Hump Day. Grey, drizzly, Chilly. Not a good day to weed -- too muddy, and too joint-aching. We watched The Life of Pi. So what's the agenda after that on a day like this one? Why we made the rounds of the garden shops, of course! First stop Condon (yes, it ends in an "n" ) Gardens. They had their gates closed. Next we went by Joshua's, which was open, but we decided to bypass it today. Headed to Heights Plant Farm, where we picked up a couple of bat faced cupheas. Now this is neither edible nor native to Texas (native of Mexico) but gosh darn it, they are so cute! The little red flowers with their purple accents do look like tiny little bat faces with big red ears. Then we headed over to Buchanan's where I had a $10 birthday certificate on a purchase of $20 or more. Ended up spending about $16 for a Copper Canyon daisy, a salvia greggii, a salvia coccinea, a frogfruit, a Homestead purple verbena, and a plant I have now forgotten what it is but I know it will bloom purple. :) And what's for dinner on a night like tonight? Chili cheese dogs and fries. :)
So, ok, I'm not thinking very deeply today, or I'm not sharing my deepest thoughts today. I spent this morning reading science news stories. Hydroelectric project in the Amazonian forest, displacing native peoples, flooding who knows how many acres of trees. I'll give you one guess what my deepest thought
In the interest of full disclosure, I admit that I am running on anger these days. This anger is due to, frankly, conventional, conformist little-minded neighbors whose focus is on "unsightliness"and "property values" and, frankly, petty vengeance and control freak issues rather than the impact of exceptional conditions on our environment. I'm doubly angry because if I had a wooden fence, like most of them, nobody would ever have known what was in my backyard. Some of them are "no government interference" people, which makes me laugh, because local neighborhood deed restrictions, city, county, and state regulations restrict freedoms far more than the federal government does. Yet they want states rights rather than federal government protections for everyone. Most of all, I am angry because this focus not only ignores my health conditions, my age, and my poverty, it ignores the horrendous loss of habitat resulting from the tremendous loss of trees..In the 2011 drought Texas lost 301 million (MILLION!) trees. Harris County, which pretty much is synonymous with Houston lost 19 million trees. I lost six lobllolly pines, all of which were standing on this property and a foot or more in diameter, when we moved in in 1957.. One of them, I suspect, was over 100 years old when it came down, all of them 60 or more. Within half a mile of me, according to a tree removal guy I spoke with, over a 1000 trees were lost. I can believe it. I used to sit on my front porch and had to look straight up to see the sky. Now, I only have to look E, S . If I walk out the sidewalk to the side street, and look W to what used to be woods, it's mostly sky.That is thousands of nesting places for birds. You might not realize it, but getting to the trees to cut them down and haul them off destroyed undergrowth as well. -- the yaupon bushes, the cherry laurels and other understory trees. After the trees around here were mostly gone, I had a swamp rabbit in my yard. I'm sure he came from the larger 1.2-3 acre lots behind me. When I had to cut down my taller grasses because of the complaints from the neighbors, The bunny moved on. I hope the migrating kestrel I saw at about that time didn't get him crossing all the open space that now exists around here. When I removed the brush piles, the treefrogs disappeared. A Carolina wren who seemed to be checking it out for a nesting spot has disappeared as well. The anoles which scrambled openly around the logs, as they have been unpiled and righted preparatory to being hauled off, haven't been sighted in weeks.I also lost a honeybee tree, not that I knew in advance they were there. I don't know where they went, because they look for a hollow tree damaged by lightening or the dropping of a big limb in a windstorm.I had hoped to construct a wildlife habitat which would also shelter my lupus-riddled body from the sun. But no, the city wouldn't allow me to keep the 3-5' logs. When they are hauled off on the 21 January 2013, not only will all the habitat be gone, but I will no longer be able to enjoy my own backyard because there will be no place shady enough for me. If that is freedom of property, I'm a hoot owl.Houston was known for its greenness. If you look across the city on GOOGLE maps, close enough to see the areas of dead and removed trees, you will see denuded parks (Hermann and Memorial), and a decimated Houston Arboretum, neighborhoods where scarcely a tree stands. I have three trees that survived. All of them had thick mats of composted mulch around their root systems, because they are where we dumped up the raked leaves and pine needles from the rest of the yard for 55+ years. From the swamp rabbit to the anoles, the bees, the birds, my neighborhood has been almost denuded of nesting places, food sources, watering places. Yet we still have deed restrictions calling for St. Augustine grass, no brush piles, yada yada yada, and we continue to pave areas, grow non-native "landscaping plants", and behave as if we are the only occupants of this earth. Unsightly? Unsightly to me are my neighbors' lawns of St Augustine, hostas and monkey grass. Who will hear when the last bird calls?SOURCES:Texas drought killed 301 million treesBy Kathy Huber | September 25, 2012 | Updated: September 26, 2012 7:52am
If you're wondering where I've been lately, I have been outside working to bring my yard into compliance with the desires of my "neighbors." I use this term exceedingly loosely because there is nothing truly neighborly about them. Mind you, I wouldn't care if they went about their lives and let me go about mine. What I object to is that they never come to see if they can help, they just cowardly tattle to the teacher (in this case the City of Houston) when I don't meet their OCD, anally retentive, control issues sense of what things could be like.
