Duck!! It’s A Mother

Devoted readers may remember my rant last year about the “War of the Leaves,” the annual struggle to remove 40 million leaves from the tiered planted area behind our deck that the guy that built this house adorned with the most efficient leaf-catching plants known to Man. This year’s war was the worst yet, because we have had several very windy days in both the fall and the winter, with prevailing breezes of 30 mph and gusts of 50 or so. Those days blew in additional leaves from neighboring yards, compounding the chore of removing them.

I approached the task a little differently, foregoing raking in favor of using a blower for the task of moving the giant leaf piles to the wooded part of my lot. Mostly what has happened is that I have had to clear the planted area and deck multiple times, five, so far.

As spring approached there was a lot of unusual bird activity, which I wrote about. You remember: the dozens of vultures? But another bird appeared that was unusual in a different way. Not too far from our house—probably a couple hundred yards, as the crow flies—is the Town’s water supply pond, which has a rather large number of ducks on it during spring/summer/fall. Imagine my surprise when I saw one of those ducks walking around in the planted areas behind the deck. The only time I’ve seen ducks this far from the pond is the occasional fly-over. I commented to Diane that this critter must have bad radar or something. I didn’t see the duck again after one other sighting the next day.

Until yesterday. While removing the leaves for the fifth and I hope final time, this time with the vacuum feature of the blower, I stuck the vacuum’s pick-up tube in a planter and noticed something that looked a whole lot like the furry seeds that dandelions produce, only a lot larger. And then, I noticed the duck’s head nestled in the leaves. What I had mistaken for large dandelion-like seeds was duck down; that darned duck has built its nest out there, nowhere near the water.


I’m a little surprised that our prized hunter, Corky, the Beagle-mix, hasn’t found the duck, but since she doesn’t get up on the tiers often, I guess the critter and her babies will be safe. At least until they hatch and start moving around.

I could end this by saying, “Life is sweet - when the birds come home to roost,” but that would be plagiarizing Buffalo, and that would be wrong. So, I’ll just stop.

‘Twas Guy’s Fault

I feel better now. Through a great deal of thought about my water pipe tragedy last Wednesday I have come to realize that it really wasn’t my fault at all, it was my friend Guy’s. You see, normally on Wednesday he and I have lunch and discuss issues with an organization we are both involved in, but this particular Wednesday he had a conflict.

Now, if I had been going to lunch, I would have showered and dressed for activities other than yard work, especially since I had a formal meeting at 5:30 p.m. What sense would it have made, after all, to get all cleaned up for lunch, come back home at 1:30 and get all dirty working outside, then have to get cleaned up again in only three hours? Not much, unless the yard work was really pressing, and it wasn’t that pressing.

So, thanks to Guy, my nasty water event happened on Wednesday.

No, I haven’t forgotten that it was my negligence that led to the pipe bursting in the first place, but it was only happenstance that caused that rupture to be recognized Wednesday, and there was always the chance that I might have realized (when I saw the hose still connected) that there was a good chance the pipe had burst over the winter, and I might have checked it out before needing to use the hose to control a fire. That’s my story and I’m … well, you know the rest.

Rationalization is a wonderful thing. I feel so Liberal!

Technorati Tags: Work, Home Maintenance, Leaves

Not a Great Day

I had some tutoring this morning and a couple of phone calls to make, then I planned to get outside and start reclaiming the yard from the natural havoc that occurred over the winter. You may remember my saga of the leaves? Well, there are still plenty of leaves left, even after the dozens of cubic yards of them that I removed in the multiple battles last fall. I had already had a short bout with some stuff along our walkway on Sunday, and I was ready to dive in for as much time as I could squeeze in before the predicted rain began. It started out as a very nice day, rising into the 70s (fourth straight day of that) and sunny.

So, out I went, first to clear the driveway of the gravel from the town’s snow treatment and some other stuff that had gathered there. I broke for lunch and finished the driveway right after. I then headed for the area behind the back deck, which is a series of tiered planting areas with a bunch of azaleas and some other shrubs, part of the Grand Design of the Master Leaf Catcher from whom we bought the house. I didn’t get all the leaves picked up, but I did get them cleared from the plants so they could begin their spring development. We have a few plants around that are some kind of ornamental grass. It grows tall and then turns almost white when the season is over, almost like straw. One of those, the biggest one, is out front near the street, and it was six to seven feet high. One night last week before my son Ryan headed back to college, we lit that sucker and watched it burn. It is quite spectacular (which is why we did it, and why we did it at night). There is also a good-sized one of those in the planted area out back.

Because of the torture that is the leaf removal process I have toyed with the idea of burning the area clear. That thought crossed my mind today. The grass in question is at one end of the planters, so I figured I’d give it a shot. Now, I knew that this would be quite the conflagration, and I knew that the flames would singe the timbers that the planters are built from, but they need to be painted/stained anyway, so I was willing to let them get scorched in order to see how effective/destructive the burning method would be.

So, with a garden hose connected close by, I lit the grass. It went fast. I knew it would. It caught the leaves nearby on fire. I knew it would. Pretty soon, the fire had spread to an area I thought was plenty big, so I fetched the hose to keep the fire from going beyond those boundaries. I turned on the faucet and climbed up near the burning area and began to water the perimeter to keep the fire within it. A really pitifully weak stream dribbled out of the nozzle. “That’s weird,” I thought, and headed down to the faucet. As I climbed down, I noticed that the fire, as fires are wont to do, was spreading. Quickly. I got to the faucet and realized I hadn’t opened it all the way. “That’s the problem,” I thought, and headed back to where I had laid the nozzle down, picked it up and began to spray the perimeter again, which was now larger than intended, but not (yet) out of control; the woods were not far away. The stream was only a little better, but enough to take care of the immediate problem, so I continued watering the perimeter. When that was accomplished, I went back down to the faucet; some burning continued. I tried the faucet and found it was wide open. Then I saw it: water dripping from beneath the sideboards on both sides of the faucet. “This isn’t good,” I said. I had to take care of the other burning areas, which took a few minutes, and then headed for the basement where the pipes came through the wall.

I opened the door to the back part of the basement where we have a lot of stuff stored and looked straight across to the wall where the pipe is. I saw a little trickle of water rolling down the wall. Then I turned on the light. It didn’t take long to realize that there was about a half-inch of water covering the floor. The entire floor. I ran to the main cutoff valve and shut off the water supply. Damn! I was angry. What a mess. Now, instead of making progress outside, I had to shift my focus to cleaning up water inside the house.

I won’t bore you with the gritty details of the clean-up, except to say it was, and is, a giant pain, but I will tell you one thing more: It was all my fault. I had neglected to take the hose off the faucet before winter weather set in. I know better; I just didn’t do it. I’m really peed off!!!

Lesson learned.

Technorati Tags: Work, Home Maintenance, Leaves