21 January: a muddy tumble

At home

Thursday, 21 January 2021

Zinc and Faerie

Sometimes the cats like to be in the windowless laundry room even on a nice day. I do not understand.

When I went out to bring the wheelie bin in from the street, I noticed my mom’s favourite rose, Joseph’s Coat, has flowers.

The tiny flowers on the Azara microphylla are budded but not yet smelling of vanilla.

• 

• 

I could not resist going out to the willow grove again, this time with one little mission, digging up some more rubble. I took the big loppers and the heavy pick.

On the way, I admired some crocus in the back garden….

• 

• 

…and my Old Blush rose has flowers, too, not unusual for winter. It’s known as The Monthly Rose because it manages to bloom in every month.

I was pleased with the look of my contorted filbert…

….but I don’t like the look of that gall and wonder if I should remove that branch. It’s more like a main trunk so I don’t especially want to remove it.

I took an after from the same angle of my “before pruning” photo.

• 

• 

Skooter accompanied me to the willow grove…

• 

• 

….and watched while I loaded a wheelbarrow full of holly twigs and ivy, which I put into the wheelie bin. I them returned to the willows to pry out some rubble.

Standing on a slight slope at the edge of the seasonal pond, I extracted a couple of old bricks and decided to cut a big willow branch in order to reach more ivy on the edge of the pond. It was almost too big for the loppers so I pressed down hard on the handles, leaning over. The blade cut through sooner than I thought and I lost my balance and tumbled face first into the muddy water!

I fell sideways from where my hat and loppers are

I couldn’t even get up at first, with one side of my face slammed into the mud and my hoodie caught on a branch. I had asked Allan to come help me pry one stubborn piece of rubble and wondered if I’d have to wait there till he showed up. Fortunately, I managed to extricate myself. Then, being a good catastrophizer, I imagined how bad it could have been. I could have landed with my eye on a stick. Or my head on a piece of rubble. Or, a week ago when the rainwater pond was deeper, I could have had my head underwater. It could have meant a trip to the emergency room, thus totally violating our Covid protocols.
I am grateful that the only result was a very muddy face and bruises on my knees that still sore two days later.

I remembered when, years ago, Bryan’s brother Morgan had bought property on Lasqueti Island, British Columbia. While exploring his new woodland with his wife, he fell off a log and pierced his side with a branch. He had to be life flighted (by helicopter) off the island to a hospital (and recovered completely). I remember saying to Bryan that surely the medical expenses would wipe out his savings, only to be reminded that as a dual citizen of the USA and Canada, all of Morgan’s medical bills were covered by the Canadian health system.

I returned to the house, washed the mud off my face and went back to the willows, this time taking a plastic chair in case I needed to sit down. Gardening is a dangerous sport. When England first went into Covid lockdown last spring, citizens were asked to avoid gardening and do it yourself projects to avoid injuries. Not using secateurs was especially advised!

Allan pried out the two pieces of rubble that I had been unable to get.

• 

  some rubble

Rubble can be useful in the garden, as described by Bob Nold in his excellent book High and Dry, in which he suggests building a garden berm atop of a spine of rubble (and other things; he’s joking about some of them):

I had in mind two more big branches for Allan to cut. (The chain saw is sort of his toy, and the chain has been slipping. I didn’t want to wreck it.) The first cut removed a stubby trunk and made a nice cove for planting something. The second cut removed a long branch that was hanging over Alicia’s debris pile, from when her back yard was leveled last year.

• 

• 

• 

  chopping up the long branch

• 

  That pile of ivy will be dealt with eventually.

I had found two concrete blocks while cutting ivy off of an old stump. Allan extricated them—not easy—and used them to improve a place where we’d had similar blocks for stepping through deep seasonal water outside the southwest corner of our deer fence.

• 

• 

His enthusiasm for and interest in the willows grove project had increased, as I knew it would, because it is fun to refine an area. He kept finding things to saw while I kept pulling ivy.

• 

• 

Easier access to ivy along the pond

He smoothed off a potential sitting spot or place to plant something on a willow trunk.

I planted some dormant Siberian Iris and Persicaria bistorta superba, (not sure how deer resistant they will be) and some foam flower, planted some Darmera peltata in the mucky water’s edge where my face had rested earlier and tossed some gunnera seeds along the edge on the off chance one might take. I remembered three potted sword ferns that I could plant, but by then it was dusk and I was too tired.

Two ivy and holly piles will be removed.

I did make an at home work board…

…from which willow grove will be erased after I get rid of one of those two piles of holly and ivy (which will take awhile as it won’t all fit in the wheelie bin).

In other news, our state announced this week that folks 65 and up can get the vaccine, but the county health department phone were jammed. I had friends who said they called 45 times, 90 times, got put on hold for an hour, and never got through. I decided to wait a day rather than spend a good weather day on the phone. Today, the health department stopped taking calls because their phone system can’t handle it. There was a form to fill out online, which we did immediately, but now they are out of vaccine. Still, more is coming, and we should get a call about getting the Jab fairly soon.

Finally, in today’s wonderful news: