Can Phoebe be 30?

 

Ah, Phoebe. The milestones are coming too thick and fast for your poor old mother. I’m still trying to process the enormity that was your wedding, and here you are almost a year later turning 30, then moving to the PNW before fall. I mean, slow down a little! I can’t keep up! 

You’re playing on La Gomera at long, long last, with your sweet husband and your dear friend Carinna,

On the Not Watching Whales trip we took when we were there...

But I hear there were flocks of flying fish!

 I’m here in a frog-choking downpour on Indigo Hill, feeling lucky and graced beyond measure to be your mama. Even if it means I somehow have to bring up a blogpost to honor your birthday, like a fully-laden heron flapping home to the nest with a craw full of half-digested fish. 

It's a darn good thing I got a feeling I'd better harvest most of the garlic today. It's safely drying in the garage, waiting for you and Óscar to take some with you to your new home! Not bad for a first time garlic farmer. Next year: Even more manure, and much more water! Yes, I grew it mostly for you and Óscar, Liam and Ayla and my three fabulous cooking sisters. How much garlic does one person need? Not that much, it turns out. But giving it away, what a joy.

 Tato wants to help me write, so he just leapt onto my lap from a sitting start. And I’m sitting at my drawing table on a high drafting chair. That’s not trivial. Yes, this “tiny ball of sunshine” has grown into a rather large, long, lean, turbo-sweet Boston terrier who knows what he wants and always gets it. 23 pounds of pure genetically hand-selected GO. I thank you for the part you and Óscar have had in making him what he is today. Still very much a work in progress, but oh so much better for your firm hand. Counting on you to keep working with him whenever you come home. 

Do you know you are a glow in my heart? Nobody can light me up like you and Liam do. Nobody can make me laugh like you do. Nothing moves me like seeing you together, speaking your own language, walking out the meadow with your chairs and crossword puzzles to go have a chat with Daddy. What is sacred? Well, that. Your bond with your brother, and the way you honor both him and your dad.

You truly were born at the perfect time of year, Poobs, the time when all the flowers come out to play and all creation begins to buzz and sing. I’m going to walk through the prairie meadow so you can see what’s blooming now.

The Grandpa Ott morning glories you gave me that twined around your front porch railing in North Carolina are losing their minds with the manure I gave them. I said I wouldn't let them climb all over the garden fence, blocking sun from my garlic and tomatoes...well...I guess I underestimated their charm and how much I love them. Next year I'll let them grow only on the north side of the garden. No sun comes from that direction anyhoo. Right. 

 In my mind and heart, you are tightly interwoven with the special and ethereal beauty July brings in both the visual and auditory realms. Summer has found her voice in mid-July. She begins to sing quietly, then more confidently, until the katydid chorus swells each night. 

Do you see him? He'll be rasping tonight!

It was into such a time, and into a riot of flowers, that you decided to be born. What a wise and special infant you were, and you are my wise counsel to this day. You look like you're giving me advice, even here.

                                                 Are you sure you wanna post that, Mommy? 

 I can’t wait to see what kind of life you and Óscar make for yourselves going forward, and of course, I am excited about visiting! Olympic Peninsula, here we come! Happy birthday, my dearest little bird, as you embark on what I know will be your most exciting adventure yet. Excellence got you there, and excellence will carry you forward, and I’ll be watchin’ and creepin’ and visitin’!! Wondering if I can buy a seat for Tato on a plane. Is that done?

Gratuitous happy birthday hot off the presses Tato content now. For you and Carinna!

I tried to get a picture of him with chicory this morning, but he wouldn't smile.

I told him to smile and not eating the chicory

He just eating more.

He's a terrible dog and you have a lot of work to do when you get home. 

All too soon, it'll be Bon Voyage. Please, will somebody slow this all down? 

Happy birthday, sweet Phoebe!!! I am so very proud of you! 

One last gift from your sweet Auntie Barb, holding you here. There's Ida, loving you too. If I've seen this Polaroid (likely taken by your daddy), I don't remember it.

