Memorial Day and summery things

It's Memorial Day weekend again (my 65th!) and the weather is supposed to be summery but hasn't quite gotten there yet.  In fact, it's getting cooler as I write.  But we're doing summery things at Memorial Day.  Frank and I have been yardworking and we're grilling hamburgers and hotdogs for supper today.  Nancy is watching baseball and crocheting.

Yesterday and today we have been treated to the constant roar of motorcycles (two blocks away on I-66 and three blocks south on US50) as the bikers head into and out of DC for the Rolling Thunder celebration of Memorial Day.  When I lived along 395 in Alexandria you could fairly feel the throb in the air as masses of motorcycles passed up the freeway.  Yesterday we passed the Fairfax Harley Davidson store where there have been masses of bikes and music and a party atmosphere since Friday.

The Harley Davidson store was on our way to the Frozen Dairy Bar in Falls Church, an old-timey longtime ice cream parlor and pizza place that we like.  Nancy had asked early in the day if we could go and go we did.  I took a double dose of Dairy

Ease so I could have a root beer float (Nobody seems to make ice cream sodas any more!  Why is that?) with no unwanted intestinal dissonance from the ice cream thanks to my lactose intolerance.  Frank and Nancy had ice cream sundaes, rich mountains of frozen goodness.  We left feeling replete with summer goodness.

On to more summery things.  Maybe I'll set up the croquet set in the back yard.

Invasive species ...

Well, we are STILL awaiting the onslaught of massed cicadas.  But!  We have the shell of one stuck on the front of the house.  I did read somewhere that they climb bricks and we have a lot of bricks for them to climb - if they get here.  Friends in southern Fairfax County, down in the Woodbridge/Ocoquan area, say the cicadas have definitely arrived there and are singing their hearts out.

So far this is all we have to show: a mere shell of himself!

Our other more lively recent invasive species showed up Saturday morning in the back garden, breakfasting on peanuts and old bread we had put out for the birds: a coyote!  Looking somewhat hard-used and with a discreet limp, but definitely a coyote and a good reason to keep our cats in the house as housepets rather than become a tastier breakfast for borther coyote!

 

We still have only the most minimal contact with the large mammals  in our neighborhood (in fact the ones at 10700 Norman are moving out today) but the small mammals and  insects are getting up close and personal!

Mutability

As the refrain in the I Ching has it "all is change".  The garden at Norman Avenue is a constant scene of change.  Just weeks ago, we were awash in a sea of colorful azaleas.  We have had orange, pink, purple, red, and white in quick succession.  We had Japanese irises, lavender (of course!), grape hyacinth, buttercups and more.

But everything changes, all tends toward decline and now our beautiful azaleas look like this:   

I think there's a lesson here, somewhere.  I do know staying beautiful isn't easy, or long-lived.  And our garden is a lesson in mutability.

Tree Liberation Front

We are tree liberationists, which in another sense means we are committing ivyicide!

Half of our backyard is covered in ground ivy, which climbs the trees and sucks some of the life out of the trees.  The arborist told Frank that all we have to do is cut the ivy from its roots on the ground and it will die on the tree.  So today, Memorial Day, Frank and I spe
nt part of the morning as 'woodsmen' cutting the ivy loose from the trees.  In a sense, we are girdling the tree ivy.

Frank cutting the ivy from the base of the tree.

We cleared ivy around the base of about ten trees in the yard (we have some 38 trees!).  The only one we didn't work on is coming down on Wednesday when the arborist's crew comes to remove it (it is hollow for five feet at the base and is a hazard in a windstorm and we'd rather have it come down than be sued by neighbors after it falls!

So this is what the ten trees look like now:  shorn of the roots of the ivy.  In a week or so, the ivy will die off, turn brown and be pulled down and discarded.  We got better at it as we worked.  The tree below is one of the first ones we did.

Who knew we would acquire these skills when we moved into the Norman Avenue house?!  What  other skills sets await us?

