Posted on by Julia B. Hebner · 2 Comments

Mundane

Lakeside received some much needed rain of the most useful kind, at least in the eyes of those of us with gardens. In spite of my efforts with the hose, the pepper plants were droopy. After this rain they’ve perked right up.

“After this rain” may not be accurate. The sun shone briefly but now the clouds are back. “During this rain” might be more accurate.

I stepped out the back door between showers. It’s steamy out there and smells like a distillery. The rain felled the ripest figs and now they ferment on the patio and buzz with bees, beetles, and wasps. I saw a Red-spotted Purple butterfly sampling smooshed figs and a Red Admiral kneading fallen fig pulp with its thread-like feet. The potted lavender smelled soapy in the humid air.

The showers held off long enough for me to slip my own substantial feet into rubber boots (a barrier to chiggers) and cut basil for the marinated eggplant planned for dinner. Two brilliant red leaves hung from the spindly branches of the small maple. The season wears itself out.

Yesterday when we had our early morning coffee on the screen porch the rain fell steadily and we neither saw nor heard any birds but the caws of crows somewhere a street away. This morning’s rain was a fine mist. I set my phone app to give names to the birds we heard: blue jay, mockingbird, titmouse, red-bellied woodpecker, crow, cardinal, nuthatch, woodthrush and house sparrow. The doves didn’t register, but we watched them. A hummingbird supped from the rosemary blossoms on the other side of the screens.

Mollie dog slept on the porch all morning and into the afternoon, bored without the usual parade of people and other dogs walking past the yard. A quiet, boring day for her.

She’s outside now, after—or during—the rain.

Posted on by Julia B. Hebner · 2 Comments

Old People House

I carry an impression from my childhood that a house crowded by shrubs and trees is an Old People House. Normal People houses had neat, regimented landscaping. Old People planted too much and let things run wild.

This impression was, you might say, brought home to me while looking over junk mail from the Arbor Day Foundation. A survey enclosed in their big white envelope asked for my response to such questions as “Have you ever climbed a tree?” and “Have you ever enjoyed the shade of a tree?” It seems doubtful that anyone plans to tabulate the results. I assume the questions were only to remind me of the many ways I value trees so I’d send money. In exchange for a donation, they promise to send trees (seedlings, surely!)

The survey question that tossed me back into childhood was: “How many trees do you have on your property?” Mentally I counted twenty on less than one-third of an acre. “Oh!” some part of my brain said. “I must be living in an Old People House.”

My child self would know right away this was an Old People House. If she walked through the shade of the big oak in front of the house and then around the corner, she would see a dogwood, a small oak, two crepe myrtles, two pine trees, a black gum, and two maples. Ragged azaleas hug the foundation. An overgrown oakleaf hydrangea sprawls under the kitchen window and an out-of-control fig tree obscures a corner of the building. And there are bird feeders, of course. Old People always have bird feeders.

If that long-gone child had walked past in May, she would have also seen tall grass and weeds in the front yard. Grass so high us Old People merited a zoning citation. The high grass wasn’t entirely due to neglect. We had a thought or two for the lightning bugs during a vulnerable phase of their life cycle. Aggressive mowing in the spring means less of an evening show in the summer.

That long-gone child never gave a thought to where the lightening bugs came from or what they needed to keep coming back. (It goes without saying that us Old People abhor herbicides and insecticides.)

Our back yard provides a seasonal buffet for birds and insects.

Parsley and milkweed welcome caterpillars. A small apple tree struggles with bagworms but still drops apples. Mockingbirds chase each other in and out of the elderberry bushes screeching and squawking and pop the berries from beak to tongue. Sparrows peck tart persimmons before they ripen enough for us Old People to enjoy. Goldfinches pluck seeds from sunflowers and zinnias.

And oh, the figs! There are so many and they are so sweet. Hummingbirds poke holes in them. Starlings tear the figs apart, leaving fig skins hanging like rags from the stalks. Us Old People shake the branches to disturb the bees and wasps and big shiny green beetles before we pick figs for ourselves, and we watch where we step so we don’t get stung. Fallen figs attract hornets as well as butterflies.

As a child, the yard of an Old People House needed no explanation. It was just how Old People lived.

Now that I am one of those Old People, I will live this way as long as I can, until we get so feeble we can’t cut back the vines or bushes or prune the trees and the house, with us in it, disappears under it all.