About That Skunk...

While all this is going on with pets inside the house, there's a pet who roams outside, too. Not gonna lie. Going from a Boston terrier to a mountain cur has been a big adjustment. Chet's reason for living was to keep me company. I remember once when he treed a raccoon deep in our woods. He stood up against the tree, barked, got very excited. I watched awhile, then said, "OK, Chet, let's leave him in peace. I'm headed home." That little dog took a last look at the coon and trotted over to me, and that was the end of that. Chet knew what his job was, and he put his whole heart into it. He followed me to the washing machine, to the bathroom; he'd butt the door open with his little melon head when I was showering (never failed to get a peal of laughter from me as the cold air would rush in). And until he lost his hearing at the end, he never even needed a collar on our runs on the busy road, because he listened to every word I said.

I can't say that about Curtis, but he's listening much better than he was a year ago. I don't love him any less for his wandering spirit. My love for him is different, because our relationship is different. He's more like a friend than the everything that Chet strove to be, that I needed him to be. Curtis is just the dog I need at this stage of my life. He's taught me to loosen my grip and let go.

I am usually looking at the hind end of this dog. Not exactly a heeler.

Just like Chet, Curtis knows what his job is. He was bred to hunt. He's a fabulous companion, as you've seen, but his first love and calling is the hunt. So when Curtis trees a coon, he stands up against the tree, bites some bark off it, bays a little, and, if he's not a half mile away through the woods, I watch for awhile. And then I say, "I'll see you at home, Curtis. I'm headed back."  And there we part ways, because Curtis is not a Boston terrier. He is a Treeing Tennessee Brindle. I'll see him again in oh, maybe two or three hours, when he's good and ready to come home. He'll be riddled  with thorns, ear tips bleeding from their tears, tongue hanging down to his brisket, hungry and exhausted and oh, so happy. Overdoing it is his way. He is doing his job, as he feels it in his very cells. 

Work mode: sniffing scent trails old and new. 

So when a badly injured skunk showed up in the yard, Houston, we had a problem. As explained before, he'd gotten himself odiferized three times in only eight months since he'd joined our family. I had concluded that Curtis was one of those dogs who would never stop trying to catch a skunk.

And yet, in that one magic moment explained a few posts back (Fun With Skunks and Dogs), Curtis put it all together. Even as he was charging for the attack, he registered my anguished plea for him to leave SugarBean alone. And alone he has left that skunk, despite myriad opportunities to ruin all our lives since. SugarBean has become a bit of a fixture in the yard. Can't imagine why...

About ten days ago, I heard Curtis ranging about in the woods to the north, his bells jingling. Without even thinking, I called to him to come home. The shortest path was through the tunnels in a trumpetvine tangle that sprawls behind the compost pit. It's a highway for Curtis, for the opossums, raccoons, rabbits...and for SugarBean. Too late, I saw SugarBean, crouched in a vine tunnel. I heard Curtis coming straight toward the skunk. I couldn't do a thing. You can't stop a dog from coming to you once you've called. You can't tell him, "No, I've changed my mind, don't come home." I heard twigs crackling as Curtis drew closer. Frantically, I sent him mind pictures of backing away. And then he caught the scent and stopped. Backed up. Went back the way he'd come, and allll the way around the garage. I ran to meet him as he emerged from the woods a good 300' from where SugarBean was hidden. I threw my arms around his neck. That's when I knew this dog gets it.

I've been very worried about SugarBean. Her right hind leg is nearly useless; she puts it down only lightly and it obviously hurts. I've thought and thought about how to help her. The injury dates to sometime in early March, when I first started seeing her around the yard.

 

The idea from the start has been to support her nutritionally, and hope for healing in the leg/hip. 

Because as sweet and cute as SugarBean looks, she's not a housecat. 

She's not even a feral cat. She's a mustelid, and she packs a ferocious bite as well as a scent bomb that WILL ruin my whole life if it goes off. About a week ago, something perturbed her in the night, and she sprayed, and that scent drifted in Phoebe's open window and permeated the house. It woke everyone up, and kept me up the rest of the night. I spent that time thinking about what it means to have an injured skunk in residence in one's yard.

