"Team"

Every time Bro4 comes over, he says, "You should get rid of the weeds in your driveway.  They'll crack the cement."  My typical response is some variation of "I'll get to it".  Lately, I've told him about my friend's eco-friendly method of killing weeds with bleach, which prompts Bro to say, "Just use Round Up".  This conversation is as predictable as the sun rising in the morning and setting every evening.  Even if he doesn't say it out loud, I know he's thinking about telling me to get rid of the weeds until I cave to the inevitable and get rid of them. 

If you're interested in the bleach method, saturate the leaves instead of the base of the plant.  Use a sprayer with only plastic parts (no metal).  Give it a day or two and the plants will die.  The bleach dissipates, so it's better for the environment, but it's better if you don't let your pets walk on it the first day.  I'd also recommend that you do it before the plants get too big because I still ended up scraping the dying plants with my dedicated driveway shovel, which is actually a coal shovel, but who has coal these days?  I even went the extra step and swept the drive (with the dedicated driveway broom) to get rid of the bzillions of maple helicopters.

My driveway looks lovely.  Well, it did look lovely before the winds and rain came and brought down several more bzillions of maple helicopters down.  But in that golden moment when my driveway looked suburban perfect, I noticed an ant colony swarming on my perfect cement.

Ants are pretty amazing.  They display excellent teamwork.  I resisted the urge to stomp on them and let them move house in peace.  I hope they remember my peaceful nature next time one of them wants to bite me when I'm weeding the garden.  Maybe they're trying to get back at me for burning their ancestors with a magnifying glass when I was a child?  Even then, I wasn't thrilled with murder for entertainment.  I took to burning paper and leaves instead.

I watched the swarming ants for a little bit because I found it interesting that they were passing up eggs and handing them off to each other.  The eggs (or larva?) were bigger than the ants carrying them.  Then one of the ants bit me, and I decided there were better things to do than watch ants.

I don't know if it's true though?  Perhaps watching ants is the absolute best use of my time?

Thoughts, creativity, inspiration, realizations happen in unexpected moments of quiet time, and we don't get those moments if we never slow down enough to witness our own lives because we're too busy watching tv, playing video games, or doing stuff we're "supposed to" do.  Should all of our discoveries be in childhood when we have endless time to watch ants?

"Sizzle"

Mom said, "Don't fry bacon naked".  I can only wonder about the source of this advice, but some things are best left out of my imagination.  And just cuz she said it, I had to do it.  She was right, don't fry bacon naked... and now Mom is probably sizzling because I mentioned her.

I don't write about Mom much.  She thinks anything on the web is forever and an invasion of privacy.  Mostly I leave her be, but sometimes I poke her because it's kind of funny when she gets all perturbed about things.  Happy birthday Mom :)

Also happy birthday to Richard, Timmy, Riley, Franz, Craig, John, Mary, Jessie, Nick... and whoever else is right about now, especially anybody I've forgotten.  Seems like everybody was born around this time of year.

Now that Mom is hot and bothered, let me say she's the only thing that's hot around here.  March coming "in like a lion and out like a lamb" is a blatant lie this year.  It's actually snowing, and snowing a lot today and I'm just sick, sick, sick of it!!

In the spirit of naked bacon frying, the bad weather inspired me to get spring water and I was surprised to see that they were tapping maple trees this late in the year.  Apparently trees know better than me to hope for warm weather.  I snapped a couple of photos in the pre-snow icy rain then did the other most contrary thing I could think of which was to try out new cars while the snow started to fall.  (A+ for German engineering in snow.)

I gave up my contrariness and went home to my puppy foot warmer and blankies and looked up the Maple Fest.    I watched their slide show and thought "OMG is this Ohio!"  The kind of Ohio I completely take for granted and mostly ignore, but I have to say that it feels happy and comfortable.