To be honest, I don't many of them by name. What I do know is that most of them arrived in this neighborhood after I did. When I arrived in June of 1957, most of this area was still woods, open fields, or farm land. I heard coyotes howling at night. there were bats swooping out of the sky to eat the mosquitoes, lightening bugs, and yes the odd rattlesnake in our yard. What do you expect? Immediately behind our house were acres of piney woods. I reckon I learned to dispatch a rattler to meet his maker with a garden hoe by the time I was 6.
These people can call in anonymously and get me in trouble -- threats of liens and big bills from the city to clean up my land. Let me make it clear. I don't have 2 or three junked up cars sitting out front. It's just that we had a drought last summer, which allowed bermuda grass (where the heck that came from, I have no idea) and some weeds (ditto -- I know I didn't sow 'em) that got GASP över nine inches tall! Some weeds, not a whole yard full. The grass was about three inches tall. We have been battling to get the yard in shape ever since last fall when the drought and pine bark beetles took out six of the large pines which were living here when I arrived.
I cannot describe how seriously the stress of the threat, along with the hours of physical labor, has impacted my health. I'm not supposed to be out in the sun. So I found shaded areas where I could work. We do not have thousands of dollars to spend on this project, so my husband and I are doing it mostly by ourselves. My brother did provide some money to pay for tools and maintenance supplies for them, and for some temporary labor. The latest purchase today was a 48"two man crosscut saw. We needed this to cut up the REALLY big logs. These are 6-8' lengths of loblolly pines, all upwards of 55 years old. Some of them were probably in the 75-100 year old range.
What I can tell you is that every joint in my body aches, and I am so tired that I fell asleep outside several times over the last couple of days while working. I have chopped two or three brush piles into mulch. What looks like a huge brush pile reduces to about 1 cubic yard of mulch. I did this with a set of pruning shears. I have also sawn up, with a bow saw, about a dozen or so branches 3-6" in diameter. We did find a bargain on a chipper/shredder which takes anything up to 1-1/4"diameter, so I spent a few hours feeding that as well. Anything over 6" and under a foot in diameter gets the chainsaw. My husband does that. Anything over a foot is gonna get the crosscut saw.
There's another solid week, two weeks of work to be done, and I'd appreciate any prayers you care to offer for the strength to keep on keeping on. I was barely walking this morning. I worked until the bottom dropped out of the clouds and then I came inside. I gotta admit that I didn't get as much work done today, because I hurt so badly every time I pull the pruning shears shut to cut a limb that I have to stop and will the pain away.
I have decided a couple of things. One, I am going to find the money to put privacy screening -- like they have on tennis courts -- around my backyard. I have a couple to the south of me that have been calling the city on us for forty years. Complete assholes the pair of them. She's a nosey gossipy pretentious cow whom I have done my best to avoid since her family moved in around 1960. He's so compulsive he went outdoors in very hot weather to mow his 1 1/2"buzz cut lawn to 1/2"one year and had a heart attack. I don't want this for my husband. They also violated the city's water rationing last year to keep their freaking lawn green! I resented this because when I went to take a shower I was lucky to get water at all. Did I call the city on them? Noooooooo. Nor on the other neighbors who were also violating the restrictions. I'm not the kind of person who tattles, snitches or looks for ways to make life difficult for other people, even when they do it to me. However, when I take all these sawn up pieces of my old friends the trees to create bed edgings, I am going to place some in this pattern facing their plate glass window: n9m. Maybe I'll make it a recurring pattern. They steal my Meyer lemons every year anyway.
