Because this afternoon was a standard late-March day for Austin (sunny, temperatures around 72/22 degrees, light winds) I got out to try some cleaning up in the bamboo patch behind the shed, where the leaves lie as thick as . . . well, “Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks in Vallombrosa.” They’ve sat back there for years and the lower layers have now produced a nice layer of humus, which I wanted for spreading around various flower beds. The chief problem with trying to clean out back there is the bamboo roots that have run all over creation through the humus, working themselves up through cracks in the concrete slab, and generally being as nasty and bothersome to gardening as possible. There are also several horrible hackberry volunteers back there, which needed to come out before they get any worse than they are. So on that note, I dug out the chain saw to begin cutting down.
The first thing I did was to chop down two of the hackberries I’d pollarded, taking them off at slab level. Then I started in to cut out some bamboo stumps that L had cut off twelve to eighteen inches above ground, just where it was impossible to do anything around them. That went all right until I tried to cut out one that was just next the chain-link fence in my south lot line. The saw’s chain hung in the fence, and before I could get it shut down or loose, something inside the gearbox went “clank” and the saw made a nasty grinding noise. From the sound of things, I think I stripped some teeth off a gear—and this is a new chain saw, too; today was only the second time I’d used it. I only hope it can be fixed.
Then I went looking for my spade, to start scooping up the bamboo root mats so I could cut them back with the loppers. The spade wasn’t to be found. I suppose someone must have stolen it out of the yard. Time out for an hour while I go to Breed & Co. to buy a new one—except the only spades they had were ones with some silly fluting on the front edge that I didn’t need or want at all, and some stainless steel ones that were far more expensive than I had any intention of going. (I don’t care what the excuse is, thirty-eight dollars for a stainless-steel spade is nothing more than gardeners’ dilettantism, in my book.) I bought a small leaf rake for raking under bushes and hedges instead, and resignedly dragged over to Home Despot. I found a spade there more like what I wanted.
On the way home I was seduced into stopping at Howard Nursery, a neighborhood joint that’s been operated by the same family since 1912, and came out with bedders of flat-leaf parsley, curly parsley, English thyme, and Sunmaster and Heatwave tomatoes, two varieties that won’t stop setting fruit once daytime temperatures get over 90/32 (definitely a consideration, since our first over-90 days will come along about May). The one thing I came away without was basil; they’d sold out everything except a couple of lemon basil bedders, and I want to try to get some more African blue basil (O. ‘Dark Opal’ x O. kilimandscharicum). L and I both like it more than ordinary O. basilicum, because it lacks the strong anise flavor overtones that O. basilicum has. Neither of us are licorice fans.
So after I got back, I took into the stuff behind the shed, pulled up obscenely large root runners and mats from the bamboo, and shoveled out two wheelbarrow-loads of mostly humus with some leaves in—after which I got out the hose nozzle and washed down the loose dirt from the slab, uncovering lots of root tangles from bamboo I’d chopped down in prior battles. I don’t quite know how—or if—I’ll be able to get them out, but with their roots exposed and nothing but bare concrete around them, they won’t be nearly so ready to invade new territory.
All that grubbing called for a lie-down, so after I had one of them, I went out and put in the bedders around the garden, first rooting out the bedstraw, henbit, chickweed, goose grass, and other junk that had invited itself in over the last few weeks. Fortunately, what it had taken root in was the layer of compost I’d laid down last winter as mulch, which was still very crumbly, so getting them all up and out was far easier than when I’m working with my normal black clay soil. The only real drawback was, as usual, the itchiness I get from handling bedstraw and I managed to avoid a lot of that with careful handling. I’ll go out and water in the new plants shortly.
And while all that was going on, I set sprinklers on all the ancient seeds I pitched into the ground earlier in the week, principally from a morbid desire to see whether any of them will germinate. T had bought all kinds of seeds in the last few years which somehow never got planted, so I took the pansies, the bachelor’s buttons, the geraniums, the zinnias, and the hollyhocks and sowed them broadcast into the front beds, just to see what might happen. I did not plant any of the morning glories or moonflowers she had, because I’m still trying to fight back the volunteers from an ill-advised planting two years ago.
A short while ago, L got a call from her sister in Maryland. Their grandmother has decided to go into an assisted-living facility. This is only a surprise because Tink has insisted adamantly for years that she’d never go to a nursing home or anything like one, but she’s now 91, almost stone deaf, physically feeble, and has been alone since my father-in-law (her only child) died four years ago. And it seems that Maryland’s rough winter was the final straw, because she told everyone that she wanted to go into a home three weeks ago, pretty much out of a clear sky. Because it’s Maryland, the state Department of Aging had to do an assessment to see what they thought was the best placement for her (I suspect this is also to prevent involuntary warehousing of the elderly), and they concluded that assisted living was a better choice than a home.
So all is being arranged, but in order to give her some income to help pay for the facility, L’s sister and mother are having to clean out the house so it can be rented. Hence the phone call: were there any particular things L wanted to have from the furnishings? She ended up asking for three things: a long-case clock for which her great-grandfather made the case, a set of salt cellars, and a large framed print, done by Maryland artist John Barber, of her great-uncle Walter’s wharf in Fleeton, Virginia, with two of the family’s fishing boats tied up and unloading their catch. L has wanted a copy of that print for years, and the edition sold out long, long ago, so the only way she’s like to get one is to claim Tink’s. L told me, “Don’t ask me where we’re going to hang it, because I don’t know, but I want it!” The same question of “where will it go” applies to the long-case clock, but that worries me less, because I have a weakness for old clocks. HOWEVER: once we have it in possession, I want to try to find a proper movement for it, even though I expect it’ll have to be spring-driven instead of weight-driven. Charles Sr. put in a QUARTZ movement (QUARTZ MOVEMENT LONG-CASE!! Ick!! Gag!! Barf!!) and made the space that’d normally contain the pendulum and weights into storage space. I really, really dislike quartz movements in old-style clocks, so I’m going to go searching for a movement that needs attention and winding, the way proper clocks should do. I’ve got several months to figure that part out, though, because L probably won’t have the chance to get a truck and go after it all until April or so, and ain’t no way we can ship that clock.
Spaceman Spiff avoids a slime-dripping space capsule singing our Discordian. Fnord.