A friend of mine tried to help, investigating as to whether the Ohio Wildlife Center would admit the skunk if I was able to catch her. She really, really wanted Sugarbean to get medical attention, and made some offers and suggestions that included offering to drive the skunk to Columbus if I could catch her! (That's love!)  Well, I really wanted her to get care, too, but I knew that her injury is too old (more than a month) for the leg to be set, even if one could operate on a skunk and keep it in a clinic, which one simply cannot. Once it wakes up from the anesthesia, the first slamming door would bring a stinkbomb! And the word came back from OWC that, even if SugarBean were somehow caught and brought in, they wouldn't attempt to operate on her leg. So what's the point of catching her?

the first falcate orangetip of spring

But while I was in the flush of being persuaded that maybe something could be done to help this poor hobbling creature, I set out a cat carrier with the door wired open, and decided to feed SugarBean inside it.

She entered without hesitation. It's all about the food with skunks. But then when she was fed, she did the most interesting thing. I had piled dry straw up in the back of the carrier, and SugarBean went on in and curled up in there, and slept for five hours!

 

While she was sleeping, it began to rain, and I was able to put a doormat over top of the carrier to shield her from the rain without any trouble or protest from the skunk. 

That night was cold and wet, and, but for a foray around 10 pm, she slept in there all night. 

Well, how do you like that?

Skunks normally have a low profile, but this one is snakelike. She flows over the ground, very very slowly.

One of the most winsome and endearing little animals I've ever known.

I am forever trying to think of new ways to help her.

Making the Leap

I headed to the animal shelter on Tuesday morning, having spent the night at Kelly's house in Columbus  (I'm writing on Friday). I'd gotten in around midnight from Medford, Oregon. and was tacking another night and day onto my trip. I must really be thinking hard about this dog. I'd told nobody what I was up to, just told my family I was too tired to make the drive home Monday night. Which was not a lie.

 I walked up to the counter at CHA Rescue in Columbus, OH at the stroke of noon, when they opened. "I'm here to see Curtis," I said, very quietly. The words sounded so strange coming out of me. I still couldn't believe I was standing at the counter of an animal shelter, saying them. I'd always said that if I was going to have a dog, I didn't want to inherit anyone else's mistakes. I wanted to craft a puppy from nine weeks on, and make it, as much as possible, conform to the image in  my head.

I may be biased, but Chet Baker was one CUTE puppy, wearing his tubesock jacket.

I did that with Chet Baker, and deep inside I had a hard time believing that a grown dog could fit my needs as well as one I'd shaped from puppyhood. But here I was. "I'm here to see Curtis."

There was something about his smile, and the way Kelly wrote about him, that gave me faith enough to at least go look.

To meet this dog, who might wind up going home with me.

I was actually trembling because I had fallen far enough into his spell to know that I'd probably leave with Curtis. And that prospect terrified me. Going back into the responsibility, the expense, the time commitment of caring for a dog; the constant back-of-the-mind worry about what to do with him every time I had to leave. I'd had a year and a half of worry-free travel, and I had loved it. But I'd also had a year and a half without a dog's warm popcorn scent, without the feel of a satiny coat, without  companionship on hikes and runs, without the laughter and love of a dog. It had been a good year, until it wasn't a good year any more.

And there he was, behind a stainless steel grid.  He didn't get up when Carrie unlatched his door. All the other dogs were standing at their doors, barking. Curtis was silent, watchful. He wasn't barking. He was thinking.

 

She clipped a leash on his collar and handed it to me. We walked together to a spacious exercise area with a single bench.   I could see Curtis was a favorite, though he'd been at the shelter for less than a week. His style reminded me of someone.

I had read through his medical records. He'd been dropped at a southern Ohio shelter on December 27 by his owner's parents. Curtis' owner had to go into rehab, and left two dogs with them. It was they who had surrendered Curtis. 