Behind me is another jewel of a neighbor. He came to the fence to talk to my husband one day. He wanted us to cut down all the yaupons that make up our back hedge "because they drop leaves in my yard." "It sure would help me out," he says. When my husband told me, I gave a few minutes thought to remembering what he'd done to help us out. Since I came up empty, I let my husband's answer to them stand "Feel free to cut off the branches on your side of the fence."" This OCD also wanted us to cut down a pine tree in OUR YARD because it dropped needles on his yard. We offered to rake them up, but he said no, that tree was going to come down in a windstorm some day, and it should come down. He'd pay for it. This exchange occurred while we were cutting down the dead trees and that was one of the two living pines left. Then he started in ragging us about the pine logs two days after they were cut. Since he's not my boss, or my father, or anyone whose opinion about anything means a damn to me, I ignored him.. Privacy screen him out too!.
To the north, the neighbors aren't so bad. Her grandfather was a pain in the ass when he lived there, but we made our peace with her mother, and she and her husband, while they have some annoyingly noisy dogs seem to be pretty good hearted live and let live people.
The other thing I decided is that modern Americans are woosies that our Founding Fathers would be ashamed of. I have a deeper appreciation of those brave souls who entered the deep woods, swamps, and such over Carolina, Virginia, Georgia way and hacked down all those trees by hand and made them into log cabins, tool sheds, barns and the like. It's damned hard work! And I didn't have to take down the 90' trees by hand either! I'm trying to imagine what would have happened in 1730 if someone had called all his neighbors together and said "Let's implement something called deed restrictions that mandate everyone having a St. Augustine lawn in front of their cabin, and not letting any weeds get over 9" tall on their land nor having any undergrowth over 9"tall. Oh and no dead, decaying vegetable matter such as leaves or pine needles or fallen twigs." I swear I hear laughter and calls for commitment to the state asylum for the insane!
On the bright side, I got to watch a number of lovely songbirds flitting about my trees in my little glade on my NW corner. Lizards, skinks, anoles, and even a bunny live in my overgrown area. Not a pet rabbit, but a wild one. I haven't seen much of him while I've been working ; I think he's afraid of us. My husband put out some rabbit food for him though. Sadly, my bees have departed, probably as a result of the heavy spring rains. I have a clematis virginia, known also as Virgin's Bower Flower on my north gate, in full, luscious bloom.
I've also made a couple of vine birdhouses when I take a break. One-and-a-half really, but I'll get it finished. Now I have to get in bed before I fall apart.
If you are currently unemployed, or have been unemployed for much of the last 2-3 years, carefully calculate when the starting quarters of eligibility for SS benefits began and when you will have accrued enough AGAIN (forget your 20+ years of prior employment cause the clock has restarted), and what quarter you plan to retire. If you are 45+ odds are that unless you start a new job TOMORROW and never again are unemployed, you will not qualify for SS ever, at any age of retirement. So if you don't have an IRA, 401(K) or a generous pension, you are probably facing an old age of poverty. Even with them, you may be. You see, I suspect the holding jobs hostage goes way beyond the petty partisan "I wanna get what I want and screw you." It is about ensuring that there will be no "SS burden" from baby-boomers by wholesale disqualifying them, about ripping up the wealth building avenues for minorities that scare the upper scum, uh crust -- through taking your home, your bank account (through fees), your income stream, and forcing you to spend all the assets you have just to eat today. The REVOLUTION has started. The rest of us have revolted people like the KOCH brothers and the MURDOCHS of this nation by actually wanting to participate in our democracy, uh republic, uh society, uhm NATIONAL DIALOGUE. The ultra wealthy started it. It is class warfare, If you don't belong to that privileged class (and Herman Cain, you do NOT as they pat you on your head and send you out to do their battles), you are its target.. You're the worm for these big fish. Do not dream you matter to them. God Bless the USA, may she rest in peace. She died while you were frittering your life away on idle entertainment, passionate religious distractions (from What would Jesus Do to anti-abortion rallies), petty daily concerns of your family, popular fiction about werewolves and vampires instead of thought-provoking essays and non-fiction, and silly Madison Avenue-stoked insecurities about having the "latest" fashion name on your clothes, shoes, car, etc. I WILL NEVER FORGIVE YOU, but YOUR CHILDREN WILL INHERIT THE SCORCHED EARTH YOU HAVE PISSED AWAY!
They will beg for food, air to breathe, the ability to get somewhere (and too unfit to WALK there), clean water to drink, shelter from weather and storms. They will lay unburied, and unmourned, where they drop. Congratulations on your "fine" parenting skills.
Are you scared yet? Motivated? You should be. If you aren't, well you don't deserve FREEDOM or the USA I grew up knowing.. You're a stupid vegetative self-centered worm who deserves to be eaten and watch one;s beloved children suffering because you chose denial over participation and believing in pap and pablum propaganda over thinking and facing hard realities (like you can't burn gasoline at 12 mpg forever without using it up, changing the climate, and RUNNING OUT!)
|
RSS Feed