Dog Day Afternoons

Shorter walks and longer stints in front of the fan these days... 

Summer arrived brutally, with temps and humidity soaring right up to the brink of insanity even before June 21st rolled around. Nick doesn't like it at all, and we're dealing with it the best we can. After breakfast, we sweat for two hours doing chores, eat lunch, then rest for a bit. Sometimes it's a nap, sometimes it's just an hour (or 90 minutes) trying to catch up with the stack of New Yorkers building on the coffee table. Then we hit it again until it's beer o'clock, which rings about 7 p.m.

Mason rebuilt the front porch stairs (photo to come) and the well house foundation. The well house is also getting a new paver floor and new insulation, all inspired by The Snake Incident.

All my spare time has been spent pulling weeds, which has been made easier by a ridiculous amount of rain.

A mulched path? Or a pond? Criminy!

I've also been busy in the veggie garden, finally getting the potatoes in the ground and, new this year, in towers. I'm trying to grow a few things vertically, to make room for more varieties (edamame, peanuts and sweet potatoes are new this year). Today Mason helped me build an arch that will soon support 1,500-Year-Old Cave Beans. It's a pole bean that was discovered in New Mexico in a clay pot sealed with resin of some sort. Carbon-dating determined the beans found inside were incredibly old (1,500 years old to be more or less exact).  I love cooking dried beans in fall and winter, thus the arch.

He has his own chores to do, but helps me with my crazy ideas, too. 

We've Had It With These Goddamn Snakes

Jackmanni Clematis vine.

Who’s up for a snake story? Or two? Or three? (Michiela, you best just stop reading right now. Just look at the pretty flower photos and move on.)

Monday was my first day summer vacation (I’m officially unemployed again until the fall gardening season), so I was in a particularly good mood, a dancing-while-making-breakfast kind of mood. After breakfast comes watering, so I two-step off to the garden. Oops, we’re out of water, so I two-step over to the well house, open the door and “SNAKE!”

A copperhead was right there on the floor. Disturbed by my screech to Mason, the snake started slithering under the wood floor of the well house. Mason comes running with the snake gun, but I slow him down, warning him to be careful not to shoot the water tank, the water lines, the propane line and electrical lines, all of which run through the well house. By the time I issue all my warnings, and he snaps at me that he had a clear shot, the snake is gone. It’s somewhere under the floor, with all the water lines, propane lines and electrical lines. (In my defense, Mason has shot a water line and a hose in pursuit of snakes.)

Red Itoh peony, I forget the variety.

We try to scare the snake off with Snake-A-Way. No go. We stand watch for a while. No movement. We now face the unfortunate scenario of knowing there’s a snake in the well house, where now that it’s gardening season, I must go several times a day to top off the tank to water all these damn plants I’ve planted.

But there’s nothing we can do about it, and it’s time for Nick’s walk, so we go for the walk. Two minutes into the walk, I squint down the driveway. “What’s that? A tree limb or a snake?” Once you see one snake, you start imagining them everywhere. “Where?” says Mason, who can’t see shit without his glasses, which he’s not wearing. I lunge for Nick’s collar before he walks right toward the snake. A black one. A friendly one, or at least not poisonous. Mason tosses a stick at it to get it to move along, but the snake takes offense and curls up in a defensive stance. Mason throws another stick. Seriously, can’t we just stop throwing things and let it mosey along on its own? Which it finally does and we continue our walk.

Smokebush. Love that color.

We are now more than jumpy. Two snakes in 20 minutes. We’ve gone up to the lake, which is a long walk for Nick these days, and are just curling around and up our driveway. We were deep in conversation about something. Maybe the projects for the day, but more likely about that idiot Trump. Mason’s a few steps ahead of me and Nick when I see it.

“Mason stop,” I shouted, lunging for Nick’s collar again. Mason stopped, but then he also backed up in a slight panic, which is natural.

I shouldn’t have said “stop,” I should have said “Behind you, snake!,” which I then managed to spit out quickly. Mason spun around and backed away. He now saw it clearly, because it was damn close. A rattlesnake. A fat one.

One shot to the head before it could ever rattle its 15 rings, and a shovel to decapitate it, and we are rattled to our cores. (Yes, we did see the story last week about the Texas man bitten by a decapitated snake head. Mason always uses a shovel for head disposal.)

The snake story doesn’t end there. Two days later Mason decided it is time to rebuild the well house foundation. We built it atop landscape timbers made of treated wood, never thinking we’d still be living here seven years later. Well seven years later and the timbers have begun to rot. Personally I would have waited to start this project for a week or two after watching a snake slither under the well house floor. But Mason?

“Oh, that snake has moved on,” he said, mocking me for my nervousness.

Siberian Iris, Caesar's Brother.

A couple hours later, we’ve got the well house jacked up a foot off the ground. Mason’s done most of the work; I'd get called to help lift, and grunt, and lift again, but then I’d back off beyond a snake jumping distance. In between calls for help, I’d wander into the veggie garden and tend to things. 

I was pruning the tomatoes when I heard him.

“Holy shit,” Mason said in a low, slow alarming tone. I raced over quickly, but he had moved even more quickly, rushing backward out of the well house.

“The copperhead,” he said almost breathlessly as he reached for the snake pistol, which he had wisely kept nearby. He ducked back into the well house just far enough to cut the glare of the sun and focus on the far back corner. There was the snake, curled up on the middle shelf, the same shelf Mason had just rested his hand on to reach down and raise a heavy block. But the snake hadn’t been on the shelf when Mason first saw it. It had been slithering out of the wall insulation. Just as Mason was raising up with the block in one hand, his other on the shelf, he saw the snake’s head just a foot from his face. Thus the “holy shit.”

Rest assured that snake is now dead. We left the body out on a tree stump, where we always leave our snake carcasses. An owl, coyote, maybe a crow, some night-dwelling creature sweeps them away for us.

Today is Sunday. I’d like to say we haven’t seen a snake since, but just a couple hours ago, returning home on our morning walk, Mason spotted a rattler stretched between a boxwood and some foxglove seedlings. 

The season’s tally so far: 3 copperheads, 2 rattlers. 

So, who’s next to visit?

In other news, the carport extension got an extension.
The 1949 Farm-All Cub tractor now has its own "garage."