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(cue creepy music)
It’s late at night – after a long day. Four loads of laundry washed, hung out, brought in, folded. Three meals cooked, eaten, and dishes washed. Hours and hours and hours of school work.
I’m really tired.
I snuggle down in my big, big bed, with two pillows squashed behind me. A little reading light on the bedside table. My better half is already snoring softly. My latest favorite mystery, The Subtle Serpent, and I are settling down in the quiet, dark house for what I hope will be an extended time of relaxation and thrill.
I’m completely lost in the mysterious crew-less ship and Sister Fidelma’s heart-stopping discovery of her dear Brother Eadulf’s belongings where they should not be when I feel the tiniest tickle on my right shin.
I absent mindedly reach down to relieve the itch when I see a tiny speck slowly making its way up the front of my leg.
(cue long, ear-piercing shriek)
It is one of those hateful, exasperating, insidious deer ticks!
Yes, friends, they’re back! The bane of carefree frolic in sun-warmed fields; the nemesis of all lovers of lap dogs and cats; the scourge of all those who would want to trek in verdant forests . .
I’m talking about the ectoparasite of all ectoparasites.
The Tick.
Evidently, hatred of them is not novel. Pliny the Elder said of ticks, “[they are] the foulest and nastiest creatures that be.”
Magister dixit!
I quickly pinch the odious Ixodes scapularis and crawl out of bed to find a lighter. Tick dispatched, my better half mumbles that he found one on youngest just at bed time. Skin crawling, I pull back the covers of her bed to see yet another one slowly making its march up the bed toward its blissfully unaware victim.
That does it! There’s nothing else for it but to burn the house down and move to Éire.
Since I can’t quite get my better half to see my logic and tearful appeals do not move him, I resort to completely vacuuming the house, evicting all four-legged animals with applications of Frontline, and a comprehensive treatment plan for the yard. Not all that night, of course. I can’t get my better half to agree to that either.
ARGH!
Ticks. One perennial I could do without.
One of the joys of gardening with perennials is watching them come back each year. I admit to a sort of nervousness – especially with young perennials. There are always the doubts that run through my mind as the winter days start to fade away – did I give them enough water the previous year? Was the winter too harsh? Did some varmint or disease take hold over the winter. . .?
What a wonderful moment when I first start to see green appear on what previously looked dead and gone!
I’m thrilled this year to see my blueberry bushes vigorously leafing out. I bought them from a cheap, cheap mail-order nursery two years ago and they arrived as dried-out sticks. I thought for sure I’d be returning them, but gave them a go first. Unbelievably, they grew.
Until last year when they met the lawnmower.
Early in the season I went out to check on the blueberries and apple trees and found one of the blueberries gone. In its place was a cleanly-cut stump. Of course, no one did it. Oh, well.
But then, a couple of months later, No-one struck again.
No use crying over chewed up bushes. But then, the drought arrived and with a well supporting a family and a thriving business, there wasn’t a whole lot I could do for my little blueberry bushes but watch them slowly start to shrivel up. I hoped I was giving them enough water to survive, even if they weren’t going to thrive.
The winter was much wetter, but I wasn’t sure my fledgling plants were going to make it.
But today, I looked out from the front porch and saw blueberry bushes, gloriously dressed in green. In spite of drought, careless lawn maintenance, and all manner of inattentiveness on my part, they have managed to present themselves once again.
Hooray! They’re back!
A benefit of having children around and constantly underfoot is the need to never have to watch a late-night comedy show to get good laughs and extend your life. Of course, with children, the abundance of humorous antics is counter-balanced by all of the life-shortening, heart-stopping moments and so it is all a wash.
But, at any rate, Spring is the best time to have a couple of children around – especially if they are between the toddler and teen years.
Today I took a break from work, housework, school, motherhood and wifedom and decided to relax a bit on our front-porch swing. Of course, it is impossible to escape children entirely without the use of a motorized vehicle and it wasn’t ten minutes before the two youngest were on the front porch as well.
The youngest, a tow-headed, curly top of 3, was as usual sans pants. Underwear was there (very proud of that, thank you), but inside out. No matter. Of course, it really isn’t warm enough to be out without pants. Or shoes and socks. But she had on a turtle neck, so she was “fine.”
There was lots of water in puddles on the porch from 3 days of rain and lots of dogwood blossoms, recently blown off by the storms. And she didn’t want to get her feet dirty. So, she pranced about on tip-toes, dutifully avoiding water and dirt.
Until her sister came out.
Sister was dressed more appropriately – jeans and along-sleeved shirt. But barefoot. It didn’t take 30 seconds for her to figure out that if she walked in the puddles, she could then make lots of footprint patterns on the rest of the porch.
Youngest forgot all about the need to stay clean and after tracking a multitude of foot prints, she proceeded to sneak down the side steps, into the yard. Still on tip-toes, to avoid the feel of wet grass, I suppose. I finally had to haul her back on the porch – visions of CPS showing up to investigate a 3 year old wandering around in a turtle neck and undies kept flashing on the CNN of my mind.
But before I did, I took the time to enjoy watching her explore the wet, green, Springy yard. A forgotten water-color rinse jar became a pot of soup and the paintbrushes were the “stir-ers.” The dog’s water bowl and a sea shell were an ocean and its mermaid. The ants were monsters (aren’t they always?) – danced around, screamed at, and finally squashed with an empty watering jug. Spent camellia blossoms were highly coveted as decorations for the ever-planned tea party. And the dog, was, of course, the family dinosaur – alternately run from and chased after.
Ah! Spring and Children are the best season there is.
Spring is finally here. Not that we had much of a winter – as the abundance of ticks, mosquitoes and other pests proves.
There is something just wonderful about spring. Yes, all of the cliches: the new green grass, the leafing out trees, the early daffodils. They are all just wonderful and every year, new again.
This year, I started a jiffy tray of tomatoes, black-eyed susans, butterfly weeds, cilantro, parsley, lettuce, candy tuft, zinnias, vinca and a perennial favorite snapdragons. Instead of rigging up a multi-tiered, indoor seed-starting station like I did last year, I just did one tray and used 2 “natural light” table lamps as the light-source.
In the middle of getting all of that going, our refrigerator died (it has since been revived!) and I had to drag out a dorm-sized refrigerator for our use. We set that up in our breakfast room (rearranging the furniture – my second, favorite hobby) and I realized that the top of it was just the right temperature for keeping little seeds nice and snuggly warm. So, the jiffy tray got moved there, lights, too, and sure enough, the seeds were germinating in record time.
A couple of weeks ago, a number of them had gotten to the point that I had to transplant them into larger cups. Even though the little cases that enclose the peat in the jiffy trays are supposed to be biodegradable, I’ve always found them to be not as degradable as advertised and so I always peel that part off. So, I transplanted the tomatoes (Roma, Cherry, Early Girl, and Better Boy), some black-eyed susans, the butterfly weeds, cilantro, zinnias and some vinca. (And I promptly started some more seeds!)
My zinnias immediately died. This makes 2 years of trying to start them – according to the seed packet instructions – maybe they are better started directly outside. Or better yet, bought from the local nursery! Or maybe that would be wimpy. Hmmm. . .
Outside already in the raised bed gardens are some wonderful Swiss Chards, peas and sugar snaps. I can’t wait to put the tomatoes in and some cucumbers. And squash. Oh, and purple-hulled peas. In fact, I have more things I’d like to plant than I have room for. I’ve thought of bribing the local farmer when he comes to plow his field, if he’ll just plow up a small section for me!
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I do so love this time of year – the birds, the gentle breezes, the chance to finally get out and feel the warmth of the sun on our faces.
