Twig is also the name of a genre of decoration. Twig tables. Twig chairs. Twig frames. Those enormous Adirondack camps, white birchbark stuff, bent willow rustic chairs? All twig. I picked up a reference book on the subject at the library book sale over the winter and took the instructions at face value.
And then re-measured and cut most of them again, using my trusty loppers and a measuring jig Daddo would have been proud to see. Precision is not my middle name, but I was quite careful.
Even knowing that the instructions were crap, I couldn't help but bemoan the injustice of it. Instructions that don't. Measuring guides that don't. Reference that isn't. Jeesh. Eventually I wandered over to the square yard or so of good cell coverage at the Would-Be Farm –– in the middle of the field –– and Googled some help. Huh. Common theme of the Amazon reviews of the book:
By Day 3, I was grimly determined to best the beast. I studied physics in college. I have been making things by hand and by brain for some years now. I will not be thwarted!
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It was bound to happen. While clearing trail –– it's on the to-do list whenever we first get to the Would-Be Farm –– we found a game camera that we'd forgotten all about...16K photos of waving grass. I guess that's why we lost track of the danged thing. I'll spare you. Here are some better photos from the game cameras:
I've since became an enthusiastic customer of St. Lawrence Nurseries, where the trees are bred to survive the harshest of North Country weather. We made sheltered havens where we've planted heirloom apples, pears, hazelnuts, elderberries, basket willows, and, the point of the blog: aronia berries. Aronia is the formal name for what is sometimes known as a "chokeberry." (NOT a "chokecherry," btw) It's a small, hardy, brushy tree that bears dark little fruits. They are quite astringent until ripe.
Scientific studies show that it's bursting with super-fruit power, and I'm hoping for an aronia cordial or a mixed berry pie next fall. It's not an easy lot, trying to be a good sapling on the Would-Be Farm. You'll have to survive lots of rain, or not enough rain, plus biblical-level plagues of insects and marauding deer. You'll get ignored and crowded by weeds for months at a time. But when fruit arrives, as this aronia did this past autumn, a young sapling can expect a bit of a party. Hurrah the Aronia! Nice work, little fella! Hope you are having a decent winter up there! You'll be getting a birthday cake of fertilizer in April! Yay you! I'm kind of proud of the asparagus. The roots went into the ground in 2015. Of course I wrote about it.
Lo and behold, up they came. And up. And up. So lush that the well-drilling guy stopped and marveled. So enormous that my gardening neighbors ask –– with palpable envy –– how do we make them thrive? So thick that I no longer have a view of the cool half-plough that Mr. Linton found for me. Uncontested success is rare on the farm. So when it arrives, we like to recognize and celebrate it. All hail kale? Nu-uh: Rush lush Asparagus!
Half asleep in our narrow berth inside Base Camp, we are roused by sound: a crunching, rattling, scratching assault on the recycling container, a lengthy effort to unsnap the cooler, a hissing dust-up over a piece of aluminum foil that once held roasted chicken.
Eventually, Mr. Linton or I will have had Just About Enough and shout at the intruders. Angry-Daddo-Voice invective, which sometimes works, but does require warning the other person. ("Hey, I'm going to yell." "All right." "GERRROUT OF IT!") Scamper scamper scamper.
This autumn, they discovered both suet and the bird feeders.
As Jeff put it: they ate a whole LOAF of suet. Naturally, they knocked a bird feeder over and emptied it also.
However, the raccoons did.
The first morning, I found the jar tipped over, the lid unscrewed and a small, tidy spill of seeds on the porch.
In the morning, the birdseed was not on my mind. I was blithely drinking my coffee and being all China-to-Peru about the dew-laden field opposite the porch.
I changed lids and put the jar inside. Thin the tin walls of Base Camp may be, and permeable as sponge, but there is a geographical limit to transgression.
You'd think, anyhow. When the light slants just right, a distinct handprint can be seen on the window that looks into the sleeping nook at Base Camp. Maybe two inches across, the little handprint is smeared on the window that stands a good three feet off the ground. I try not to imagine why a raccoon climbed up and appears to have pushed –– pushed!–– on the window that looks into our sleeping quarters.
Nevertheless, I find myself weighing a few options:
Which is where I hit pause. The bandits were here first. They raid for a living.
I'll start by making it prohibitively difficult for them to get satisfaction around Base Camp before taking lethal steps. Muah ha ha.
But in shadows? As with every happening hotspot in the known world, predators are just waiting for the opportunity to prey. It might be a small life-and-death drama, but at the Farm, we are talking actual life and death.
Along comes the big bad. Slithering. Licking the air with a forked tongue for the scent of mousey love. Perhaps the big bad has developed a taste for these tender morsels in their nuptial bower. Or wants to. In a moment comes a squeaking in the humid dark. A thump perhaps, and a scrabble...A fierce little battle that no diminutive St. George can hope to win. A final squeak and silence fills Base Camp. The big bad curls around a full tummy and snoozes for a day or a week, and wakes to the delightfully stretchy feeling of impending shed. The nuptial bower now a spa room. Exfoliation and microderm abrasion. Buffed. Polished. And then vamoosed. Leaving the mess for the maid.