When he came in, Curtis couldn't bear weight on his left hind leg. He had ticks, and tested positive for both Lyme disease and Ehrlichiosis. He was intact, and was said to be four years old. His teeth were in bad shape. Over the next month and a half, a dog fostering organization paid to give him the veterinary care he'd been denied for too long. Six teeth were pulled (mostly lower incisors, and one canine). He was neutered, and given a total of almost 40 days of doxycycline for tick-borne disease, as well as Clindamycin for his teeth. He got anti-inflammatories and painkillers, too. The hind leg lameness resolved with treatment. Whether it was caused by tick-borne disease or an injury, it got better. Finally, Curtis was ready for adoption, and he was accepted by CHA.  

He arrived in Columbus on Wednesday, February 13, and I saw Kelly's Instagram post on Saturday, Feb. 16. Now, Kelly has all of seven posts on Instagram. What are the chances that I'd be scrolling through my feed and see one of seven posts by my friend?

Is he already someone's darling?

And now here it was the next Tuesday, February 19, and this pretty little dog was, against all odds, still here and I was walking him up and down the dog run. I stopped and sat on the bench. Curtis leapt up beside me and leaned against me. Oh. It was clear he wanted to be with me. 

I asked him to stay, and walked to the end of the run. He never took his eyes off me. OK! He leapt off the bench and ran to me. He had a wigwag in his run. I fretted about that hind leg.

 

He kept jumping up to sit on the bench. And he made sure to keep a paw or two on my bag. So, you know, if I picked up my bag to go, I'd have to move him...or take him, too.

 

"He is WORKIN' you! My goodness!"  Carrie laughed. 'Struth. That dog stared into my eyes the entire time. He was lasering out his plan for our future together. He was sending me pictures of us, together, for good.

He leaned on me and licked my chin. I looked down at my fleece and jeans and they were absolutely coated in dog hair. Ew. Oh. Ack. I'd been spoiled by Chet's tiny eyelash hairs. 

I thought about drifts of dog hair on my kitchen floor. Hair on the butter in its dish. (Right, Jeanne?)

 I thought about whether I should be doing this at all. Did I really want to get back into dog ownership again, with all it entailed? Couldn't someone tell me what to do, other than this dog, staring holes in me?

 I milled around, threw a toy for him, sat down on the bench. He dutifully fetched it, twice, then laid it down and resumed staring into my eyes. 

"Fetching is stupid. Let's go. What happens now is you take me home."

The sun winked out in a wooly gray sky. 

 It was cold out there. Curtis was shivering. We had to go back inside. There was nothing else to do in the dog run. Carrie put him back in his cell so I could fill out the paperwork. 

 Fill out the paperwork! Am I doing this??

  

Curtis hesitated, but walked slowly back in and curled up on his hammock. The door clanged behind him. He sighed and put his head on his paws. I could feel despair wash out of him and over me. Another fail, he was thinking. I barely made it to the restroom before bursting into tears. I was so conflicted, so unsure, walking in circles, sobbing. It seemed so cruel to put him back in the cell, to dash his sweet doggish hopes, even for a few minutes. And the thought that I might be dashing them altogether sent me into a new gale of tears.

I got a clipboard, snuffling, and filled out two pages of forms. Did I own or rent my house? Who else lived there with me? How would I handle misbehavior like barking or digging? (What would be the right answer here? I wrote, "Firm correction." Was the yard fenced? I smiled. A form could not begin to describe the situation this dog would be inheriting. How do you describe doggie Valhalla?

I started to cry again. I needed to go see Curtis, to ask him if this was the right thing to do. 

 

Just as before, he didn't get up. He looked into my eyes, never breaking his gaze.  I stood silently, looking back at him from about ten feet away. 

"Everything will be all right," he said.  "You'll see."

OK Curtis. Come on. I'm going to take you home, hair and misgivings and firm corrections and all.

You won't be sorry.  I promise. 

