Old House Stories # 2- The Critter

 I have a lot of memories of our old house, here is another one:

A squirrel was sitting in my house gutter the other day. He had really gone too far. I mean, we have hawks that swoop down on such unsuspecting critters like him and here he was sitting happily in the middle of the gutter, munching on maple seeds staring in my kitchen window. I stared back wondering if he was really watching my face or was simply in maple nut nirvana. Either way he was going to get himself snatched off the roof if he didn't stop stuffing his face. More seeds in that ever expanding belly of his and he wouldn't just be lunch for a hawk but find himself stuck literally in the gutter.

Suddenly, a friend of his decided this was just too good to miss and there were now two squirrels in the gutter loading up on seeds. Normally I would have thought good deal, they are cleaning out my gutters from the yearly scourge of maple helicopters landing all over my roof that end up clogging the gutter downspouts. But they were making such a mess with the husks of the seeds dropping them all over my desk that I thought for a moment, you deserve to get picked off by a hawk. Shame on me.

Finally I had enough and send Watson, our Basset/Springer Spaniel out to chase them off. Poor Watson, he is getting up in age, but his eyes have never been his strong suit. He comes out the back door all ready to engage in battle with the intruders but he can never quite see where they are. I can point up to the roof all day and he will sniff the ground nonetheless. Low to the ground, Watson has the heart of the Springer Spaniel and the legs and dragging belly of a basset hound. He stir up some mighty fearsome barking but it will be all day before he reaches you.

Squirrels off the roof for now, I move on to filling my seasonal swimming pool. It's the type of pool you put up every year because my husband and I don't quite want a year round pool in the back yard. We seem to have amnesia when it comes to remembering how much trouble it is to drag five hundred pounds of hot sticky vinyl in the middle of the yard, slide the metal support tubes into sticky vinyl sleeves, set up the metal legs all without damaging our fingers, shins and ears of our neighbors.

My husband and I are aging too, as in we are getting too old to think just the two of us can do this by ourselves every year. But not just getting old as in in creaky bones and muscles but also our hearing. How can two people who are standing back to back not hear what the other one is saying when they are standing in the yard working on a project? It's beyond me. All I know is we are constantly yelling, "What? What did you say?" I am surprised neighbors don't come out and interpret for us. Of course none of them are much younger, so maybe they don't hear us.

Back to the pool, so the box says it takes only thirty minutes to set up and begin filling the pool. It takes us ninety, with a lot of sweat, swearing and wine at nine in the morning. Last year my wonderful husband built a wood deck by the pool so our grandchildren and I could get in and out easily. It made it so wonderful not having to climb up and down a rickety ladder. We kept the deck throughout the winter, but moved it down the yard so it wouldn't be standing right in front of our main deck all winter looking all forlorn. Of course that meant pretty much disassembling this deck because it was too heavy for us to move. It worked out great during the fall and early spring as a miniature playhouse for the and the granddaughters to play on. But, of course, once we got the pool assembled the deck had to be moved back in place. Which meant disassembling it again, and also reassembling it next to the pool. I think it was easier to build in place the first year. This time we had to keep pushing and pulling the five hundred pounds of vinyl along with poles and legs to get it in the right spot for the deck or else the ladder would not fit along a flat side of the octagonal pool. Believe me, we thought we knew where it would fit against the deck, but when you push, pull and scream at five hundred pounds of vinyl it tends to sit wherever it wants.

Finally, it was done. Back in the house, I washed vegetables to have with lunch when I looked out and saw the squirrel was back but this time on top of our pergola. The pergola sits on the deck right next to the pool deck. The next thing I know, Watson is outside barking, in the wrong direction again, at a squirrel he can smell but not see. The barking was enough to alarm the squirrel, but now I can see it panic as he realizes where he would have normally run and jumped when the dog came running out there was now a giant blue five hundred pound vinyl thing in his squirrelly path.

So, this squirrel is no dummy, he improvised and he jumped to the pool deck and and down the ladder. Now because I had immediately begun running the hose to fill the pool as soon as we had set up it up, I know that there are a few inches of water at the end of that ladder, but the squirrel did not. He suddenly reappears looking rather freaked out at the prospect of maybe having to swim instead of run. He is back on the pool deck closer to the loudly barking dog. Much to the squirrel's further chagrin, my husband appears on the deck to see what the dog is barking about. And the squirrel Olympics begins. Mr. Squirrel is so panicked to see a human and a dog blocking most of his paths to freedom, he begins running up and down the pool deck. He makes a quick decision to leap to the pergola and running along a narrow beam flies with hope and a prayer to the top of the house.

I am happy to say he made the leap, much to the amusement of my husband and myself. Watson, of course because he hasn't been able to track him still thinks the squirrel is lurking around the pool and keeps barking.

So summer has officially begun in our backyard.

Old House Stories # 1- Litter

I have a lot of memories of our old house  which sat on a very busy major street in our town. We had absolutely no privacy in the front yard, but lots of stories to tell. Here is another one:

 I was mowing our front lawn.  I have claimed the right to mow the front lawn mostly because I have planted two dozen trees, flowers and shrubs out front in the hopes of gaining some of the privacy we lost when our fifteen year old pine tree was destroyed by ice four years ago. 

 You don't realize how exposed and naked you are in your front lawn until you lose a thirty foot tall by twenty foot wide evergreen. Suddenly the world is staring at you when you look out the front door, stand on the porch and of course do anything in your front yard.

  So while I enjoy mowing the front yard so I can make sure all my little baby plants survive the weekly trim going past them, I also
have to endure the constant noise and wind of passing vehicles, trucks, semis, you name it going by on our somewhat busy street.  But the biggest hazard is trash.

 Whether it's the wind picking up trash from the trash container in the apartment complex across the street  or what I actually suspect is not so nice people throwing things out their car windows either way trash is a hazard.

I am reminded of the anti pollution commercial famous in the 1970's of a Native American standing near the forest on a highway and some woman throwing an entire bag of trash out her car window and it lands at his feet.   As a kid I always thought he should have taken his bow and arrow and shot the tire of their car but he was nicer than I was.

 Mowing along our yard I have found beer bottles, cans, wrappers of White Castle burgers, Chick Fil A, Arbys, and masks which apparently people are still wearing (and should wear if they are driving past my house throwing out trash).  The other day I found one fake fur Easter bunny ear lying on the ground.  That was just disturbing.  But all this is particularly gross in our post Covid world of not wanting to touch anything that might have 'the GERM' on it.  Especially a discarded mask!!!

And I won't even go into the number of times I've hit paper napkins which explode all over the yard looking like I hit a confetti canon.  The mulching attachment on our mower doesn't make this any better. It just mulches up the paper into even better flying confetti.

I either have to get over my germ phobia or begin wearing gloves to pick up trash. But I happen to like getting a tanned while mowing so gloves are definitely out.  I would have a golfer's tan!

So on I mow, trying to swerve around the debris, put on a glove and go back and pick it up afterwards.

Maybe I could make up social media memes asking people not to throw trash. Or just stop being a baby and pick it all up, like a good citizen.  :)