the Museum of Natural History in 1949.   I've only just put the whole story together, never having given it a thought—ever.  It was only yesterday that I realized my grandfather must have made the stone's setting.  After all, who else?

*Much of this about my grandfather I learned from my cousin who had been filled no doubt by his father who may have seen it, having recently gotten out of the army and probably living at home until he got married.

SUMMER IN THE REAR VIEW MIRROR

 

SUMMER IN THE REAR VIEW MIRROR

Looking back doesn't show much, does it?

 

Goodbye, summer 2021.  I won't miss it.  Not that it was terrible.  Just blah.  For starters, I wrote no posts whatsoever.  Somehow or other the air went out of all my thoughts that floated by in the heavy humid air.  I accomplished nothing.  Things fell apart, and mostly they got fixed.   Or done with, or completed in one way or another.

It was a summer of petty annoyances.  

   The tractor got fixed (after the rain-fed grass grew without restraint and created a mess of cut clumps for the rest of that month), 

   the valve on the water tank was replaced (having flooded part of the basement at such a rate that it kept me awake emptying a brim-full bucket on a 3-hour schedule), 

   the car windshield was replaced (cracks happen, so it goes), 

there’s a new lock on the front door (the door that had tried to lock me out, save for the existence of another point of entry),

   I somehow cracked the band on a ring Ken had given me (not yet repaired), nevermind also losing another opal (also from Ken, and unfixable), 

   my “natural” pool underwent some rehabbing (how “natural” natural is, is another story*) and is once again inviting (although this didn’t happen until the end of August sos there was little to no swimming), 

   two family members recovered (one from post-vaccine COVID, another from a very bad mushroom, and me from some mid-summer stomach bug),

   there was the continued masking because of the Delta variant... 

 

Enough!

On the purely positive side, a new painting was hung on my wall (commissioned from artist Carly Huston), and I had a couple of lovely days on Monhegan Island.  So, all in all, what is there to complain about?

BEFORE REHAB:  A large amount of algae in the pool, plus an excess of plants around the perimeter.

 

IN PRODESS: Notice ballooning of the liner because of outside water pressure

IN PROCESS:  The pool, drained, with fresh gravel and rocks

Since it's now September, the flowers are done, and there's still a slight greenish tinge, but it's under control.  Of course, by now it's also a bit chilly.

Just about everything has been far better than what has been going on elsewhere.  With so much world-wide bad news it was easy to almost overlook small local stories. 

Here's one late summer tale that really got to me.  It was about the primitive thinking going on the peaceful, remote, unspoiled, beautiful Northeast Kingdom of Vermont–a place everyone loves whether they've been there or not.  A story in the digital Vermont news report VTDIGGER that took place in the heart of the Kingdom was so awful I had thought I'd write a blog post about it.  

 

It took place in the little town of Brighton (pop. ~1,222), tucked in a bit south of the Canadian border and a bit west of the Maine border. The story described a meeting held by State Rep Brian Smithwith his constituents from the district of Derby.  He set the tone, telling the gathered crowd “I’m really quite proud to be white,” a statement eagerly defended by State Senator Russ Ingall of the Orleans district (also part of the picturesque Northeast Kingdom) who had helped to arrange the occasion.  Then, attempting a more statesman-like pose, he added, “You should be proud of any skin color that you’d like,” which of course is a bit like saying “all lives matter,” a statement that is so self-evident it’s like saying you favor gravity.  Hence, meaningless.

 

Rep. Brian Smith (R)  Proud and white.

But what struck me as particularly appalling were the comments from the audience which went pretty much unchallenged:  

 

"Immediately after Smith’s comments — about an hour into the recording of the meeting — a white man stood up in front of the seated crowd and said, 'Anybody in this room know who the first slave traders were? They were colored people.'

 

A voice from the crowd responded, 'Yes they were.'

 

The man continued, 'They rounded them up, sold them. They come to the United States to work.' 

He then spoke of Vermont’s contributions to the Civil War and made the historically inaccurate statement, 'Ninety-nine percent of the colored people stayed in the South because they weren’t treated that bad.'

The man concluded his speech, 'So please don't tell me I'm a racist.  I'm not a racist.'" 

 

Most of the audience applauded. The State Senator applauded. (See? There are no racists anymore!)

