JUST PICTURES

The purple "Grapenut"



Friend Howard



Icabod the Snake

Icabod Up Close

Purple Greenbeans From My Garden

THREE DAYS OF THE CODGERS

Yesterday Husband came home looking dejected and pitiful, prompting me to ask, "what's wrong?"  He sat down, removed his glasses and told how in the process of fixing friend Howard's VW, he nearly set fire to the entire shop and immolated friend Howard as well as his VW, sometimes referred to as the purple "grapenut."

Picture here if you will a purple VW bug, at once a pristine, nostalgic, and overstated emblem of egotistic eccentricity.  Whew, that statement hurt as much as childbirth.  Meanwhile, enjoy a picture from my garden.

It was a woeful admission, requiring a healing remark to repair his sagging confidence.  It seems he forgot to reattach the fuel line and then asked Howard to start the grapenut, which began spewing gasoline.  He saw it and shouted to turn it off averting disaster.  We are grateful that friend Howard, who is hard of hearing, got the message.

I comforted Husband with the reminder of my mega-mistake of the day before, which entailed another misadventure with the infamous Cub Cadet.  I felt inspired to cut grass, get some sunshine, and smell the wild onions.  So off I go on the Cub Cadet.  I no sooner pass the pumphouse than there are pieces of flying extension cord passing on either side.  It seems I drove over an electrocution trap laid by Husband, who was by this time running and shouting, "Drop it," meaning the section of cord I picked up (clearly cut on both ends).  So I dutifully dropped it.  He fumed and fussed.  The Cub Cadet took no notice.  But I thought I saw it smirk, insolent mechanical devil.

Today is another day!  No blotches on our record.  Then the phone rings.  Husband's deal to get free steamed crab claws is successful.  And it arrives:  a megalithic box of claws which fills two big garbage bags!

And we pick and crack and crack and pick.  We freeze some (above), eat some, give some to the neighbors, and let the cat have a cut.  Resolute in our desire to never look at another crab claw, we look forward to the next test of our competency/senility and what things may come on Waverly Lane.



CAPE HATTERAS LIGHTHOUSE

Last week our family took a trip to Avon on the Outer Banks of North Carolina.  Husband has goals to achieve on every vacation we have experienced.  He is the one pressing on to climb higher, travel farther, ask more dumb questions and exhaust yourself taking in something of scant interest to you for the sake of logging one more item in the book of "Things We Did As A Family."  While that is commendable, it is small reparation for his personal deficiency as a workaholic, "play-with-your-friends-aholic," runaway parent when the children were still children.  And with that I have coughed up an ancient hairball.

On the day he was most driven, we headed for an educational trek to the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse with Middle Sis, her hubby Mike, Baby Sis and her friend Dino.

As you can see, it was a lighthouse.  This lighthouse had a winding metal staircase involving 268 steps.  On a hot day.  And we had the joy of knowing the whole thing had been moved a considerable distance from where it was built in the 1800's, a thing which added to the thrill of wondering about structural integrity.  More spice for the old ticker as we climb to the pinnacle.

(The bald spot above is where the lighthouse used to be!)

We all began the ascent and rested at each level with a window.  As we neared the top, Middle Sis and Baby Sis refused to go all the way.  Siezed by terror, they begged me to get Husband, who was on top quizzing the Park Ranger for factual details, to come down.  I did try, but he was too wrapped up in it all.  So I went down alone leaving the sisters to experience their fears without me.  I thought about all the nights of fear they caused me as teenagers and continued down musing about things that go around and come around.

.

Being a fast walker as well as a cheapskate, I headed for the free museum on the grounds.  It was a wide ranging nautical exhibit.  Old ship items, WWII U-Boat pictures, portraits of lighthouse keepers and such. 

Meanwhile, the family panic changed focus from Husband to me, whom everyone feared had come to an untimely end.  Just because I came down fast doesn't mean I fell over the side.

Husband ran out of questions for the ranger and descended with his fearful daughters and they all group hugged and went looking for me.  They found me and we recounted our adventures in the heat, the height,  the paranoia, and the mystery of how two old folks could fearlessly walk up a lighthouse and not be overcome by inertia, senility, or giddyness.

Son-in-law Mike found a local one-armed restaurant critic, who gave five stars to a biker bar called "Pop's" and we ate, we drank, and we all lived happily ever after. At least for that day .

OH 'POSSUM!

