Alexandersmap

    Category: Garden and Home

    • Fat Squirrel Haiku and Much Work to Do

      I watched a squirrel, fat for winter, dig in the garden for who knows what. The squirrel wasn’t welcome, but invited itself to this place I’ve called my own. Its ancestors might say the same of me, for one day generations ago there was a stand of trees, the next day someone laid a foundation and a house rose where the maples and oaks once stood and squirrels foraged in the wood. Who encroached on who?

      December cold and the bird feeders are filled once again. We’re told to hold off on filling them until the bears hibernate, lest they’re drawn to the neighborhood seeking food. The bears are always here, friend, but why invite trouble? I let the feeders run out and kept them empty until the 5th of December. But trouble arrived anyway–not as bears, mind you, but squirrels. They quickly got the memo that the buffet was open once again.

      The air is cold, reminding me of things left undone in the yard while I was busy doing other things. The list is longer than I’d like it to be, but I dream of escaping to faraway places anyway. Best to turn my attention back towards the nest. The squirrels are boldly circling back, ever closer, thinking, “If he’s not going to use it, we’ll grab it back for ourselves.”

      Fat squirrel digs for food
      Is the garden his or mine?
      Today, the rodent

    • Scarcity and Abundance

      We live in a world of scarcity and abundance. I see it in nature, where wildlife adjusts to a world of dwindling food, scrapping together something to eat in the dormant forest. A newly-filled birdfeeder sets off an alarm in the woods, and no sooner do I walk away from it that it’s filled with the boldest of foragers — black-capped chickadees and such. Soon the turkey, squirrels and blue jays will appear. In a world of scarcity this gift of food quickly garners attention.

      A pair of deer walked slowly through the mud and runoff from the recent rains. They know they’re relatively safe in these woods, for hunters can’t reach them so close to houses. I inch closer to try to get a decent picture and eventually spook them. They splash away a hundred yards or so and reassess the danger I present to them. Armed with an iPhone, the most dangerous thing I can do to them is spook them into the deeper forests in town, where the hunters are. I walk slowly back towards the house and leave them be.

      The only thing that’s abundant now are the millions of brown leaves blanketing the ground, mocking me for my excuses. I chose to pay someone to remove the leaves this year, a nod to the extensive time away but a bit frivolous for an otherwise active adult. I could have done it, the leaves taunt, and I silently agree. Yardwork is a favorite workout, and I’ve deprived myself of it this year. I find myself hoping the landscaper comes soon so I don’t have to hear the leafy voices anymore.

      In New Hampshire, we look towards Thanksgiving as a time to celebrate the abundance of the harvest and the time to share it with others. All this extra downtime waiting for someone else to pick up the leaves offers too much time to think. It’s not the same anymore, Thanksgiving, and yet we have so much to be thankful for. I can’t help but think of what’s missing this year, but remind myself to focus on what you do have. Life is a balancing act between scarcity and abundance. We must plan for the former and not overindulge in the latter. And in those moments when things seem a little out of balance it helps to pause and catch your breath.

      The world dances all around us in a blur of motion and stillness. Wildlife scrapping life together one day at a time and the leaves returning to the earth after their season in the sun. Who are we to refuse this gift of the present dwelling on what’s missing? Focus on what’s here, friend. And be thankful.

    • A Visit to Alcatraz

      The first thing you notice about Alcatraz is how small it is compared to that image in your mind. If you’re ever met a celebrity you find most of them are smaller in real life. It’s the same with this place. The Rock became famous, and like any other celebrity you come to terms with the stories in your head when you meet one.

      I don’t celebrate the lives of murderers and con men. They were put here for a reason, and it’s not for things that should be celebrated. For me, Alcatraz was a curiosity, an island front and center in the middle of San Francisco Bay that offers stunning views back towards the city, the bridges and the beautiful natural world that surrounds you when you’re standing on it.

      Jail cells and all that aside, the island was once a fort that utilized that commanding position in the harbor as a key defensive position. Eventually military prisoners were incarcerated on the island and it grew from there into a federal prison. It reminded me of Edinburgh Castle, both with reputations for strength, both at turns a fort and prison, both requiring steep ascents to get to the top. They put these places where they were for a reason.

