Sean was recently amusing himself by going through "the archive" -- which I last updated last July. Look at me, squeaking in under the 1-year wire! I had to go back through my photos to see hm, what should I add to the record in brief?
Autumn:
Our shed roof has been in trouble since we bought this house. The inspector had pointed out that despite its impressive size (20 x 16, as I learned when I needed to obtain the tarp below), it had some design flaws: Don (our house's original owner - his wife Betty sold it to the developers in 2018, and the Grammaticos stepped in during that flip before selling to us) had used a lot of interior wood trim on the exterior, which is a no-no. He also didn't install any ventilation in the roof (possibly assuming the side windows would work?), so the shingles on the left-hand side, which caught the most sun, had been baking for years, curling up and falling off. By this past fall, I could see that water was making it to the plywood ceiling from inside the shed, so I decided we needed to put up a tarp. It sounds so simple, and yet, the Great Tarp Adventure would have been a complete failure without the intercession of our new neighbor, Ken, who replaced Todd and Margo. The first tarp, which was too small and only covered the front where the water was coming in, kept blowing off in storms, despite my best efforts to anchor it to cinderblocks (of which we have many, thank you Don). Then I decided we needed to tarp the entire thing - but I'm afraid of heights, and the thought of Sean getting up there was giving me such anxiety (even though yes, it's not very high up). Ken saw us struggling and came right over - despite being 75, he has that wiry, no-nonsense old-man energy, and no qualms about going up onto the roof to get the tarp settled from the top. Oh, and going up again 15 minutes later, because a sudden gust of wind lifted it off before we could get it settled. He even went out and got these candy-cane shaped rebar pins and redid all of our ropes (because even with cinderblocks on the top of the rebar sunk into the group, the wind really wanted that tarp).
We repaid Ken's kindness with a bottle of his preferred beverage - Macallan scotch! The tarp stayed up until we got the roof replaced in early February (yes this was winter, despite the 0 snow on the ground). Winter is a good time to get small roofing jobs done, I guess - it only took them about four hours. I thought they might have to replace some of the plywood where there was water staining, but nope, it was still good (and a sign of Russo Roofing not trying to upsell us, which I appreciate).
I chose the lightest gray shingles possible to help reflect the heat, but on the summer to-do list is to install a pair of 8-inch gable vents along the back side of the shed (not directly in the center, where you normally see them because that's where Don ran the main roof support beam).
Winter:
We had a gas fireplace installed, which is ridiculously cozy, and unlike the one we had on Concord Street, this one lights up with a remote! We had to experiment with our Christmas set-up, since the last couple of years we had put the loveseat directly in front of the (empty) fireplace. Sean masterminded this, and it worked great!
A big windstorm in December took out the beautiful tree by the pond - split it right in half. It was some kind of willow (possibly a black willow), which apparently are not terribly long-lived, but it was such a delight to see in the summer, with all of the birds in the branches. Even after we had the remains hauled away, it looked like a raw wound from the windows all winter (and we can't even see the stump from the house, which looks even sadder). We were planning to plant a new willow in the spring, but literally as I was emailing with a native plant nursery in April, I realized there is an American elm coming up in just about the same spot. It's a much bigger tree than the willow, but it's native, so why not let Nature handle it, instead of worrying about protecting a sapling I planted from the deer and bunnies?
Spring:
We look our long-awaited trip to London in April! Getting there was pretty stressful, and Sean got sick halfway through the trip, so it was not the perfect vacation, but we still had a great time. We had booked an "aparthotel" near Paddington, which turned out to be a perfect choice - it had a kitchenette and a dishwasher, and a Marks & Spencer down the street, so we could do breakfast on our own, but there was also full concierge service (which we honestly didn't need, but was still nice!) As always, it's important to us to eat well when we travel, haha. Culinary highlights: the Sunday roast at a pub in Mayfair; an Indian restaurant in Kensington, Dishoom, that my colleague Megan had recommended (and then I forgot about and independently decided on from the guidebook); a Spanish tapas place in Mayfair; and honestly, a classic "local pub" dinner, down the street from Paddington, as locals filed in to watch some kind of soccer championship.
Of course, for lunch, there's no better deal than the V& A's cafeteria. Not only is this the first museum in the world that offered meal options from its inception, it's like $15 for an excellent hot meal with sides, plus you're eating in these rooms:
I actually got to visit twice on this trip - Sean was not feeling well and stayed at the hotel the first time I went, but we went again. Honestly, I love everything about this museum, but the Cast Courts just blew me away on this visit. The scale of the column of Trajan! My jaw dropped when I walked in the first time. No picture does it justice. That you can go inside it (which obviously you're not allowed to do in Rome), and that you can actually make out some of the relief carving (hard to do in Rome, though of course both surviving column and the plaster copy lack the original paint that would have made it legible!)
At the British Library, Sean permitted a rare photograph of him with one of the oldest copies of the Bible in existence, the Greek Codex Alexandrina:
Summer:
Goose war 2024 is going okay so far! We laughed about seeing Canada geese in St. James' Park when we got to London (they were imported in the 1950s), but the joke was on us, because the first skirmish took place just days after we got home, in late April. It had been a very warm early spring, so I was anticipating this, and the fencing was up before we left, but the babies were small enough to scoot under it. We wound up in a bit of a Mexican standoff, with the geese inside the fenced pond, and despite the harassment of the "goose lady's" border collie, unwilling or unable to depart. This was a Thursday. I thought we'd have to leave the fencing open for a day during the weekend at the shallow end and try to close it behind them when they left (which I had to do once before, and it really hard, because as soon as you come close they of course race for the water). I left for work on Friday - geese in the pond. Came back Friday night - no geese. Fencing intact, not much goose poop in the grass. Where did they go, and why? I wondered if someone had come onto our property to "let them out" - or was Ken involved? (He remains mysterious on the topic, but was in immediate agreement with us and Joe about how welcoming he felt toward them...).