On a morning when I was atypically still asleep at sunrise, husband woke me, drooling in deep sleep, by shouting - "Mumma, there's a possum out here who's sick!"  Since I panic when he calls me "Mumma," (It always means he's in desperate straits) I leaped from my four poster and ran downstairs in my gowntail to see a healthy older oppossum trying frantically to free himself from the garbage bag tie that had noosed around his privates and rendered him helpless, among other things.

After much sturm und drang, I got a pair of sissors and clipped the tie.  He still wouldn't move so I put a basket and cover over him to allow him time to recover.

Meanwhile, Husband had called Mathews Animal Control, which is manned by compassionate people who actually care about animals.  That is some definite progress in these parts.  I commend them with extreme praise.

On arrival, Mr. Horne (the Animal Control Officer) picked possum up by the tail, unraveled the plastic tie, and put him under a bush.  He headed for beneath our deck, with his poor testicles conspicuously hanging low, and prepared to return to normal or a little less.

We haven't seen him since, but Mr. Horne says he'll be fine but will probably be cured of his desire for sex.  I, for one, can live with that.  I left him a little food in case he gets hungry. 

And life resumes on Waverly Lane.

EXERCISE FOR THE SOUL

Walking is good for your health whether it is accomplished on an expensive treadmill with various speeds and levels of difficulty, or on a brisk trip down a tree-lined dirt lane.  I choose the latter because I require the prospect of the unexpected.

On a treadmill, you can trot away in the same location to your favorite tunes, or watch TV and hope your feet don't get confused and launch you backwards.

On a real walk you can see this:

or this:

and this:

and sometimes this:

Sounds of birds, frogs and neighborhood dogs punctuate the stream of thoughts that wash through consciousness once immersed in nature.  It's impossible not to have thoughts.  Today on my walk, I thought about how much I love living things; about the inconsequence of a single life; about the contradiction of death to the proposition of life.  And then I realized that one's own death is an imperceivable state, a sudden midnight with no new dawn, and our bit of time ends but remains part of all of time.  Try that on a treadmill...and then take a real walk.

TIPPING OVER THE SILO

In the summer of 2009, the silo came down.  As part of our shoreline project, Husband managed to include the demolition of the very old and dangerously crumbling silo nested closely to the old red barn, which is our Waverly trademark.  Inhabited seasonally by ravens, black-headed vultures and other things that go bump in the night, we had mixed feelings about its demise, but reasoned it could only end up hurting someone with its occasional masonry tile exfoliation.  Each section was brick-heavy and capable of killing.  So, over she went.

As I captured the precise moment of death on camera, a lump lodged in my throat and a still, barometric depression began forming in my chest.  "Is it just a heart attack," I thought, "or am I going to cry?"  Neither happened.  And then "Ca-Smash."  Quiet is the time after an event so transforming.  The former brown, shiny, stoney silo was an elongated ridge of broken pottery.    White dust hung in a cloud  over the slain corpse of our long-time companion and the grave diggers with metal arms loaded the remains onto a huge dump truck bound for landfill interment.  Goodbye forever, old friend.

After a respectable period of mourning, we visited the death scene and were pleasantly surprised to discover a cleared, beautiful, fertile, loamy garden space that had been hiding under our deceased friend.  A great place to sow seeds for a late fall garden.  The impetus of the universe from cosmic to quantum emerges tirelessly, a last act/first act melding of everything, destruction fomenting the beginnings of new and wonderful possibilities.

THE MOTHER'S DAY GIFT

   
    Mother gardened for pleasure.  Father planted vegetables while Mother grew and maintained a large strawberry patch of the "Red Rich" variety and flowers in the form of climbing roses, gladiolas, hollyhocks, verbena, four o'clocks and portulaca.

    Once I observed her creating new rose plants from cuttings.  I took careful note of the process and secretly took a cutting, planting it at the far end of Dad's garden, placing a rock over the base of the future rose plant.  By Mother's Day, it had taken hold and was gaining strength and growing out.

    As a nine year old, I had no money to buy presents, so I drew and colored a card and put a bow on the fledgling rose bush.  On Mother's Day, I told my mom I had a big surprise for her.  She followed me down to the garden and her surprise was genuine and touching. 

    Never again did I surpass the success of that particular present or fail to understand the power and awe of love and enthusiasm for life, transplanted from parent to child.

    Happy Mother's Day.