Shocking, right?  Did no one ever manage learning some history?  As I began to think about how easy it was, pointing out such primitive thinking. It was too.  A cheap shot. Those statements were either a result of a lack of education, possibly stupidity, or of living in a bubble, or perhaps some combination of all three.  I’d have felt good, superior, maybe smug, and definitely “woke.”  (Aren't all of us good guys, and woke?)  It was, after all, a gathering to oppose “critical race theory,” so one would expect the mood of the audience hot for battle. That particular issue, critical race theory, or, in reality, non-issue, is yet another example of Trump’s hold on all too many minds, given that most people never heard about it until our ex-prez called it out as a threat following some FOX news banter after the death of George Floyd and the protests and discussions about race that followed.**

It was a reminder, if I needed it, that even when you live in a beautiful place, that doesn't mean all is beautiful as well.  A summer can be just as blah if you live in a less lovely place, or just as wonderful if you revel in it, and are happy with yourself.  I felt grouchy, and everything around me was strangely complicit.  I welcome fall!

 

 

* Thanks to swimming pool owner stepdaughter Christine, I’m no longer a stranger to using chlorine.  I have learned, albeit slowly, that keeping a natural pool clear of algae takes more than just pond algaecides and "good" bacteria.

* * For the story of CRT, see the 7/27/2021 NYTimes story by Jacey Fortin titled "Critical Race Theory: A Brief History, or "How a complicated and expansive academic theory developed during the 1980's has become a to-button political issue forty years later."

BUILT TO LAST – TWO WAYS

THE WAY OF BEAUTY

Arguably the prettiest valley in Wisconsin: Spring Green

The valley is lovely.  Very Vermont-y.  And the main residence sits as it should, tucked into the brow of the hill.  The view is pristine, electricity poles buried, as Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) had the clout to ensure they wouldn’t spoil it.  This is Taliesin, the place where so much happened, whose architecture evolved as new ideas replaced older ones and fires erased pieces of the past.

The main residence sits below the brow of the hill. The section you can see jutting out was a viewing platform for his wife to see the birds.  There were more trees around it at the time.

Rear entrance to the main residence

 

When I first saw a Frank Lloyd Wright building, one of the early ones that incorporated his revolutionary designs and was built at a time when horses were more common than cars, it took my breath away.  It was out of time, an anachronism, like seeing a Tesla in 1950.  The fact that the wood was aged, edges marred or peeling, had me imagining a new building that had been made with old, used materials.

Dining hall of what was the Hillside Home School, a boarding school built in 1932, later his architecture school. The chairs are as uncomfortable as they look. The furnishing are made of plywood.

 

Once the entrance for horses and carriages, modifed for cars.  A signature color was red, and cars at Taliesin needed to be dark red.  

In the main residence.  Plywood again, but beautiful this time.  (I don't know about comfort.) The Japanese influence can be seen in the painting that is reflected beautifully in the glass table top.

This, from a 2009 New York Times book review:

 

Frank Lloyd Wright was a visionary who produced some of the 20th century’s grandest architectural designs. He was also a reckless adventurer who got lucky. He liked to position structures over water­falls, on steep slopes, at the bottom of arroyos. He designed a hotel that withstood a major earthquake. He designed private houses marred by leaking roofs and poor heating systems. He rewarded his clients with buildings that suited their needs. He ignored his clients’ wishes and didn’t pay his bills. He was devoted to his art. He would let nothing stand in the way of success. He was passionate and affectionate, manipulative and denigrating. By all accounts he loved — and hated — publicity.

 

He designed his country estate, Taliesin, in Wisconsin, as a retreat where he could live — and love — in peace. Taliesin was where he went to escape the press. It was where he gathered with his apprentices and worked for long stretches. And it was where he brought his mistresses and wives.

 

He did love plywood, used it everywhere, and in several rooms it shows its age.  And it’s probably no surprise to anyone who has visited a Wright-designed place (“place” often includes not just the building, but everything inside of it, chairs, lamps, tables, placement of ceramics, etc.) that the chairs are often uncomfortable, unforgiving. (Yes, we were allowed to sit.)  Design über alles, my ideas over yours.

Wright designed the entire farm as well. The silos are low because he felt tall silos would mar the overall design. 

