The Mystery of the Random Noise

For the past few days, I have been hearing a strange, very loud noise.

The first time I heard it, I was getting ready for bed, and I just about jumped out of my skin. It was a rumbling, scraping, thumping noise, and seemed to be coming from inside my house. But when I turned on all the lights and looked around, I couldn't find an explanation. Nothing had fallen. Nothing was out of place. It definitely was not associated with an earthquake.

Ultimately, I figured that my neighbors must have been moving furniture in the corridor between our houses. It was the only remotely plausible explanation I could think of. It did sound a little bit like the noise of moving the trash bins around--just louder. A lot louder.

I heard the noise once the next day, and then once more when I was on the phone with a friend. By this time, I was pretty convinced it was my neighbors dragging things around, though I never did see them doing it. I was trying to figure out how big a thing they must be moving to make so much noise.

As I was getting ready for bed last night, I though I spotted ash around the front of my fireplace, but I was tired, so I decided to ignore it until morning.

This morning, I noticed feathers mixed in with the ash. "Of course," I thought. Birds must have been fighting over who got to use my chimney as a perch. Wings and talons on the roof might sound like the noise I'd been hearing, and the attic space might amplify the sound. A big clump of ash falling down the chimney would make noise, too. (I don't use the fireplace, so I didn't bother to get the chimney swept when I moved in.)

I fetched the dust pan and small broom, and peered through the glass doors and metal screen into the fireplace, wondering how big a task I was facing. A mourning dove peered back.

After talking it over with my dad, I decided that the best strategy was to open the outside doors as wide as they would go, and close all the interior doors and window curtains. Then I opened the fireplace glass and screen. Much to my relief, the bird was still strong enough to fly, and it took her mere seconds to find and take advantage of an exit.

How do I know it was a her? The egg under the fireplace grate was a dead giveaway. (Sadly, falling from the grate to the concrete cracked it. Not that it would have been likely to survive in any event.)

So now the bird is free, the fireplace is cleaned, the flue is closed, and the mystery is (hopefully) solved. And I won't be so quick to blame my neighbors for strange, random noises in the future.

Ruining More Gloves

Today, I went to the gardening store and bought:

• Organic citrus fertilizer
• Organic rose fertilizer
• Worm castings
• Cedar mulch (small bark chips)
• A dahlia plant (yellow flowers, very pretty)

Then I came home and finished transplanting the bulbs from the front bed (for a value of finished that ignores some stragglers at the edge of the bed that may end up as compost). I hope that most of them survive the move. I'm not exactly the world's most patient person, even when I'm not in the blazing hot sun with dust in my eyes and dirt under my fingernails. So I didn't exactly use great precision and care in placing the plants. I sort of stuffed them into the dirt where I could find room, then threw handfuls of leaf mulch over them, then dumped a bunch of water over that. (I was a little more careful with the bark mulch.) Now I'll just have to wait and see how much dies back and how much keeps growing.

Out in the front, I took a couple of wheelbarrow loads of dirt out of the nearly empty bed. On the positive side, Mother Nature took care of one problem for me: one of the big stumps out front turned out to be well rotted through. I pretty much just had to pick up the pieces and throw them in the yard waste bin. On the negative side:

• The dirt was packed tight against the bottom of the stucco (a big no-no, since it gives subterranean termites easy access to the walls).
• Roots were stretch just under the dirt, snug up against the foundation, for the length of the bed.
• There are slugs and spiders, but I didn't see a single earthworm in all the dirt I dug out (meaning it's probably not worth saving the dirt to use elsewhere, but I don't have anywhere to get rid of it).
• There are rocks, rocks, and more rocks. (The white rocks brought in for decorative purposes, the local rocks that proliferate in the area, and the rocks that the local kids like to throw at houses and at each other. Since I know which house has the green rocks and which house has the rose-colored rocks, I can at least take those back.)
• The dirt the plants were in is only about 5" deep. Under that, it's clay. Hard clay. Very, very hard clay. And rocks. Did I mention the rocks? (I need to take the bed down about 9".)

And then I took a shower and made lemonade. The lemonade was delicious. I might drink the whole 3/4 gallon this evening. The end.

Dirt Under My Nails

My attempts to transform bits of my backyard into actual growing space are coming along. Over the past couple of months, I've put in some experimental plants here and there, and most of them are doing just fine. I did have one daffodil die, and my lavender isn't entirely happy, and I'm not sure the columbine is supposed to look like that, but the gladiolas that I transplanted a couple of months back are blooming, and my strawberry plant is fruiting for the second time (and fruiting, and fruiting, and fruiting), and all of my succulents and drought-resistant experiment plants are growing faster than I'd thought possible.

I've been working for at least a month now on one patch of dirt next to my patio. At some point, someone decided to put in plastic as a weed barrier, and then covered the plastic with gravel. I discovered this as I was pulling out the thick-packed crabgrass. (Turns out, a weed barrier doesn't do much good when the pine tree from next door and the crabgrass from under the fence keep poking holes in it.) So I got the weeds out, and the plastic out, and most of the gravel out. And then I put some decent soil in. And then I decided that decent soil might not be enough, and put some fertilizer in.

Today, I decided that the fertilizer was probably cured enough, and I started transplanting bulbs from the bed along the side of my garage. (This is the bed I have to take out because it's too high, and drains into the foundation.) I have about a third of the bulbs moved to their new home. They've been drenched, and mulched, and given a pep talk. Here's hoping that they like it in the back. I'm very much looking forward to finding out what they all are. (I know the gladiolas, because the ones from the front yard are just ending their blooming season, and I remember there being daffodils last year. Mostly, I've just been making sure the pointy end of the bulb is up, and hoping they dig in and start growing.)

