Alexandersmap

    Category: Garden and Home

    • Blueberry Thieves

      It’s easy to see motion in the garden when the motion is coming from a six foot tall mess of stakes, chicken wire and plastic netting. The chicken wire was a 2021 addition after the plastic netting proved insufficient to keep the birds and chipmunks off of the blueberry bushes. Know what my blueberry harvest was in 2020? Take a look at that last number in the year.

      So this year brought new resolve and a commitment to reaching the finish line with at least one bowlful of blueberries. And then I saw motion inside the cage. Sure enough a gray catbird had somehow gotten inside but couldn’t figure out how to get out. I offered some advice, filtered here for the protection of the innocent. And the catbird found a way out with my encouragement.

      An hour later, more motion from the cage. Looking over, a chipmunk was inside, stretched to its limits in the act of attempting to steal a ripening blueberry. I threw the head of a hoe at the cage, terrifying the chipster and emptying the cage once again. Clearly this cage isn’t working out as planned.

      A quick online search for how to scare away critters brought the usual assortment of scarecrows, pinwheels and shiny tape. But it also brought up one I hadn’t considered – plastic snakes. It seems the forest creatures find plastic snakes unnerving enough that they stay away from the blueberries.

      Which makes me wonder, what am I doing growing blueberries anyway? Wouldn’t it be a lot easier to just buy some at the market? When I’ve reached a point where I’m buying toy snakes as garden accessories, has the very act robbed me of the joie de jardiner? Am I adding whimsy or tackiness? I crossed that threshold when I put up a chicken wire cage in my garden.

      I pride myself on coexisting with most of the critters in the neighborhood. Until they start messing with my garden anyway. Last year featured epic battles with the groundhog. This year it’s been rabbits, birds and chipmunks. Am I willing to concede the blueberries to fate, or is a small crop of fruit worth an investment in a scary-looking toy? Will there even be fruit to protect by the time I obtain a snake?

      The things I do for a garden…. While there are blueberries to fight for this battle isn’t over, and neither is the story. Stay tuned.

    • Gardens and Purpose

      One of the neighbors won the town’s garden of the month award for June. He does have a lovely garden in the front yard. I imagine it was especially satisfying because the guy next door to him, someone he’s been in something of a rivalry with for twenty years, won this particular award years ago. As a neutral party, I’ve heard both sides of this particular story, and am well-practiced in steering the conversation on to other things.

      My own garden has never won the town’s garden of the month award. I believe this is in part a result of my distinct focus on the backyard garden, which I view as an oasis, and maybe also a distinct lack of focus on winning this particular award. But the whole thing got me thinking, maybe it’s time to double down on the front garden? Maybe it’s time to show some gardening spunk?

      I look around knowing the work I put into the garden, knowing the battles with the weeds and the trees. And I wonder, what is the purpose of all of this anyway? I’m not chasing awards. I’m not growing a meaningful amount of food for my family. So why do it at all?

      Simply put, the garden is a place for me to meditate for a while. A place to pay my penance and focus on something besides myself. A handy escape destination during a pandemic or after a particularly long commute. And an expression of hope for the future and optimism for my place in it.

      I suppose that’s enough. Still, I am competitive. And that award looks awfully nice sitting in the neighbor’s front lawn…

      Which brings me to purpose. What are we invested in? What prompts you out of bed in the morning? What’s your why? Those two neighbors up the street are retired now, and things like gardening awards drive them. I’m driven by experience, and the garden is a vehicle to get to the experiences I want out of my time on this plot of land.

      For all the frustrations of a garden – like getting a catbird out from the inside of the elaborate netting I’d put around my blueberries, installing fencing to keep the rabbits out, and the battles with the other assorted pests that test my patience, there’s an underlying message in the work. It all ends up being the purpose. About having a go at something and making it work against the odds. Anyone can do easy – there are plenty of pristine lawns across America. A garden says something else entirely about you. It says that we want something more and we’re willing to work for it.

      Maybe that deserves an award after all.

    • More Like a Cardinal

      Contemplating the turf war between a pair of stressed House Wrens and a nonchalant female Cardinal perched a little too close to the nest. I was struck by the similarity between the birds and my relationship with my neighbors. The neighbors are fine people, mind you, but they each do something that I find annoying in some small way. And I realized that I was like the House Wrens reacting to encroachment from the Cardinal. And of course, the neighbors were like the Cardinal.