Wright's office in the main house

 

Rooms were added and changed many times. A bedroom had 21 (!) ceiling revisions.

 

Apprentice architects or interns–perhaps acolytes is a better word–were expected to work on the farm, the house, and elsewhere on the estate. They were the ones who physically built nearly everything. Some had had enough after a month, others stayed for a lifetime.

Drafting room for apprentices/interns/acolytes.  They sat on the little slanted stools. The room was heated by a fireplace at each end.

 

I’d visited Taliesin West in Arizona where the Wright entourage migrated in winter and have seen other Wright houses, but this is the one where his life was mostly lived.  It was a tumultuous life.  Three wives, a liaison that ended in tragedy:  a servant butchered his then partner, Mamah Cheney, her two children who were visiting, and a colleague after having locked the doors and set the house on fire.*  This was the second and worst fire to happen here, the earlier one caused accidentally by poor wiring.  Wiring was not one of his strong points.

Much of Wright's work was inspired by Japanese architecure which he admired.

THE WAY OF IMPORTANCE

 

The Capitol building in Madison, WI as I saw it.

 

Capitol building, as I did not see it. Construction began in 1837, completed in 1917.  
Cost:  A whopping $7.2 million.

Just up a slight rise and two blocks from the hotel I could see the what appeared to be the main entrance to the humongous Capitol building.  Walk on the street toward that entrance and take a right, and there it is again, or what looks like the same entrance.  Keep doing that, twice more, squaring the circle, and you will see it has four identical entrances, four streets cutting diagonally across the grid to take you there, as if it were the sun, orbited by everything else, on the highest piece of land, a strip between two lakes.  The Capitol Building of Madison, the capital of Wisconsin, has a layout that has been seriously designed.  Imagine L’Enfant inn 1791 laying out the center of Washington, D.C. but on a much smaller scale.  You can do that when you’re starting a city, or a state for that matter, from scratch.

 

 

Only the best materials. 

 

All of it is pretty impressive.

Some “scratch.” It’s not as if the land was just there.  The local (Ho-Chunk tribe) had to be removed, or ideally, disappeared in some way,* after which the city was pretty much created by smoothing over the original ancient native mounds and adding more soil where it was needed, along with rerouting some water.  But, really, how different are the stories of other cities, other states?  It was James Duane Doty (1799-1865), land speculator and politician–a useful combination then as now–who drove the process, named the place, laid out the square and streets, with his purchase of 1,261 acres–not from the Ho-Chunk of course, but the government–for $1,500. It was for him a start on the road to riches.

 

"X" marks the spot, literally. (Capitol building)

 

The almost-always-visible state Capitol as seen from Manona Terrace designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

 

AND A MASH-UP

Wright’s influence is noticeable here and there around Madison.  The house below, however, says importance much more loudly than it says beauty.  

Home for sale, Madison area, $1.695,000.  It's giantism is hidden behind the front view.

BUILT TO LAST?

The so-called Romeo and Juliet towers, originally built as a windmill in the late 1880's for the Hillside school looks old, but was actually demolished and rebuilt in 1992.

Behind the ferns at right is scaffolding holding up the not-yet-rehabbed apartment where Minerva, 97-year-old former assistant to Wright's wife Olgivanna, still lives.

Every building needs repairs from time to time.  Wright’s buildings may need it more than most.  I didn’t take a photo of crumbling stone steps (in an used entry way, as it happened), but their appearance suggested other stone steps had been in need of help.  After his third wife Olgivanna died in 1985 and the Foundation took over the estate, major rehab was required.  It is still underway and may continue to be, in perpetuity.  The Capitol, obviously, is made of sterner stuff.  (Although it, too, was rehabbed or "restored" in the 1990's.)

But which is really more important?

NOTES

 *A fictionalized version based upon actual events is engrossingly told by T. Coraghessan Boyle in “The Women,” published in 2009.