In a Vacant House: Wilding with Jen

Ever see two dogs running loose, getting into trouble? It really takes two. Tongues lolling, tails high, they go looking for adventure. A dog on its own just isn't as inquisitive or fearless. When it comes to going through old houses, I'm definitely a dog. I'm not a fearful person; not given to the heebie-jeebies. I just want to have someone with me. Maybe it's to share the fun and amazement. Maybe it's for that little boost through the open window. Maybe it is a little spooky to go through a vacant house alone. It's a little spooky to go through this one with someone else!

I had a feeling my dear friend Jen would be up for some adventure. I wanted to show her one of my favorite houses. I hadn't been inside it since James came to see me, several years ago. I remember what fun it had been to finally see the inside of a house I'd wondered about for years! I knew there'd be neat stuff in there. She was admiring the house and had noted the open window. "I don't suppose you'd want to climb in there with me, would you?" I asked. "Hell yeah!" Jen answered, and we were off and wilding. 

Carpet was Jen's innovation, after I ripped my good lined trousers on a nail. That is a very small window to fit through. That's another reason to have a friend along--to help you pull your leg up and through!  

 

 First thing we saw was a mouse nest, which had once been sandwiched in between wallpaper and wall. Oops.  There was some funky wallpaper going down in this house.

 

Like I said, it was a little spooky from the inside. I've photographed this ancient Hydrangea arborescens from the outside so many times. Now here it is, in winter plumage, from the dark musty inside.

As it was in summer 2016, when Chet was with me. Sweet memories of giving him a cold drink from the well each time we came there. I loved running there with him. I've really only just gotten used to going there without him.

2014. Hydrangea and window behind. He's already so gray. 

Onward. We're in an old house, not hunkered down in the sweet July grass outside it.

I'm diggin' the little framed placard, and the fact that someone long ago rubbed the dirty glass to see what it said. I finished the job with a licked finger.

For YOU, MOTHER.

May the sun smile through your window

From out the skies of blue

Upon the world's sweetest creation

"Mothers just like you."

I think card verse has gotten better with time. I liked thinking, though, that in this house had lived a mother someone thought so well of.

 

Shaving stuff--a straight razor, Palmolive Lather Soap. Tums, $.30. And Spirits of Turpentine. People put stuff like that on their skin. Not me, not ever!

 

I looked at the massive old fridge with its supercool funky logo and said, "I bet if you could plug this thing in it would still run. Probably drive you out of the room with noise, but it'd work." Which is more than I can say of the three refrigerators that have died on me in the last 24 years. When I was a kid, you had the same fridge/freezer your entire life. No more. Planned obsolescence and crappy materials are the name of the game now. This thing is built like a dang battleship. You could go over Niagara in this refrigerator. I mean, if you wanted to. 

In the corner of the kitchen is a secret.

It's a cabinet that stays almost closed. The bottom shelf is a tumble of cutlery (I can't really call it silverware). There's a jar of washers. Oh, so many washers. My dad saved washers. Sadly, I am of the cohort that barely knows what washers are for, and rarely ever deploys them.

 

 On the second shelf are some little dishes and cups.

 

On the third shelf are some more washers and cotter pins. So many cotter pins. Again...not something most people these days collect for later use. 

  

The green milk glass coffee mug? Straight out of my grandmother Ruigh's cabinets. That was her dishware. I'm sad that by the time I came along, the last of five, my grandmother Elnora Zickefoose had only a few more years left in her little brick bungalow in Sheffield, Iowa. I never got to go through her cabinets; ate only a few meals at her table. But oh, what a cook she was. As was my maternal grandmother Frieda Ruigh. I never expect to eat so well again. Looking back, I realize what a gift those meals were, and I'm grateful that my parents took us every summer to see our family in Iowa.

I looked hard at the cotter pin can.  Recent enough to have a barcode and be called LeCafe! Somebody tell me what year barcodes happened...On June 26, 1974, at 8:01 a.m., Sharon Buchanan used a barcode to ring up a 10-pack of Juicy Fruit at the Marsh Supermarket in Troy, Ohio. Thank you, Google! So this house was occupied at least through the late 1970's, I'd say, and nosing through the Christmas letters, into the 80's. Situational awareness, my friends. More than 30 years gone from here, the inhabitants, and all this beautiful wreckage, telling of their time here.