      The Cardinal was simply existing, but doing so in a way that annoyed the Wrens. And I recognized I don’t want to be like a House Wren at all. I want to be more like a Cardinal. Not necessarily annoying the neighbors with my presence, but in the nonchalant way that it goes through life.

      I realized in that moment that I’m probably going to live in this spot, with a nod to fate, for at least thirty years of my lifetime. By far the longest I’ve spent any time in any place. And I’m a nomad at heart. What brought me to this realization? Comfort? Complacency? Commitment? I’m sure there are C’s I’m missing, but you already know the answer anyway. It’s a bit of each. And this is how communities are formed. People sticking together despite annoying tendencies and a competing urge to try a new place now and then.

      Cardinals don’t migrate. They stick with the place they live in and make it work. House Wrens, on the other hand, migrate to warmer climates for the winter and return when the weather warms up again. Snowbirds versus redbirds, if you will. Both return, but where they’ve been in the meantime is so very different.

      Ultimately, I long to fly like each bird. To fly off but return to the home nest seems appealing. I’m coming to terms with the idea that my travel will be shorter in duration, but perhaps more meaningful knowing I have a place to land in when I return. Maybe that’s enough. And thirty years in one nest is surprisingly closer than I ever imagined.

    • The Great Bunny Escape

      I’m not one to think a lot about bunnies. And I can assure you this post will be a rarity in the relentlessly eclectic world of Alexandersmap. But there’s a story that must be told.

      It seems there are people in this world who buy bunnies as pets around Easter. They seem to believe this is a good thing, sharing cuteness and such with children or lovers or maybe just a self-indulgence – who knows, really? Personally, I’m more inclined to dark chocolate, but some people choose to acquire living creatures as pets. And they love them for all their cuteness. Until they grow bigger and become adult bunnies. And then what?

      Well, they drive through some wooded street far from their own home and abandon that bunny on the side of the road like an old mattress or refrigerator they don’t want to pay to have removed. Classy. And a winning strategy for teaching the next generation how to be responsible adults. I bet these bastards don’t even recycle.

      I don’t believe in fairy tales, but I hope if there’s an afterlife there’s a special place in hell reserved for bunny and mattress dumpers. I imagine, in my darkest moments, it involves lying forever on that dirty old mattress surrounded by millions of abandoned bunnies, each with that wrinkly nose munching vibe that bunnies have, staring with those crazy genetically-engineered pink eyes, while the dumpers slowly spirals into insanity.

      What? Won’t concede me this version of Dante’s Inferno? Could they at least have nightmares about abandoned bunnies scratching at the walls trying to get back in?

      Flight of fancy aside, my work day was interrupted by an animal control officer ringing my door bell to inform me that there was a white bunny in my backyard. I’d heard about this bunny, for it’s been roaming the neighborhood since some A-hole dumped it on the side of the road. Apparently the longer bunnies are alive out in the wild the more they like their newfound freedom. Honestly, I don’t blame the bunny – I’d rather deal with wild predators in unfamiliar woods than that crappy family that bought me like some edible arrangement that could be tossed aside when the only thing left was melon slices.

      Apparently the bunny was spotted in the neighbor’s backyard. For those keeping track, this is the same neighbor’s backyard that featured a goat hiding from a killer bear last fall, so the word was out amongst the domesticated animal crowd that this was the halfway house in town. So the neighbors have animal control on speed dial and they had a reunion in the driveway, spooking the bunny into my own backyard, which brings us back to the doorbell ringing.

      Walking outside, I’m confronted with four animal control professionals with a distinct smell of skunk in the air (they’ve been busy elsewhere on this day). Each had a large net on poles, like a fishing net on steroids. They had the bunny surrounded in the shrubbery and were discussing how to get it out of there when I showed up. The bunny answered for them and shot out of the holly and sprinted towards the deck.

      What I noticed in this moment, if we were to put it in slow motion like a Hollywood movie, is four capable adults with nets watching the bunny makes its move. The nets never descended on the bunny. Which makes me wonder – why carry a net at all? Returning to normal speed, the white bunny was moving at a high rate of speed, impossibly fast for the reaction time of an animal control officer bent over to peer under a holly bush. It seems it’s not as simple as bending sideways to dodge a flying bullet like a superhero.