 

**Chief Black Hawk was both Sauk and Ho-Chunk.  The story of the Black Hawk War is a complicated one.  It marked the end of Native American armed resistance to U.S. expansion into what came to be called the Northwest Territories. Here’s an irony for you:  According to University of Wisconsin historian Kerry Trask (credit: Wikipedia), after their defeat, “Black Hawk and his fellow prisoners were treated like celebrities because the Indians served as a living embodiment of the ‘noble savage’ myth that had become popular in the eastern United States.  Then and later” argues Trask, “white Americans absolved themselves of complicity in the dispossession of Native Americans by expressing admiration or sympathy for defeated Indians like Black Hawk.”

 

BOUNDARIES, AN ILLUSTRATED GUIDE

Boundaries: borders, restrictions, partitions, borderlines, dividing lines, cutoff points thresholds, confines, limits, outer limits, extremities, margins, edges, fringes, peripheries, perimeters...

I draw the line here. The meadow keeps trying to cross it.

Maybe I wasn't all that clear.  I'm talking about physical boundaries, and very local ones at that.  To the eye, they are nowhere, and yet everywhere.  I like to think I'm the ruling party here, but often that seems in doubt.

I could describe them.  So I will.

What put this in mind was a morning of transitions not long ago, not sure just when––time has been very mutable this past year and a half.  Mask wearing was in its last official day, but I didn't know that yet.  In the first store, people at the registers were masked, customers were not. (Agway)  At the second, only one person at the register was masked, others not. (Hardware)  At the third, about 80 to 90% of the shoppers were unmasked while all the clerks were masked. (Supermarket)  At the fourth, nothing had changed at all, everyone kept their distance and everyone was masked. (Co-op)  Unrestricted restrictions.   It got me thinking about limits and borders, and boundaries.

MOUSELAND

Mouseland covers the same relative space as as the ratio of planetary water to land.  No area is off limits. There must be hundreds (thousands?) of them in the natural and built environment.  By built, I mean indoors. Indoors includes inside-type things, like a a tractor, car, a grill.  For a long time I've been setting mouse traps (instant kill, lest you wonder) in the basement in winter, as they prefer a warm, non-windblown climate.  My record for trapping was eleven mice one winter, a record that could easily have been greater if I'd been rigorous about keeping the traps in dabs of peanut butter.  This season I decided to continue setting traps to see what, if anything, would happen.  I had little thought of catching any, but yes, there they were, even in warm weather––four so far.  

This brings me to another aspect of Mouseland.  End-of-Life Mouseland.  

Beneath the burdock (infamous for its burrs*) is my mouse cemetery.  It is an above-ground
cemetery, however, as I have no mouse death ceremony, no burial.

A suburb of Mouseland, or kind of town-within-a-town, is Voleland.  Voles, unlike mice, are McMansion types.  No discreet little holes for them.  No, they need to have massive entryways and massive exit holes.  Their works pretty much ruin the neighborhood. It makes for an incredibly bumpy ride on my mower.  Last summer the voles were very busy in homebuilding, and I can't help but wonder whether they will recycle the homes they've already got instead of even more construction.  Or maybe I should called it de-construction.  

One of altogether too many vole holes.  The entrance has a 3-inch diameter.  
Why is that necessary? After all, they're about the same size as mice.

THE AREA OF INTOLERANCE, FORMERLY THE AREA OF TOLERANCE

I've mentioned this already in a previous post.  How lovely I used to think it was to watch the swallows make their nests on the front porch and raise their babies.  Once the chicks had fledged I faced the  yearly mess of swallow poop clean up.  It seemed like the price I had to pay for watching them nest.  They had made the nest along the molding and atop the light fixtures.  Brown mud would stick on the molding, impervious to scrubbing, and white poop dribbled down the red wall.  Prayer flags flapping along the molding and small rocks atop the lights have done the trick.  After years of this, I'd had enough. I drew my line in the sand, so to speak.  It worked.

Prayers for good fortune flap in the wind and declare this space off limits.

LOST EDEN

Last year and the year before that, and the year even before that, the swimming pond was the place to be for frogs of all sorts.  They seemed happy, the evidence being the fact that they laid many eggs and produced even more frogs with each year.  They swam contentedly with people around and without.  If snakes or herons managed to make a meal of any of them, they were quickly enough replaced that I never noticed a change in numbers.  