Disarray!

The Pepto Bismol Bathroom is no more.

Magic Alan and his sidekick Marcello have had at it and stripped the bathroom to the nubbins.  Actually I think maybe the nubbins are gone too.  When we first saw the house with the Pepto Bismol pink master bathroom, circa 1954, I knew we had to live here.  Just to save the house from the bathroom.  Alan Claros and team moved in on Monday and have stripped even stuff we didn't think was going to go - like the white water-saving toilet that went into the dump ruck without so much as a 'by your leave': Alan just decided it was going.  And it did.

I kind of miss showering in the pink walk-in shower.  When you opened your eyes after letting the water run off your head, it suddenly looked like you were submerged in a gastrointestinal cleanser!

Guest bedroom with new holes

We've only been in the house for two and a half months but we are so settled that having the bathroom disappear and all of its contents go into assorted plastic bins has been unnerving.  We have spent months living in the "it must be somewhere" state of disarray.  And now we can't even find spare toothpaste, deodorant, and all those little things like floss and nail scissors that always seem to be out and about except when you really need them.  Does anyone know where "somewhere" is?  I usually can't find it.

Family room stripped of paneling and with new perforations

And just in case we haven't had enough self-inflicted disarray, Alan's friend Francisco (from Argentina, not the Bolivia that is home to Alan and Marcello) has arrived to help set the electrical system in  the house to rights: there were only three grounded 3 prong plugs in the house (and the overhead fan in the family room provides a nice tingling electric pulse when you touch it).  So Francisco and his team member are performing laparascopic incisions on the walls and ceilings to repair the electrical system.  Our freshly painted rooms are taking on the look of Swiss cheese -- BUT grounded plugs are appearing where there weren't any.

The dining room with new Swiss cheese holes

My mother always used to say that things had to get worse before they got better.  It must be just about time for them to get better because we are pretty near the "worse" part.  As they said so memorably in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, "It will be all right in the end, and  if it's not all  right, then it's not yet the end!"

I hope so.

Cats that go bump in the night ...

We aren't sure that our guest room is habitable for people who aren't used to things that go bump in the night.  It isn't haunted (we don't believe) but there is definitely an unseen presence in the room.

Our youngest cat, a Himalayan named Nano (because she was so tiny when we got her from the rescue people),

Nano

is a real 'fraidy cat and has a difficult time being around people.  We think she was probably abused as a kitten.  When we lived in Arlington she discovered she could burrow into the box spring under our mattress.  The tear in the cover has widened over time and she now 'lives' in the box spring  when she isn't out and about in the house.  Even during the 2012 derecho that left us without power for six days she still found the box spring a refuge, as hot as it was in July.

The lump in the underside of the box spring, Nano's personal hammock

We have put the mattress and box spring in the guest room here on Norman but  little Nano still burrows into her hiding place every night, emerging for breakfast and retiring to her mattress hideaway at night.

Which is why when you sleep on that bed you might get the sensation that you are not alone in that bed.  And indeed you aren't!  If you think someone else has rolled over in the bed, you're probably right, it was just on a lower level.  And who's to deprive a small scared cat of her safety zone?  It's kind of a princess-and-the-pea situation for people using the bed.  We used the guest bed this week when a guest was using our master bedroom and we could feel Nano moving around in the box spring during the night.

The other cats sometimes venture under the bed but no cat is going to risk nose damage from Nano's claws by trying t o join her in her box spring hammock.  The others get their kicks out of waking up us large mammals at dawn when they climb onto our bed and walk back and forth across us.

Pergolas, threes, decks and floors

It has been a busy week here at 10702 Norman.  Alan, magic Alan the construction guy (who did the hardwood floors and painted the walls inside the house), has started on the deck area.

He built us a beautiful pergola (below) on which we have already hung the windchimes (one on the right  is a Frank Lloyd Wright model given  us by our friend Susan Brown and the one on the left was made by Frank's Dad many years ago.  The picture on the right is of Frank as Pergola Man hanging the windchimes.

