Dear Everybody,
In the past six weeks it’s been winter, summer, winter, spring, summer, and today we’re back to spring again. I’m ready to be done with the cold, but I’ve had a few chances to make some progress ahead of the main season, and that’s been satisfying. I feel pretty well prepared for the summer scramble.
The holidays were a bit less jolly than I had hoped for, thanks to some health issues that I finally tracked down to a contaminated blanket hung over a doorway to help with the drafts. There were no emergencies, however, which is not to be taken for granted at this point. I celebrated Chinese New Year with rather more gusto than usual, as a stand-in.
Among the lovely things I received for Christmas were a weather station (courtesy of my brother) and a new phone, courtesy of… well, me. I decided it was about time, and picked up a used Pixel 6. I hope you enjoy the dramatic increase in photo quality as a result; the difference is stunning. Check out the photo album and see. And the weather station has been incredibly useful, giving me immediate information and graphing trends that help me stay on top of things.
Early January did bring a light fall of snow, with a hard crust the cats could walk on easily. I kept myself busy by clearing out half of the upstairs greatroom (the Lift) and turning the area around the treadle sewing machine into a workspace. Then I bought a dozen yards of muslin and set about creating work clothes that fit me, after a fruitless search for new work pants. I’ve got a pattern for the pants now, and I’m working out a few variations for shirts. Once I’ve washed the fabric I bought a week or so ago, I’ll be able to make the first basic outfits, using the treadle machine. After work clothes I’m sure nicer things will follow.
I engaged in the usual maintenance: shoveling mud off the intake screen for the water box (two Wednesdays in a row), pulling the blower motor in the Accord to remove a mouse nest and former occupant (the first of two times), cleaning the layers of dust out of my bedroom top to bottom, ordering and waiting patiently for a new power brick for the laptop when the existing one suddenly died, scrubbing the upstairs bathroom more thoroughly than it had been cleaned in decades. Winter is full of a lot of waiting, when the weather is in the high 20s and not sure whether it wants to drizzle or snow.
Until the first week of February, when it suddenly turned quite warm and sunny. The gardener in me awoke, and before I knew it I was spending long days outside, clearing trash and rocks before the weeds could grow up and hide them, digging new garden beds, spreading lime, pulling out brambles, and several rather ambitious projects I hadn’t expected to do so early in the year. I dismantled the remnant of the old fence by the workroom and turned the steep muddy track next to it, the one down into the garden proper, into a series of low steps. Having the fence out of the way allowed me to put a ladder up, and I finally installed the scupper box and drainpipe for the valley between the garage and workroom roofs, so the runoff no longer spatters all over the outer walls and the door to the passageway.
I dug out a bunch of raspberries, planted what I could in two long rows parallel to the workroom windows (across the path), and gave the surplus plants to Darlene. I dug most of the Cascade blackberries out of the honeysuckle hedge and gave a few of them a new bed, at least for the time being, in the garden. I created an herb bed on top of a concrete walkway I discovered below the dining room windows, eliminating a thicket which has been in my way for several years. I covered a bunch of the rampant comfrey with sheets of cardboard and weighed it down with tires, in an effort to smother it. And I cleared the brambles and dead grass out of the rest of the garden, which will hopefully make it possible to maintain with the electric mower. It looks so much neater now. And that was just in one week…
Two weeks later, the snow hit. First just a little, which was fine. Then on the first day of March it was 2023 all over again, as I got the first of several rounds of up to eight inches, leaving me with a snowpack of close to two feet. At least this time I had been able to park the Accord near the road. I wasn’t desperate, though; I took stock of my supplies and decided I’d be fine for at least a few weeks, and it wouldn’t be difficult to dig the car out. So I settled in and worked on sewing.
By a week later, the snow was retreating, and it didn’t look likely that I’d get any more. The real thaw came on Pi Day, and I was quite ready to say goodbye to it for this year. While it was nice to be able to take the car out to run necessary errands, it’s a long walk out to the road in knee-deep snow.
And I had another reason to wish the driveway to clear: the drains stopped working in the second week of March. I realized it when the kitchen sink threw my pasta water out of the washing machine drain (currently unused) at the back of the kitchen; in a moment of horror, I realized that wasn’t supposed to be the lowest point in the system, and rushed into the bathroom to find the tub full to within an inch of the top. If I hadn’t cooked that particular late dinner, I might very well have gone to bed and woken up to the kitchen and back hall under an inch or more of water, as the kitchen tap (which still doesn’t turn off) peacefully ran all night.
Yes, I’m getting that fixed.