      The Alcatraz tour itself is a downloadable app that you listen to on your phone. You can still borrow the headphones but most people seem to prefer the app. It detects when you remove the phone from your ear so you aren’t missing the story while taking pictures with your phone. The drawback to this is dozens if people walking in every direction with their phones pressed to their ears like Christmas Eve shoppers in a crowded mall. So I was happy to complete the official tour and wander around the island. And that’s where the real magic was.

      The gardens of Alcatraz are beautiful, diverse landscapes in a unique microclimate. Old foundations form neat garden walls, and the wall tops themselves became long rows of planters. Plants ranged from agave to fuchsia to a showstopper, Pride of Madeira, each set against a beautiful water view. The gardens made the trip for me, making Alcatraz more than a rock in the bay with a few stories.

      I confess I wasn’t excited about going to Alcatraz, but I’m glad I did. It rounds out the history of this place when you’re standing on it. That story is a little dark, but also more beautiful than I gave it credit for. But isn’t that what travel does for you? It changes perceptions, one visit at a time.

      Defensive map of San Francisco Bay
      Pride of Madeira
      Fuchsia

    • By These Hands

      The gobs of wet leaves and pine straw pulled with bare hands from the gutter weren’t posted on YouTube for the world to see. Nor were the pulled fence posts as they were chipped free of old concrete footings. The world will never wonder at the labor put into such things by these hands. My labor remains undocumented.

      The same fingers that write these jumbles of words once laid brick on a curving walkway only to pull it up two decades later to reset a stubborn gate heaved by frost and refusing to close. This is the price of time in one place, you find yourself undoing what you’ve done before over and over again. It’s the labor of living, and like generations before mine the work goes largely unnoticed by most. Like an Offensive Lineman, you understand that if your work is noticed it wasn’t done correctly. But you know when it’s done well and when it isn’t.

      Labor is done for profit, and it reveals itself in moments. Each time I open the gate without having to kick the bottom corner, I’ll celebrate the sweat and strain of a Sunday in August when the work was done. Each time it rains I’ll celebrate the sound of water running through the downspout and not up and over the top of the gutter. These observations aren’t celebrated in the same way as seeing the Grand Canyon or St. Basil’s Cathedral or the Tower of London for the first time, because they’re mundane. But when you’ve fixed something that needed fixing and see it work, none of those other places matter a lick in that particular moment.

      I know plenty of people who hire others to do their labor for them. I understand this particular inclination, for paying others buys you time for yourself. Time spent on yard work is time not spent on a mountain summit or a beach on these briefest of days we call summer. But I know deep down that the work done by these hands reveals something in myself that I’d never find if I left the work to others.

      There are lessons in the labor, residing deep inside of me, that others may not see. Lessons that open up for you like a swinging gate free of obstruction. Flow through you like water through a downspout. When you do the work, even when it might all be undone once again someday, you understand that our brief, fleeting lives only have meaning in these mundane contributions we make. Even if it’s never seen on YouTube.

    • Breaking Garden (and Life) Rules

      I regularly break the accepted rules of gardening. Rules like putting the tall plants in the back of the garden. But when something like a balloon flower (Platycodon grandiflorus) or bee balm (Monarda) are shoved way to the back you lose something intimate that you gain when they’re right in your face. So my apologies to the garden rule enforcers. Surely you see my dilemma?

      I was offering advice to a former coworker who wants to quite her job and travel the world with her husband, but she feels stuck in the job, stuck in the life she’s wrapped herself in, and is only looking at the reasons why she can’t just do it instead of finding the reasons to just go for it. I dropped my favorite pair of Latin phrases on her to reflect on: Memento Mori and Carpe Diem (Remember we all must die, and seize the day!).

      Some rules are there for logical reasons; if the tall plants are up front you can’t see the shorter ones behind them. Makes sense. Some rules are there because we’ve all grown up believing stories: you have to get a job and work 50 weeks a year, then skip one of the two weeks of vacation and work on weekends to stay ahead. Who made that rule? Someone who wants to profit on your short productive years before they turn you to dust and plan you out for someone else.

      Make your own rules. Rules like walking out in the middle of a work day and seeing how the flowers are doing, just because you feel like it. Putting yourself out there in the world, to meet it on your terms. And maybe find something of yourself that was hidden when it was shoved to the back by someone else’s rules.

      Balloon Flower

    • 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.