 

On the top shelf is the best thing of all. An electric juicer (Jen thought it might be a coffee press at first and I laughed; this is definitely 8 O'Clock Coffee, ground in a can, country).  But that's not the best thing.

 

 A Carolina wren nest! It's been occupied for several years that I know of, hidden in that magic cabinet, which I mostly closed back up when I was done snooping. The parents enter the house, I'd think, through a variety of holes, and as far as I can tell they lead the babies out via the window we climbed in. That's on the other side of the house, but a trip like that is no big deal for Carolina wrens. They're brainy--spatial perception kings.  They teach their children well.

Cabinet, ready for occupancy, spring 2018.

Now for the tableaux I love so well.

That massive refrigerator, and some boots and a barrel and bucket and stool...oh my gosh. Andrew Wyeth, bar the door.

I'm always trying to get people to click on the photos in my blog to see them large and in focus. Not going to tell you what this letter says. Trust me, it's worth reading. The things you pick out of a pile of Christmas cards from the mid 1980's! And while you're at it, run through and appreciate the other photos at full size, please and thank you.

Tools on the far kitchen wall. I have always wondered if the tools hung here when the original inhabitants lived here, or whether those went up after the house became a sort of storage unit. So I gave it some thought. I'm leaning toward the latter explanation. I mean, I love the way they look but I doubt Grandma would have allowed this in her kitchen. This looks like an after-they-left arrangement to me.

We'll just hang these here where we can git 'em. Nobody hangs a saw on the very edge of a corner they're going to walk around (the basement door). Ergo: Put up after everyone moved out.

Eek. This is what I mean by spooky.

Another look through that kitchen door before we go up the creaky freaky stairs.

The light-gathering capability of my iPhone6, my partner in all crime and adventure, is such that the darkness of this stairwell is not adequately conveyed. I went first, you know, in case BATS. Note the wall to the right.

Those are ancient logs, barely covered with plaster and wallpaper. James muses,

"That log frame is something I think about often.

What were the forests where those seedlings began?

Did they know native Americans?"

 

 LOOK at those logs!! In this humble house, forest giants, felled. When??

 

 

Pretty posies, peeling, uncovering the venerable bones of a house that's not going to fall down anytime soon.

An ironing board. Wonder and trepidation in discovery. Gratitude to be able just to look at it all.

An electric clock, strongly reminiscent of the one in my Gram Ruigh's kitchen. Again, I had the strong feeling this one would work if plugged in. "I bet it buzzes like a ...." I said to Jen. I was haunted by the thought that it was 11:10 AM when it was taken off the wall and thrown into a box, to be found over 30 years later by a harmless trespasser. Telechron brand. Sounds so Buck Rogers, doesn't it?

Creepy toys and school papers. Who will ever know?

 

Hangers, breeding in dark corners. 

Big tropical leaves were in vogue in the 1940's. I wondered why there was no color to these. Understated.

 

In a corner window sash, a hand-tatted tie for curtains, long gone. Everywhere, hand-made things that are no longer hand-done. I thought at first it was a snakeskin. Jen figured out it was a curtain tie.

 

Hunters come here. This one, I think, died on its own; the skull mostly gone as it would be had something chewed it in nature.

It was time to get back out into the sunshine. There's been so little of it this spring!

 

 

May the sun smile through your window

From out the skies of blue.

We climbed back out the pronky small window, our wilding done for the day.

The golden forsythia, the blue sky, and my favorite tableau of all were calling.

 

I saw the ghost of Chet Baker stomping across this couch, sniffing for decades-old crackers in the cushions.

The couch is losing color. Chet no longer stomps. A squirrel has taken a large divot of stuffing for its nest. The couch melts away. 

Time can only keep spooling out.

 

The log cabin stands yet.