Anyway, never got an answer, and we haven't seen that goose family again. This encounter did inspire me to get a Ring camera mounted facing the pond. It's blurry at that distance, but enough for a quick check. I also used landscaping staples to make sure there weren't gaps for the goslings below. The next goose skirmish came in May, while Linda was here - I was at work, saw movement by the pond, and had her confirm. This was a different family with younger goslings. Deterrence: my neighbor Joe flying across the lawn on his riding mower, terrorizing the geese into departure (I watched this happen live via Ring app). The family has shown up two more times, coming not from Lidyhites Pond but rather, I presume, from a smaller pond up Laurel Hill that I've seen on maps. Both time I was able to use the lawnmower to drive them back into the woods. Unfortunately, the second time, when I went around behind the pond, it had recently rained and turned it into a vernal-pool swamp. I got stuck in the mud and Sean had to come push (and now we know the John Deere is rear-wheel drive).
In conclusion: the Goose War of 2024 continues. Constant vigilance!
Wildflower project:
We have a massive patch of milkweeds by the pond, as they are aggressive spreaders and I've let them have free reign. However, we only get 1-2 monarchs a year, which is so disappointing! Wondering if the problem was not enough flowers nearby to attract them to lay eggs, I've started working on solarizing about 110 square feet along the bank. This mean first weeding and digging out all of the roots I could, which was pretty backbreaking. Some of those weeds had insane root systems. Oriental bittersweet had made its home there, and its roots are bright orange and branch for four feet in multiple directions, it was wild.
I've been solarizing these under plastic for a few weeks, and just took the plastic off today. I read that you should give the patches a break so that any surviving weeds have time to stick their heads up -- then you rip them out and redo the tarps for another period. The goal is to seed this area with native wildflower seeds in the fall, six weeks before the frost, and then hopefully they will germinate on their own in the spring. I can't afford to cover this much ground with plugs, so seed it shall be. I'll also need to temper my expectations, because apparently wildflower areas tend to "creep" in year 2 and then "leap" in year three.
After I finished the second patch I came back to take a photo and found I'd been joined by a rather large snapper! This is the downside of the pond fencing: it's not a problem for things like raccoons, squirrels, or deer, but it is for turtles. I opened a stretch of fencing further ahead, left the area, and she scooted on in (she moved fast!). We just did the same on the shallow end for a large box turtle. Unfortunately, I've already found two massacred nests of turtle eggs so far.
The Boat Project:
Last year, the boat was taking on water, so I spent a week applying coats of flexseal before giving it another water test. Success! The USS Fat Man (named in honor of JTD and his desire for a boat) took to sea pond. Now, the oars we have are two mismatched ones I found in the shed, and are super awkward to use. I acquired oarlocks, which made rowing a little easier, but they didn't come with cotter pins to hold them in place, so they still kept coming out of the oarlocks. I got the pins today, so this should be easier on the next round, one hopes. Sean was the on-shore support, and took this photo that, yes, looks like it was taken with a potato:
The actual purpose for going into the water is to stem the advance of the invasive reeds (the phragmites australis at upper right - the shorter reeds at upper left are native) by cutting them below the waterline, and also picking up any reed debris that's hanging out in the pond. This is fairly awkward and messy work. A big wooden rowboat is not exactly the idea craft here -- a lightweight metal jonboat would be amazing -- but it's the one I've got. But the giant oars are more designed for "row yourself about on a giant clear lake!" instead of "maneuver yourself alongside the reeds and don't float away while you're cutting them." It's not the most elegant endeavor. But the only other option for the reeds is aquatic pesticide, which would cost $2k for the permits and the company, and they wouldn't remove any of the dead reeds. Plus, the birds freaking love the reeds, they're always hanging out in them and on them, which admittedly they don't seem to do as much with the shorter native variety. So the goal is control, not eradication.
We've also had fun observing our friend the great blue heron, who is very shy (he's flown away when he's spotted me on the driveway). Just this week we finally were able to watch him catch and eat a fish (of which there are so many in there)! But the smaller birds, especially the redwing blackbirds, tend to harass him away. :-(
Finally, I suppose I would be remiss if I didn't mention my other, ahem, "nature control" project: reducing the number of chipmunks, which
exploded this year. We had to have the driveway repaired two years ago because of them, and now they're destroying the retaining wall too, which was the last straw. All efforts at deterrence failed, so now we've moved on to murder. At last count we've got 17 fewer chipmunks around here than we had last month, but they're still seemingly
everywhere. We'll see what the number is the next time I update this!
Edited to add: I went out late yesterday afternoon to take a photo of the solarized beds without their plastic. When you stand by the pond edge, the milkweeds almost block out the roof of our house!
I also discovered that what my plant-ID app tells me is willow shoots coming up from the trunk of the fallen tree! The baby American elm is lower left, with sort of jagged leaves. Now to decide who we let thrive...