The modern game-trail camera is an enduring pleasure. Eight lithium batteries and a 16-gig card about doubles the price for one of these sturdy little gizmos, but it's still an bargain peep into the wildlife show at the Farm. Each season brings its surprises past the motion detector. Sometimes a bear. Sometimes a bird –– or squirrel! –– mid-flight. We nearly always have coyotes and deer. But the surprise this summer was the repeated photo of a free-range Highland Cow (knows in Scotland as the Heeland Coo). We were rooting for her: she the last of her herd, escaped from the roundup when the neighbor sold off all of his cows in the spring. We heard how she'd jumped the fence and headed for the hills. When wrangled into an old barn, she leaped through a glass window for freedom. Burst out and was gone with what I imagine was a sassy flick of her blonde tail. There, we thought, is a cow who knows which side of the fence is which. Cue the music from Born Free. She looks so at home, as wary as a deer in the woods.
I didn't want to ask the follow-up question in September. Let's all pretend that she's running free still. Let's pretend that instead of thinking about whether she irritated the guy with the gun, or how she got packaged by the pound. Or any of her last moments. Thanks Matt Munro, for the words Andy Williams sings on the dopey movie that gave me an unreasonable penchant for dented old Land Rovers: "Stay free where no walls divide you/You're free as the roaring tide/So there's no need to hide. Born free." During our 9000-mile trek around the western US, we learned a few things about Utah. First, it's got zillions of acres of dramatic desert scenery and otherworldly rock formations. One ranger-led evening program included an entertaining slide show where the audience was invited to guess: Mars? Or Utah? It was harder than you might expect. Second big thing about Utah? Mormonism. What we don't know about the religion would fill a library. (Just for the record: our ignorance extends to nearly all branches of belief. We are non-denominational like that.) But thanks to the Big Parks Trip, we do know why there are orchards at Capitol Reef National Park, and why the fort at Pipe Springs was built. Here's my abbreviated version of the history: Back in the day (mid 1800's), when Mormons were facing persecution in the eastern US, Brigham Young led his followers into the Utah Territory, where they could practice their religion without oversight or interference from the government. Since, naturally, the territory was not yet a state. Long story short, the conflict between faith and state came to actual war between Young's followers (the Nauvoo Legion) and the US Army.
As in, one can wander around in the orchard and eat apricots to one's heart's content. 3000 or so fruit trees are maintained by the National Parks Service (the last settlers moved out in the 1960's after selling their land to the Park). An earthly paradise. And likewise, the Mormon ranch at Pipe Springs is a National Monument. Halfway between Zion National Park and the Grand Canyon, Pipe Springs served as a stop-over for early tourists out west. My historical summary: For time immemorial, local Kaibab Paiute people came here on their annual circuit. At the end of winter, this little oasis was full of rice grass and small game. And for time immemorial, the Paiutes moved along for better hunting and gathering as the seasons changed.
Luckily for the Mormons, these particular natives were not a warlike lot. Between small-pox, TB, and starvation, the local population of natives dwindled pretty rapidly.
Drought and ongoing federal prosecution of polygamy (check out the Edmunds-Tucker Act of 1887 for some stimulating thought on church vs. state) put an end to Mormon ownership of the ranch. It became a National Monument partly because Pipe Springs offered a way-station between the Grand Canyon and Zion National Park, Today, the water rights are split between the Kaibab Paiute Tribe, the National Parks Service, and a group of descendants of the cattle farmers. The Kaibab Paiute (now numbering 200 souls) would still like to have the spring back, by the way. Ironically, of course, when the states came into being, Pipe Springs ended up in Arizona rather than Utah. Which is another thing we learned about Utah. Additional References https://www.kaibabpaiute-nsn.gov/KPTCEDS.pdf https://www.everyculture.com/multi/Le-Pa/Paiutes.html http://itcaonline.com/?page_id=1166 https://heritage.utah.gov/tag/the-paiute-tribe-of-utah https://www.deseretnews.com/article/865574356/A-visit-to-pioneer-oasis-Arizonas-Pipe-Spring.html Pariediolia is the name for the native human tendency to construct faces out of random patterns. Like Arcimaboldo's work, but by chance rather than art. The word comes from the Greek for something like "wrong image." Spotting the face of St. Lucia on your flatbread pizza –– mental illness notwithstanding –– is bonus in our evolutionary heritage of pattern recognition. It's related to the way that when confronted with a paper plate decorated with bull's eyes, a wee bitty baby serves up the same charming goo-goo eyes for the plate as he gives to actual human faces. Survival of the most charming. Which tells me that the point of imagination is to actually and genuinely save your life. But what's it called when you spot horses everywhere? A long winter, a late spring. The shape of the land shows like the ribs of a hungry animal this early in the spring. Waiting for the arrival of spring, Mr. Linton and I blazed a couple of new trails. It's easier to make a way without having to part that modesty-drape of leaves and grass. Naming the trails is surprisingly difficult, for what we end up calling them.
Anyway, a few days and a few yellow blazes later, we now we have Dead Possum Trail (named for the skeleton we found, natch) and what I first thought would be Trillium Trail. Then we noticed this: So, Broken Wagon Trail it is.
Okay, yes, it's not technically a wagon. Neither is it precisely broken. But Abandoned Hay Rake Trail doesn't have the same ring, does it? Plus Mr. Linton named it, and what he says, goes. Sometimes. This time. Back to the narrative. Late spring this year: even the old oaks seemed to be having a hard time waking up. |
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