      The bunny went under the deck and the animal control officers each shrugged their shoulders and packed up to leave. Leaving me wondering what they hell I was going to do with a rogue domesticated bunny in my yard. Come on folks, what ever happened to “Try, try again”?! And sure enough, just as I was thinking this the bunny sprinted out from the deck and around to the front of the yard. I shouted to the animal control officers and the chase was on once again!

      You might be thinking this is where they catch the bunny. No, the bunny ran away again, and the animal control officers once again took their big nets, got in their cars and drove away saying they’d be back when the bunny was back. Back? The bunny is still here, just fifty feet from where it left you! But I knew the truth in this statement, the bunny was here as long as it felt like being here or became a bobcat dinner. They just weren’t going to invest any more time chasing it.

      Sure enough, later in the afternoon I walked out to tend the garden and there was the white bunny, quietly munching on my lawn. Next to it was a wild rabbit doing the same. Each assessed me while chewing the flora, knowing there wasn’t much I could do to stop them. I’m not a bunny killer, they could see it in my eyes. And just maybe, they saw a future together, wild and domestic, living together in bliss. I suppose it’s better than the house of horrors the bunny came from.

    • Everything, Left Alone

      We want the stillness and confidence
      of age, the space between self and all the objects of the world
      honoured and defined, the possibility that everything
      left alone can ripen of its own accord
      – David Whyte, Living Together

      I’d like to think that I’ve arrived at this stage in my life where I can just let things be. To allow nature to take its course, for things to sort themselves out, to let everything left alone ripen of its own accord. I should think that’s too bold a statement, the arrogance of youth still pulsing in my middle-aged body.

      We see it mostly with our children. In wanting to control the pace of their lives, to see them land well when they fly – to see the flight itself aim straight and true towards a logical place a few notches above where we ourselves have flown. For we’re in such a hurry to get them there, wanting the very best for them. You can’t rush the ripening, you tell yourself, and keep your unsolicited advice deep inside, waiting for an invitation to weigh in.

      You learn to wait in the wings, ready to lend a hand, just playing the parent or friend card. Maybe it’s the gardener in me, knowing you’ve got to let things grow, more often than not finding yourself in wonder at the progression as things surpass your expectations. Sure, you curse the occasional rabbit or groundhog that ruins your dreams of a perfect season, but on the whole things work themselves out in the end (letting things be doesn’t mean you don’t have to fight for what you believe in: install a fence when you need to).

      I’m not in any hurry to reach old age, but I know (if I’m lucky) that it’s not all that far away. A few decades, maybe, to make what I might of this life project. This work in progress. Imperfect. Incomplete. But in progress just the same. Seeing this in yourself lends a measure of understanding and empathy for the journey everyone else is on. For the possibility that they’re grinding away at.

      Everything left alone can ripen on its own accord. This is the way of the world. Just remember that I’ll be here if you need me.

    • Myths and Pretty Stories

      “Like the elite of ancient Egypt, most people in most cultures dedicate their lives to building pyramids. Only the names, shapes and sizes of these pyramids change from one culture to the other. They may take the form, for example, of a suburban cottage with a swimming pool and an evergreen lawn, or a gleaming penthouse with an enviable view. Few question the myths that cause us to desire the pyramid in the first place.” – Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

      We all build pretty stories, latch on to myths that align us with a currency, political party, and what we chase in our short time on earth. Since I reached “responsible” adulthood I’ve been servant to my pyramid in New Hampshire, my second pyramid, thank you. I’ve done my part to keep both the economy and humankind going by getting married and having two children, a boy and a girl, to keep the party going after I someday check out.

      Sapiens challenges long-standing assumptions we have about our place in the world: how we got here, what we believe, what we’ve destroyed in the process of getting here and what is being destroyed now as a result of the myths and pretty stories we collectively tell ourselves. And that’s the part that I’ve been thinking about lately. We’ve all seen what collective belief in a myth can do on September 11, 2001 and on January 6, 2021. There’s a very dark side of humanity that emerges when subscribing to certain myths. And there’s a swell of resistance that rises up when confronted with myths that don’t fit our own view of the world.

