Backyard update: Wings
by Anton Zuiker on June 17, 2019
A hummingbird visited the flower bed in the front of the house. On the back deck, sitting with a friend for breakfast and a leisurely chat, I watched a variety of wasps and flies buzz through, interested in the underside of the big umbrella. The other day, as I walked in the woods, a pileated woodpecker flew up from a fallen tree trunk, the bird’s size astonishing me. The cats chase fireflies in the evening.
The chicks, meanwhile, have been moved from the laundry room to the deluxe chicken coop out next to the garden. Their feathers are coming in, and they race across their yard flapping their wings.
We’ve worked hard on this house and land, and only in the last few days have I been able to pause to look and listen and notice. I delight in the morning bird chorus, and am mesmerized by the late-day sunlight angling through the tree trunks. There’s a peacefulness all around, even as life is busy in its many ways.
Benign neglect and hands in dirt
by Anton Zuiker on May 6, 2019
Deer antler found in the woods
Home after a full day of work, already dusk, but some unexpected sod to lay down and a garden box to get leveled and filled with new soil. I finished in the dark, feeling with my hands in the fragrant dirt to place four young tomatillo plants. A smell of the farm, the blanket of night, and a satisfied calm within.
Yesterday, Sunday with afternoon rain showers forced me to rest. I sat with the paper on the front porch. Erin and the girls went out to shop and sighted the first box turtle of the year crossing the gravel road. I’m still delighted in my find from a couple of weeks ago, a deer antler that was in the back woods. Another deer ate the leaves off the apricot tree I’d just planted. The squirrels have visited the cherry tree, and the pileated woodpeckers continue to pound at the downed yellow poplar tree behind the abandoned shed.
Last month, Randall the sawyer brought his mobile mill up to the house to slice the blackjack oak, red oak, and white oak stacked on the edge of the road since the tree trimming in March. We finished stacking the boards only yesterday, a big pile out in the shade of the woods. “Stack them, cover, and let benign neglect take over,” said Randall. In a year or two, we’ll take some of the slabs to his Fireside Farm workshop so he can make tables, including a long table for backyard dinners with friends. For sure there will be tomatillo salsa and maybe fireflies as dusk settles over us.
Appreciation and birthday cake
by Anton Zuiker on May 2, 2019
April is over, which means all our birthdays are past for another year. We ate a lot of cake, and now we’re working off the calories with a lot of work in the yard. Oliver helped me build another cedar garden box to go in the large enclosure that’s been erected out back. Anna, who turned 18 and selected a college—UNC Greensboro been mowing the green grass in the reseeded yards. (She just walked in from a track meet, where she competed in the shot put and 200-yard race, and reported her best throw and run yet.) Malia’s been busy every night for a few weeks preparing for her part in the high school play.
Erin, of course, has been behind all of the progress at the house, and helping each of us in our activities. We wanted to to show her how much we appreciate all she does for her family, friends, and community, so we planned a surprise birthday party for her, and asked friends and family to show their appreciation by sending a letter of love or other creation. The surprise worked, and Erin enjoyed the shower of love (cards are still coming in). She deserved it. She’s amazing.
For Erin’s party, I bought cupcakes. She expected a birthday cake, but understood the change. For years, we’ve gotten cakes at Whole Foods Market in Chapel Hill the day of each birthday. We craved the buttercream frosting, put the uneaten half under the glass dome of the cake stand, and finished it the next day. But now that Amazon owns Whole Foods, the cakes are almost always frozen when we buy them, and there’s less of the yellow cake inside, and the service at the counter is poor.
“We’ll just have to bake our own cakes from now on,” said Erin.
I do want to spend more time in our kitchen. Oliver requested his favorite chicken with Asian-style sweet-and-sour sauce (we call it Burn Your Lips Chicken), so I cooked that for him this week. This summer, there will be garden vegetables to cook for dinner, and cherries and plums and pears (the deer got to the apricot tree I’d planted before I could get a protective fence around it), and other occasions to celebrate with a cake or pie. We’ll sit on the back deck and appreciate it all, and each other’s presence, and life all around.
Pulchritude and opprobrium
by Anton Zuiker on April 12, 2019
Evening yesterday was warm and calm, everything coated by the yellow pine pollen that has covered North Carolina the last week. I stepped out onto the back deck to survey the grass that’s coming up around the house. Carpenter bees were buzzing about, bumping into the flashing above the screen porch and crawling up into their holes.
Today, rain. I got home from work as a deluge was flooding the road and yard, overwhelming the new French drain and rock path along the house.
We settled in for family movie night. Erin selected Akeelah and the Bee, which we’ve watched time and again though this was Oliver’s first. When Akeelah was at the state bee, I went out with the flashlight to meet Malia down at the park to walk her home. I tiptoed slowly down the path through the woods, expecting to meet a copperhead at any step. Thankfully, no serpents were in the shadows.
Back the bee, as usual, I cried. Such a sweet movie. But I was also crying from sadness, having read the short poem Sea Prayer by Khaled Hosseini, calling humanity to witness the flight of refugees trying to get across the water to some place, any place, of safety and hope.
And this on a day when news from the southern border of the United States is more and more dire, and our country continues its refusal to be humane, and the hopeless man who is president plays with fire.
Standing in the rain
by Anton Zuiker on April 8, 2019
A band of thunderstorms came across North Carolina this evening, and our home is drenched. This made it a good night to check the new French drain and gravel path that runs the side of the house. It seems to be working, though a lot of water that runs off the driveway and there’s some puddling still under the big white oak. The shed is leaking, too, even though we paid a guy to patch the roof last summer.
When it rains, I have this urge to go outside and evaluate the gutters, the gullies, the puddles, and the pools. As a boy, I would make dams in the mud, and redirect streams into small ponds of my making. As a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Vanuatu, stuck in our house for a week at a time while cyclone rains pounded the tin roof, I moved jars around the floor to catch water dripping through the nail holes in the tin, and I watched nervously from the door as rivers of water and mud formed outside.
The rain tonight was welcome, watering the newly seeded lawn all around this solid, dry, silent house.