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pine seedlings in the gutter
Saturday, August 4 2018
Because Gretchen and I would be leaving for a week in the Adirondacks tomorrow, and that meant we would be turning our house over to a housesitter. Thus today was a cleaning jihad day. Fortunately for me, Gretchen had already been cleaning and she continued with it today, doing some things (such as vacuuming) that are usually my chores. That freed me to dedicate time to such things as mowing the lawn. I only mowed the south part of the yard (south and west of the garden patches), though I also took a weed wacker to the many weeds encroaching on the bluestone pathway to the front door. At some point I went downstairs to clean up the various bathrooms and roll back some of the mold. The plan was to have our housesitter spend tonight (the only night we would overlap) in the master guestroom, but recent rains and humidity had made that room almost uninhabitable with the smell of mold (and puddles of water that had condensed directly out of the atmosphere onto the floor). I started up the dehumidifier, but there's only so much such a device can do.
Later on, I did something I'd been procrastinating for years: I cleaned out all the gutters (aside from where they were difficult to reach in the middle of the west side of the house and high above the ground on the southeast corner of the house). Since the last time I'd cleaned the gutters, enough soil had accumulated in some of the gutters for pine seedlings and three-foot-tall weeds to take root. I put all the removed soil directly into the garden, and it came to over ten gallons of material. It was a mix of identifiable pine needles, rich black material resembling boggy topsoil, and sand eroded from the shingles, which are (at 24 years of age) collectively approaching the end of their useful life. As always, I worked with my bare hands, and there was something either in the much I removed or in the edges of the shingles that cut into my knuckles like the tiny shards in fibreglass insulation, leaving them feeling raw and afflicted for hours afterwards.
This evening, Gretchen went to UPAC in Midtown Kingston to see Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, so it was just me at the house when a couple of good ole boys from the Blue Ridge of Maryland made a delivery. Gretchens' parents had decided to sell their log cabin vacation house near Camp David, and Gretchen had selected a number of items from that cabin to continue their useful lives with us. Most of those items had been earmarked for the new screened-in porch, though there was also some heavy cast-iron outdoor furniture, an antique roll-top desk, and a sewing table (complete with working pedal-powered wheel!). The guys wrangled the stuff down the stairs and out to the porch while the dogs looked on with a mixture of excitement (Ramona) and concern (Neville). Neville doesn't see too well, and at one point when one of the guys was carrying a futon frame, Neville ran up and grabbed the loose fabric of his trouser. The guy wasn't hurt, but it could've been bad. Afterwards, as the guys marveled at my copper lamps and the whimsical bird made from a crosscut saw blade that hangs in the living room, I tipped them each $20 and sent them on their way.
The dogs were still down on the new futon in Gretchen's screened-in porch, and with the new white swivel chair and ottoman from the cabin, I wanted to be there too. So I fixed myself a drink of SportTea and gin and sat there with them, running the ceiling fan at full blast. At that moment in time, it was a very pleasant place to be. Had that screen not been there, we would've been besieged by mosquitoes (which have recently started to get bad). But the air in the porch had no such impurities.
Unfortunately, my drinking was interrupted by a Facebook private message from Gretchen asking me to pick up Maja, our housesitter, from the bus station. Gretchen didn't want to leave the Joan Jett concert prematurely. All I had to do was pick up Maja from the bus station and drive her the half mile to the Uptown Hannaford so she could do her shopping for the week, and Gretchen would pick her up there and take her and her groceries back to our house.
I didn't know anything about what Maja looked like when I arrived at the Kingston bus station, although I knew she was Danish. There was a vaguely Nordic-looking woman standing there by herself with her enormous pieces of luggage, though she looked a little stout to be amenable to a week in a vegan household. But it turned out that she was indeed Maja. As I dropped her off at the Ghettoford Hannaford, I told her that she should be on the lookout for weirdoes.
It wasn't long after I returned home that Gretchen returned with Maja. She took an immediate shine to some of our cats, particularly Clarence. It was soon decided that Maja should just get out upstairs bed tonight and Gretchen and I should sleep in the basement guestroom. But with all the dogs and lingering smell of mold, Gretchen decided to sleep upstairs on the living room couch. By then, the night had brought cooler, drier conditions, so I opened the sliding door to the outside world, which immediately improved the room's air quality. I'd neglected to notice that the screen door was open, and only later, in the middle of the night, did I awake to the sound of the several aggressive mosquitoes attacking me and the dogs. Clarence the Cat had been with us earlier, but by then he was gone.
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