      It may come as no surprise to any reader of this blog that I’m a romanticist, chasing experiences in this short life. And yet like many of my fellow romanticists I’ve also built a pyramid. And keep adding smaller pyramids around it to make this life more… comfortable? Luxurious? Sure. But every myth has a price, and to function in this society your story needs to align with the larger story of paying mortgages and car payments and working to fund it all.

      We humans are complicated, aren’t we? Life is about the pretty stories we tell ourselves. About where we are and where we’re going. We all tell ourselves and others these stories. I tell myself that I’m chasing washboard abs, but still managed to have a third taco last night. Now I’m planning a long walk and yard work to make up for the three tacos. Washboard abs are just another pretty story I tell myself if I don’t align my habits with the larger goal.

      As an American I grew up believing certain things about our Rights as citizens. We buy into the belief that all men and women are created equal. Over time you learn this is a myth, we aren’t at all equal. Some are dealt tougher hands than others. Some drink the Kool-Aid of scarcity and fear and react to that with aggression and hate. In sharp contrast, may of us subscribe to something bigger. A belief in each other and a better future.

      “Well, big wheels roll through fields where sunlight streams
      Oh, meet me in a land of hope and dreams”
      – Bruce Springsteen, Land of Hope and Dreams

      Inevitably there’s friction and chafing when one person’s myths run into another’s opposing myths. We live in a dangerous time, and a lot depends on how the pendulum swings during our watch. Like Springsteen I’m an eternal optimist, but recognize that’s just the way we frame our pretty stories. Like washboard abs and too many tacos, sometimes pretty stories and reality don’t align and you’ve got to recognize that and commit to changing the story.

      We all have to work for the pyramids we are building towards the sky. It’s fair to question whether we’re building the right pyramid in the first place. Isn’t it?

    • Roses Rise

      and out of the silent dirt
      the blood-red roses rise.
      – Mary Oliver, Both Worlds

      The tea roses bloom in abundance in June, and reward you with blooms in bursts of fragrant joy the rest of the season. This is the time when rose petals pile up like seaweed at the edge of the surf, for the dance is so very brief for each individual flower before it rains down to the dirt to make way for the next budding star.

      I’m considered a tall man, and the tea roses reach up to my height, wanting very much to overtake the neighboring crab apple tree and maybe even the oaks should they be so bold. Tea roses love to dance with the sky, to catch the breeze and perfume the air with their subtle scent. Year-after-year they return, despite the relative neglect they receive compared with the pampered annuals.

      I’ve held this line from Mary Oliver in my mind since winter. I thought then of the blooming tea roses (pink, not red in the garden I’m subservient to). Winter is a time of dormancy and darkness, not at all the explosion of delight that June offers in New Hampshire. Each year the blooms are a miracle, and I gratefully celebrate their return.

      For all my talk of travel and exploring the world, I bask in this short time together with the roses each year around this time. A time when the roses rise to meet me at eye level. As if to ask me, why would you ever want to leave us?

      Tea Rose Time

    • The Magical Hours

      Water patterns reflect on the tree trunks, illuminating the bark and lichen in a dance of morning light. The wave patterns slowly fade as my bathing suit air dries in the early warmth. Birds and chipmunks fill the air with a soundtrack of their greatest hits. It’s going to be a scorcher today, they seemed to agree.

      The house wren that moved into the bluebird house dominates the conversation, but the chipmunks have a lot to say too. Until I stand up and abruptly reset the agenda from banter to assessing the new guy. In the sudden hush I catch the sound of a woodpecker, unseen, seeking a meal in a tree somewhere in the woods. The bass tone indicates deep work.

      It’s such a short time, these magical hours spent in outdoor spaces when everything in the world just seems perfect. No bugs, no pollen, no shoes, no problems. That these days exist at all is a blessing. I imagine this is why people live in Southern California, where every day is this kind of perfect. Here we take what we can get while it’s here, and boy do we love it when it’s here.

      Early mornings are reserved for the knowing few. I catch a glimpse of a neighbor out watering potted plants as I do the same with my own. We nod a greeting to each other and return to the work at hand.