But, alas.  The Eden is not what it was.  An invasion of what first looks like an innocent moss turned out to be a virulent strain of an algae called hydrilla.  Hydrilla loves to grow in quantity under the deepest water, in the shallower water, and in the shallowest water, the domain of the frogs.  I countered with supposedly "good" and "safe" hydrilla killer, in appropriate amounts.  Taking stock some weeks thereafter I was shocked to find fewer plants and, lucky me, just about as much hydrilla as before.  There were also one, then two, monstrous bullfrogs.**  It was as if those two giants were full of all the little frogs.  (Actually there were still some little frogs. And tadpoles. So all was not completely lost.) Or maybe the little frogs left because the thinness of the plants wasn't to their liking.  At any rate, there are lots fewer frogs in the swimming pond.  Fewer plants too.  

Frog Eden; the Golden Years

No more Eden. (Photo taken at about the same time of year, give or take a week or so.)

The bottom is obscured by reflections, but that green stuff is hydrilla 'way down deep. The gravel is greenish too.  

Let no one say that a "natural pool" is simple to manage.  Hah! You still have to watch the pH, and look after the plants, and add good bacteria at the right time, and keep an eye out for algae.  You have to learn to read the water.  I think (I hope) I'm there now.  But it took me a long time.  I've wrestled with hairy algae, which has a reputation for being hard to get rid of, but I managed that. This stuff?  It's gotten to me.  The result is that the pool will have to have a major rehab.  Drained, cleaned, refilled, and maybe a UV filter to boot.  That's not likely to happen until late summer, or, worse yet, maybe later.  I haven't even swum in it yet.  It's because I'm mad at it.  I drew my line.  Stay tuned.

 

PLACE OF THE ANCESTORS

It was here in the Beginning, the place of Origin.

We're talking frogs again.  Before there was a swimming pond, there was the big pond.  In the days of yore, before human memory of this particular site, there was a seep, perhaps a small marsh, absorbing the waters from higher ground across the meadows.  It was here the frogs' ancestors lived.  When the swimming pond was first built, it wasn't more than a day or so before they found their way to this new site.  They seemed to like it.  I remember a few years ago when my grandaughter Audrey was still afraid of frogs her kindly brother Ben captured as many as he could lay his hands on and carried them back to the Place of Origin.  It wasn't a half hour before they were all back.  They knew they had moved up in the world and they were planning on staying.

COYOTE VISITING AREA

This visiting area was not my choice.  Skyler has an invisible boundary just a few feet behind the foreground.  Two coyotes have come to this precise spot a month or two apart.  The first one, a big guy, stood just behind the intersection (mid-photo), the more recent visitor about six feet closer.   It happened about 8 o'clock one evening. I was upstairs when I heard Skyler in agitated barking.  I looked out the window.  There was Skyler and the coyote, separated by only a few feet. Skyler was at his invisible boundary line, the coyote just outside of it. When I saw how close the two were I nearly flew down the stairs.  As I leapt out the back door I grabbed my coyote scare can, a tin can with pebbles inside kept just inside the door for this exact purpose, and ran out shaking it as hard as I could.  The coyote left. Not in a hurry, but determinedly.

Skyler looks at this path every night, in anticipation, or fear, or curiosity.  Or just because he's guarding what's on the inside of his boundary.

BEAR VISITING AREA? (URSA INCOGNITA)

This is unknown territory.  There may have been a bear right here in the woods.  I don't know.  Skyler has often barked at mysterious beings there.  A bear visited next door early one morning recently.  It was a young bear and he was easily scared off.  But I don't know if one has ever come here.  If it did, this is where he/she would come from.  There have been no obvious signs, no messed up compost, for instance.  The messes I've seen there are the work of something much smaller, maybe raccoons, or opossums. Bears leave bigger messes.

What's out there?  Bear? Coyote? Or just a rabbit?

 

Skyler catching a plume of scent.  Of something...

I know where my boundaries are.

*Burdock burrs are the worst kind.  Trust me, I know. This spring I bent over some plants and when I raised my head I discovered to my shock I had a headful of burrs.  It took me painful hours to get them out, along with a small amount of precious hair.  A lesson learned:  Use only oil, oil and more oil.  No water as this makes the little hooks hold even tighter.

**The size of actual bullfrogs is surprising, especially when you're used to seeing ordinary frog-size frogs.  They put in mind that Australian scourge, the cane toad.

                                                                Okay, which is which?