When I used to ride the school bus everyday, we went past Nash's farm at the top of the hill.  I always knew when spring was coming because old man Nash tapped his trees in the front yard.  I loved those trees.  They burned a beautiful yellow, orange, red every fall and they were also the first signs of spring.  Developers knocked them down to build McMansions.  (sob)

Maybe I assume too much when I figure people outside Ohio know about tapping trees?  Maple trees hibernate in the winter.  When the trees sense spring coming, the sap inside starts to "run".  A tap is hammered carefully into the tree, just past the bark, so that the running sap is caught in the end of the tap and funneled into a bucket, or these days, into tubing that feeds into a big plastic bladder. 

Once someone has enough sap, it's boiled until you get syrup, or boiled more until you get candy.  If you sizzle it one second too long you're shopping for a new pan.  It takes 50 gazillion gallons of sap to make a teaspoon of syrup.  (Actually 40 gallons of sap = 1 gallon syrup)  If you do this inside your home, you also have to buy new wallpaper since the old stuff just got steamed off.  In case you're wondering if I've tried it, you've got to remember that I also fried bacon!

"Flattened"

The angel in charge of my prayer requests has a wicked sense of humor. At various times throughout the summer I have thought:



I want more exercise and fresh air
I’d like to see more of my brother Peter
I’d like my garden to get more sunshine
I don’t want the deer to eat my apples
I wish I had more wood to make a better deer barricade…

I think you can see the general train of my thoughts here. I didn’t realize that wishing for a better garden was going to result in a mature silver maple tree squashing the garden flat. Amazingly, even though an 11 foot circumference tree fell on my cultivations, I think my tomatoes and butternut squash survived the angels’ joke. It's a whole 'nother level of watching leaves fall in autumn!

Click on Marv Newland's art (or here) for a movie classic :)

"Proverb"

The Byrds sang "Turn, Turn, Turn" straight out of the Bible, except for the last line. The music is by Pete Seeger. The Byrds' version was released when I was a very little child, the Viet Nam war was going on, and I couldn't understand why my dad railed against hippies for saying "make love, not war".

To everything, turn, turn, turn
There is a season, turn, turn, turn
And a time to every purpose, under Heaven

A time to be born, a time to die
A time to plant, a time to reap
A time to kill, a time to heal
A time to laugh, a time to weep

To everything, turn, turn, turn
There is a season, turn, turn, turn
And a time to every purpose, under Heaven.

A time to build up, a time to break down
A time to dance, a time to mourn
A time to cast away stones, a time to gather stones together

To everything, turn, turn, turn
There is a a season, turn, turn, turn
And a time to every purpose, under Heaven

A time of love, a time of hate
A time of war, a time of peace
A time you may embrace, a time to refrain from embracing

To everything turn, turn, turn
There is a season, turn, turn, turn
And a time to every purpose, under Heaven

A time to gain, a time to lose
A time to rend, a time to sew
A time for love, a time for hate
A time for peace, I swear it's not too late

I argued with my Sunday school teacher Mrs. Blazy about this song. I didn't want to accept that God sanctioned war or hate, especially when the horrors of Viet Nam were on TV every night. I'm sure I was responsible for some of Mrs. Blazy's gray hair for this and other religious differences.

I have an ongoing war against the maple trees that try to reforest my yard. I pulled these in spring, and thought their deaths ought to count for something, so I scanned them and did a lot of PhotoShop because I was studying new techniques. The original scan is below just to show that I actually did some work to get it to look like this.

I sang the song while yanking the baby maples. I can't help myself. It's a good song, and I'm not going to live in a maple forest with squirrels throwing things at my head and eating my fruit before it's ripe. Okay, there's nothing I can do about the squirrels short of shooting them, and I'm not ready to take that step... yet.

Everything changes. David Crosby isn't the fresh-faced boy he was in the '60s. The maple leaves will be changing colors soon, then falling, then snow and bare branches before I have a new crop of maple seedlings to pull out. There are a lot of proverbs about change, but this song speaks to me most because I find the truths in it so uncomfortable to deal with.