      The garden isn’t the same as Mother Nature. Magic doesn’t just happen in a garden, you’ve got to put the work in. These are the days when you’re rewarded (or punished) for the work invested in a yard and garden. Harvest is still weeks or months away for the vegetables, but we’re entering peak season for the flowers.

      How do you know when you’ve reached a peak? When the world aligns in moments of wonder? When everything just seems to click for you? Or do you have to wait until you’ve declined from your peak, when things aren’t going as well and you see, maybe for the first time, just how good that moment was?

      I’m past peak when it comes to athletic performance, but haven’t yet peaked in my learning. If fitness is the flowers in your garden, learning and mental development is the fruits and vegetables, often taking until the very end of the season to fully develop. Like flowers your fitness level doesn’t have to stop midway through your season, and like vegetables you can find enlightenment well before the end of your season.

      There are no hard and fast rules in life or gardening, but there are seasons to honor and work to do in each. In each day there are moments available to appreciate the blessings that have come your way. Those magical hours that seem to fly by so quickly when life seems just about perfect in every way.

    • Caretakers of the Present

      “Even when we get what we wish, it is not ours.” – Publius Syrus

      We’re all in a relationship with time. Some relationships are abusive, some are blissful. Time teases us. We think we have so much of it, but that’s a fabric of our imagination, like the belief that we might just live forever. The days fly by in rapid succession, and we do with them what we can.

      Over the last week I’ve wrestled with a yard relentlessly assaulted by the surrounding trees, raining pollen and catkins and samaras into and on to everything I’d worked to clean up until the rains came and turned the tide in my favor. The chores of home ownership are relentless and a fool’s game. Yet it offers the meditative work required for me to sort out the rest of this crazy world. For all my complaints, I recognize this plot of land I’ve squatted on is borrowed from the universe, and I appreciate what it’s brought to me.

      And some day I’ll return it to that universe to do with it whatever it must. Will this land return to the oaks, pines and maples that regularly reach back for what was stolen from them, or will the house will be torn down and the pool filled in to make way for a McMansion as the region continues to face the pressure of urban sprawl. Who knows? I’m the caretaker of the present, such that it is, and recognize the folly in it all.

      What we receive is not really ours. What we have is on loan in the present, be it stuff or relationships or a plot of land with a modest garden. It’s ours to work with as best we can today. If we think of ourselves as caretakers instead of consumers, we might just leave something for those who come after us. That’s not exactly a new way of thinking, but maybe forgotten in the assault of consumerism and consumption and pursuit of “ownership”.

      We might wish for more time, but like stuff we accumulate, it’s not really ours. Once you accept that time is on loan to us, it liberates you. Simply dance with these days and forget the math. We have what we have, and the rest is not our concern. Take care of the present. While there’s still time.

    • A Moment of Wonder

      Yesterday morning I chanced upon an Oriole in the garden. He looked at me and I at him and we both had our moment of interspecies connection before he decided to fly off to join his mate (who was no doubt pissed at him for his boldness). The bright orange and dark black are still locked in my mind a day later.

      That night in the very same spot I stood while the fireflies made their debut in the yard. More likely, it was the first performance I could attend. They lit up the darkness at the edge of the woods, just as the brilliant moon was rising through the trees. I expect fireflies know more about illumination than I do, but I was beaming just the same at their shared performance. That big, bold moon and the small, sparkling fireflies dancing quietly in the dark to an audience of one.

      What do we make of the moon this week? Called the Super Flower Blood Moon because it’s a combination of the May full moon and a timely lunar eclipse. This kind of thing stirs the collective imagination of the press, the talking heads who eagerly point out the big event. As a sky geek I’m aware of it, and appreciate the need of a news celebrity to talk about something besides a mass shooting or some other tragedy happening somewhere, right now, that may impact me next. Those masters of string pulling and I can agree that this moon is something special, and special things should be seen.

      But just because something should be seen doesn’t mean that it can be. As is usually the case when there’s something of note happening in the sky, it was overcast in my part of New Hampshire in the early morning hours. The lunar eclipse, like so much in this universe, wasn’t meant to be shared with me today.

      But the universe giveth even as it taketh away. Yesterday it offered those encounters with a bold Oriole and dancing fireflies, and each changed me in our moment together. I should think a moment of wonder is all we can really ask for from the universe. Just remember to say thank you.