I have particular incentive now, as the snow made it impossible to call in a plumber, and even though I went off to buy a drain auger—it seemed like a prudent thing to have on hand, given the surliness of the drains here—I had no way to hike the dang thing over 600 feet to the garage in 6” of snow. So it sat in my car for the rest of the week while I waited for the weather to improve, and I ended up leaving the water turned off, as even the cutoff for the kitchen sink is frozen. I know how to manage without running water, and I know how to handle grey water (thanks to my days at Burning Man), but by the time I ended up doing three loads of laundry and a bath out at the picnic table with hot water boiled on the stove, I was very ready for a change. I’m just lucky the toilets have their own system that wasn’t having any apparent trouble, though hauling water up the stairs gets tiring.
Rue came to help me bring in the auger (in a sled) and provide a second person for the operation; it’s always good to have someone who can run around, throw buckets of water down the drain, and watch various points for changes. We worked on it for several hours, though the cleanout for the grey water was too small and angled badly for the auger to get into it upstream. Using the sink snake I already had, we cleared something, but the flow was still sluggish. I went out to dig up the distribution box to the leach field, which might be full of mud again, and while hunting for it (it still wasn’t marked) I found the water table instead. 16” beneath the orchard, which put it higher than the drainage pipes and the gravel. The leach field was flooded.
After Rue went home, I walked out into the near pasture, which is where the leach field runs. There was still some snow, but only in the higher patches of ground; the rest was covered in a thin sheet of water. I knew from exploring behind the Shippen several weeks earlier that the beavers had dammed the east creek in so many places that it no longer had any coherent watercourse; it was heading overland from several different points, and converged at the foot of the pasture to create a new little waterfall. Between the light rain and the snowmelt, the water table was at or above ground level in most places. I grumbled about rodents and made plans to dig a new creekbed this summer. Or maybe sooner.
Back to waiting. A few days ago, I checked the cleanout, checked the D-box (which I finally located, and have now marked), and threw a couple buckets of water down the drain without incident. The snow was gone, and a few sunny days had worked their magic. Great! So yesterday I tackled the mountain of dishes from ten days of having no running water… and the tub backed up again. But the cleanout didn’t. Some extra work with the small snake dislodged a substantial solid clog, and suddenly I was home free. Hopefully that’s the end of it… for now.
But I had already asked Rue to help me fix the washers on the knobs of the kitchen faucet so that it doesn’t run constantly, and I’m going to keep that appointment. I’ll thank myself next time. And I’ll think about adding a second cleanout angled upstream.
I’m sowing a couple of pots of seeds every week, according to my planting calendar, and I scored a bundle of strawberry roots that are now tucked neatly into a new bed. I got some rabbit manure to brighten the day of the various plants waking up; the daffodils and violets are here, and the berry canes are sporting tiny new leaves. And I spotted clusters of red where the rhubarb has been sleeping all winter… before long it’ll be time for fresh fruit pies. I’m quite pleased with the state of the garden right now, and I’m very much looking forward to making even more progress this season.
Finally… the bridge. Yes, it’s still vaporware. I spoke to the contractor a couple of days ago, and he said the permits should be ready by now; he promised to nudge the Department of State Lands and let me know. So I’m waiting on that, and hoping it’s not long now. We’re still not sure whether they’ll waive the requirement to wait until summer for work in the waterway; they had been muttering about emergency vehicle access and urgency. But I’m cautiously optimistic that work will commence by June at the latest. I can’t wait—you have no idea how many projects are on hold, and I want the vehicles under cover.
By that time I suspect I’ll have multiple plates to juggle again; I need to make some headway on finding painters for this house and Jenny’s, I have the materials for the next steps to make the office usable again, and I still haven’t finished the kitchen floor. Plus I need to put new treads on the Bridge to Nowhere before the driveway bridge is demolished, not to mention scrubbing and/or painting a bunch of furniture to make it suitable to bring back into the house, and two or three urgent matters will pop out of nowhere. That’s the way it goes in the warm season. But I’m hoping to fit in the project to redirect the east creek and cut down the thickets around the old creekbed, and once I can drive the truck down to the house I’ll be pulling dump loads not only out of the garage and Annex, but clearing things out of the Shippen to prepare for rebuilding it next year.
So progress is being made, and there is still a long way to go. But that’s the nature of the beast. By the next update we’ll be most of the way through June, and I expect I’ll have a lot of things to report. I hope warmer weather treats you well, and I’ll see you then.
—Sam
[P.S.: If you’d like to help me with the cost of flea medicine, you can toss a couple of dollars at my Ko-fi page. Artie has the worst flea allergy I’ve ever seen, and I’m doing my best to keep him comfortable.]