 

The whole neighborhood is awash in flowering trees and the azaleas are about to burst into bloom.  The orange-pink azaleas in the back of the back yard are already blooming, underneath the weeping cherry tree.  The front yard's white dogwoods are all in full bloom.  In the back, next to the deck, is a beautiful Japanese maple that overspreads what is left of the grape hyacinths.

Every morning, I spread peanuts in their shells along the deck's brick walls for the squirrels, bluejays and other small mammals.  By the time I leave for work, the peanuts are gone!  The small mammals don't waste any time getting their share.

Not to shortchange the large mammals, Frank and I visited Home Depot on Saturday where I purchased a double smoker grill (one side gas, the other side charcoal).  It took us all afternoon to assemble but we only lost a no. 5 nut in the process. To prove it worked, we did hamburgers and hotdogs on the gas side for supper last night and invited Alan and Marcello to join us (they are busy reflooring the basement family room to cover the old 1950s era asbestos tiles).  The grill performed marvelously as did the grillmeister (Frank).  And so another weekend of tasks has been accomplished.

Lawncare, gardens, and the Mr Green Jeans Syndrome

Luckily, I am still employed and have to be somewhere else five days a week under adult supervision and control.  That gives me literally an "out" except on weekends.  [And it gives me an hour long commute at twice the price from our old digs in Shirlington (Oh well!).]

Frank is not so lucky.  He is on house and grounds duty 24/7.  That's called a retirement perk!  So Frank has been bearing the brunt of flower-planting, ground maintenance, tree planting, and wondering what in the hell that thing over there in the corner is and what should we do with it?  He has been hosting visits from arborists assessing our inventory of very tall and old trees (and telling us trees need to come down, trees need to be pruned, trees need to be left alone, etc. etc.).  For his birthday, I gave him two fig trees  (the Taylors love everything figgy).   He planted them as soon as he could. (That's our weeping cherry tree in back of him.)

Also for his birthday, Nancy, Frank's sister, gave him an electric tiller, which he wanted for the patch of lawn he wanted to dig up to plant the lilac trees and peonies we had gotten at the amazing Betty's Azalea Ranch (about 3 miles from us.)  So, Frank has been spending a lot of time outdoors reddening his fair skin in the sun and getting things done.  In fact, he spends most of the day time outside working and plotting and planning.  Here's Frank as Tillerman, chewing up the turf with the new tiller.  Lower left are the large patch of grape hyacinths that came with the house - we keep finding all sorts of plants that the previous owners installed.  Those kinds of surprises we like!

There are also the worrisome things, like the little volcano-like dirt cones with an opening in the top, that are all over the front and back yards.  And the imminent deluge of cicadas that will be humming and crawling and falling and dying in the weeks to come.  Here's one of those cone-things (we have yet to see anything come out of them):

Last night I came home from work to find that the phlox I had bought to plant along Norman Avenue had already been installed.  Frank had gone back to Betty's (where they know us on sight) for compost, ended up with sweet earth, then stopped by the Walmart to get a pitchfork, and dug and mixed and planted and watered and ... and ... and ...

Not surprisingly I have been looking online for a set of green bib overalls in his size.  Those of you who are our contemporaries may remember Mr. Green Jeans from Captain Kangaroo days!  I think there is a Mr Green Jeans syndrome at work with Frank right now.  And that's a good thing.

Newbies

At the beginning of March 2013, we moved into our new home at 10702 Norman Avenue. We've never had a yard, much less half an acre and we were moving from an 875 square foot townhouse to a 4200 square foot ranch house and from a two storey rowhouse in Pennsylvania to the same new home.  Two houses into one.  Wasn't that a lot of somethings to put somewhere?  Now 6 weeks later we are still discovering that what we need or want is "somewhere" that mysterious place to which things go when you pack and move.