Now that I've finally had the tree service out to take out the unfortunate cypress trees in the back (they'd been mangled by someone before my time), my back yard is opened up, and I'm trying to figure out how to turn the hard-packed sandy clay (contradiction? apparently not) and yellow, drying weeds into an actual garden. A friend's husband has been passing along old copies of Organic Gardening magazine, and another friend loaned me a copy of J. I. Rodale's How to Grow Vegetables and Fruits by the Organic Method, plus I saw these raised bed kits at Home Despot...

All I can say for now is that I have a good mix of grass and leaf mulch cooking in a can out back, and a bunch of pencil sketches. We'll see what comes of it.

Digging in the Dirt

Today is the first day in a while that I didn't spend any time working on my yard. As the days get longer, it's becoming more and more inviting to shake off the tensions of the workday through a little hard work.

At first, I was just pulling up weeds and trimming bushes. But there was this stump by my patio from one of the ficus trees that my dad and I took down. I started off trying to churn up the dirt around the stump, to see if I might be able to put in some plants. Next thing I new, I was digging up all around the stump to get the roots out. Then I had most of the stump exposed, and a lot of the surrounding roots gone. And then it rained. Some things about clay:

• Rain does make it pliable and much less like rock.
• Wet clay clings to things, like shovels, pickaxes, hand spades, pruning shears, and stumps.
• Wet clay is slippery.

Still, I did get that stump out, which proved two important things:

1. I can dig a stump out all by my own self with the tools I have on hand.
2. I should have known better.

Fortunately, I didn't do any permanent damage to myself, even with all of the slipping on wet clay and falling on my rear end. Even better, after a few more days of puttering (pulling rocks from the dirt, breaking out clumps of clay, mixing in gardening soil, and adding fertilizer), I made a new place to plant! At the moment, I have columbine, lavender, and...some other plant with purple flowers acting as my soil testers. I've put down leaf mulch and bark mulch, too.

(I still have to figure out what to do with the rocks. Before you suggest it: these aren't pretty, border type rocks. These are ragged and ornery rocks of highly irregular size and appearance. I have this idea about putting them through a rock chipper to make gravel. Only I don't think there is such a thing as a rock chipper.)

So now I have two more areas around the patio to clear of weeds and rocks so that I can start amending the soil (which I think is a hilarious term for a messy process) and planting stuff. And then I can move on to the rest of the yard!

It may be unending, but it's more rewarding than the similarly eternal process of prying weeds out of the lawn. At least once I put in flower and vegetable beds, I can mulch enough to at least partially suppress the weeds. (Please don't taunt me for my youthful optimism.)

Furniture!

Guess what I did this weekend?

Okay, not the part where my dad and I chopped down 2 ficus trees to clear the way for a new back fence. Or the part where I spent 3 hours raking leaves and pulling weeds. Or the part where I rested from all the back-straining work and read some books.

I bought furniture!

That's right: somewhere between 3 and 8 weeks from yesterday, my house will have actual company-worthy furniture. I bought a couch, 2 living room arm chairs (in 2 completely different styles, from 2 manufacturers--I hope it works as well in practice as it does in my head), and a recliner for my bedroom.

Why a recliner for my bedroom? Well, I've been in physical therapy for back pain for a while now, and I'm thinking that part of the problem is that I don't have a lot of choices when I want to sit and read. I'm allergic to my futon (until I get the smoke smell out), and my computer chair is best for computing. So I spend a lot of my downtime reading (or doing sudoku, or talking on the phone, or whatever) in bed.

Besides, it's a really comfortable (though not entirely esthetically pleasing) chair.

The couch isn't really what I had intended to buy when I went out shopping. I had this idea of getting a simple couch with clean lines and relatively high arms in a contemporary style and (possibly) a striking color.

I ended up with the most comfortable couch of all time, with a traditional shape and dark brown upholstery.

As for the chairs? One has a nice, contemporary look to it, in a somewhat boring color with nice dark accents. The other has a traditional look to match the couch, but in a striking brick color. (I remembered too late that the accent pillows I already own are burgundy. Oh, well. They'll go well with the recliner in the bedroom.)

Now all I need is a rug to put the recliner on so that it doesn't scrape up my laminate floors. But I have 3-8 weeks to work that out.

Retrospective

In 2009, I bought a house. This involved an fatiguing search, a frustrating purchasing process, a painfully exhausting preparation for move-in, a flood, various plagues of vermin, plenty of hard labor, the emptying of my bank accounts, and a fence that decided not to stand up any more. It has also involved learning to paint, replace a doorknob, put in a faucet, prune and fertilize a rose bush, pry out roots with a pick ax, get advice when I need it, ask for and gratefully receive help, and use a circular saw. It has also involved taking joy in little things: colors that I picked on the walls, a clean sink, a high-efficiency toilet, a working irrigation system, a washer and dryer of my own, and a thermostat.

I have a lot of work ahead. Once I have acquired the money to put the new fence in and get the trees pruned, there are windows to replace, and a master bathroom to expand, and a kitchen to redo.

In the meantime, there are plenty of projects requiring more sweat then dollars. There are plants to get in the ground, and improperly-placed flowerbeds to move, and a garage that just needs a few shelf adjustments to be just right. (Over Thanksgiving weekend my dad and brother-in-law moved my workbench, extended the gas and water lines, and moved my washer and dryer. Today, my dad got the workbench level and secured to the wall, and we added more pegboard to the wall behind and next to the workbench to help organize my tools. Between those changes and the trash that my dad is hauling to the dumpster for me, the garage is looking amazing. And there's plenty of room for my car, too.)

Here's to a fantastic 2010.