nature of things

There’s a cypress tree in the space between my property line on the east and the fence around the backyard of Montreal’s old house. If you know anything about cypress trees their roots send up ‘knees’ and if the area around that tree is mown, whatever growth gets shaved off by the mower and they end up looking like this. This is a big one. Most are considerably smaller in diameter. This one is 14” at its widest.

August is always hot but the last couple of weeks have been brutal, and still no rain. but here we are at the end of the month, days are getting noticeably shorter and the next ten or so the highs have dropped about 5 degrees, so mid-90s. Not much but I’ll take it. And rain is predicted for the next several days. One can only hope. It’s about all I can do to keep the plants in pots and stuff in the ground watered, keep the water freshened in the three birdbaths. I have plants that need to be repotted in bigger pots but I just can’t seem to make myself mix up the dirt and do it knowing that I’ll come in wet with sweat dripping off me, then sit under the fan on high for the next 30 minutes while I cool off.

The clump of pampas grass at the other end of the street is putting out new plumes (I took a picture but the sun was just blasting it and I'm not walking down there again before I post this). That surprised me, it’s one of the signs that the season is heading toward change. It seems early. Snow-on-the-prairie is also a portent of cooler temps but I haven’t seen any of that yet. The tallows are dropping leaves though but I think that has more to do with the drought than changing seasons. Speaking of tallows, there are two small ones on the west property line one of which lost a big limb last year. That limb had been dead for a couple of years before it finally fell. I was walking by that tree yesterday when I noticed a hole had opened up at the base and obviously dead bark above it so I reached down and pulled the bark away and more and more and wood pulp, some of it so dry it basically turned to dust in my hand and pulp that was wet and spongy. That whole tree is rotting from the inside. 

First picture above shows all the material I pulled out down on the ground, next picture a close up. Looks like a torso with the hips narrowing at the waist and widening with two arms reaching up. Both those limbs are rotten all the way up all while they are furiously putting out new foliage from the solid outer bark. The last picture is a chunk of the soft spongy stuff that came out of the center.

I filled the bird feeder yesterday morning. The white wing doves had it more than half empty in about an hour. This morning they are already coming to check it out but it will stay empty today even though the little birds keep looking in my window like aren’t you forgetting something? I’ve been seeing a little hummingbird mornings and evenings and more butterflies; fritillaries, swallowtails, long wings, a few sulfurs; migrating through, also signs of season change. The orange cosmos has some open blooms but haven’t started their big display yet. They are a favorite of the migrating butterflies though this one is on the Mexican bird of paradise.

I’ve been working on the new shadow box, started painting the cattails. Because the elements are long and narrow I decided to glue two pieces of watercolor paper together to stiffen them up, give them more body. Experimented with one of the leftover first attempt at leaves on the previous box to see how much more difficult it would be to cut through two layers (and glue) of paper. More effort but doable especially since the cuts are all going to be mostly smooth straight lines (as opposed to serrated edges on leaves). 

The neighbors next door that were renting Montreal’s old house moved out. Last weekend I saw a flatbed trailer backed up to the open front door and a few days later I noticed all the curtains were gone and no lights or activity, no car coming and going. Today they came back to finish cleaning up, picked up some trash around the yard and then emptied the house of trash and piled it all up on the side of the street and drove off. 

No idea if they are going to come back for the trampoline frame and jumping surface which never got attached (I think not at this point). But that pile of trash? The rural trash pick up that we residents in the county have to subscribe to (and I have no idea if they did since I never saw them put a trash can out, they were burning it for a while and I saw them put a bag in someone else’s can once) will not pick that shit up, not like that. Neither will the county. So it remains to be seen if the owner of the house will take care of it when they come inspect the house and property. Which surely they will do.