Old Lawn Mowers

Was a time when I had little knowledge of or use for things like lawn mowers and weed eaters. That’s no longer the case out here in the country where concrete or paving is minimal and where grass and weeds can grow an inch overnight. I have about two acres of it to subdue every ten days at this time of year and it’s a season when you don’t want to be without a means of keeping all that grass low to discourage the snakes from crossing the fence. Didn’t take me long to learn that tall grass and weeds make an attractive environment for things that slither. My problem from the beginning has been with old and well-worn lawn mowers that have more ailments than a 12-year-old Ford Pinto. I could fill a notebook with all the different mechanical problems plaguing my old lawn mowers. Everything from rusted spark plugs frozen in place to the loss of brakes and steering, you name it, I’ve seen it on those two old antiques.

Last week I went out to crank the Landmaster for a hour or two of mowing and got no response when I turned the key. Not even a cough or the sound of a low battery. That happened not long after three or four other problems that cost me money and left the grass growing high. I have a good neighbor who is at home with his hands inside of motors, so I asked him to have a look at the problem this time. He played with it and got the mower started by pressing a screwdriver against the ignition switch (or something) under the hood. So I managed to get the grass cut that day but decided halfway through I was done with old, played out lawn mowers, that I would look around for a newer machine with a reputable brand and not twelve years old. Things aren’t bad enough yet that I’m going off to Home Depot for a brand new lawn mower tagged at $2000.

Maybe I was lucky to find somebody selling a Husqvarna 23 horsepower mower with a 48-inch deck and only a few years old. (The 48-inch deck means it cuts that width in one pass.) The mower also came newly greased, with new blades and new battery and a warranty. And a big extra for me: free delivery and a discount for giving him the old battered Landmaster. I looked at the Husqvarna website online and got all the specifics so I could at least sound knowledgeable in talking to the guy when he delivered. Otherwise he might try to explain the hydrostatic transmission and see the duh on my face. 

For all the problems I’ve had with previous lawn mowers there’s a repairman not far from here who has served me well. Over the past year he’s tried to convince me that buying gasoline without ethanol for the lawnmower will increase the machine’s longevity. It costs a little more and the closest place to get it is 20 miles away but I’ve made up my mind to start using the no-ethanol gasoline in the “new” Husqvarna. I’ll try almost anything to have the peace of mind that comes with not worrying if the lawn mower is going to start when I want to cut the grass.

The Smell of Cedar

Walking out into the front yard this morning the first thing that grabbed my attention was the smell of cedar. The scent was strong and I thought, “What a great aftereffect to cap an hour of hard work.” A week ago I thought the large dead tree in front yard was a pine tree, information I’d gotten from someone who had their trees mixed up. 

The fact that the big dead tree was a cedar and not pine became obvious with the first cut from a chainsaw, with sawdust spewing out rich with the smell of cedar. The day to cut down the tree was set for yesterday and planned as a three man job but suddenly there were six people, all neighbors coming over to help out. I’ve often said that living out here in the dirt road country of southern Oak Hill has taught me the real meaning of neighborliness. Once that tree was on the ground, it took no more than forty-five minutes to have it stripped of branches, cut into manageable pieces, hauled away and the ground raked clean. The tree’s trunk was eighteen inches across and at its highest about twenty-seven feet. With the yard cleaned up and offering a whole new perspective, my neighbors stood around chatting for a while and then one by one drifted home. 

Scroll down to the March 11 post here and you can see a snap of the tree as it was before being cut down. All that remains now is an eighteen inch tall stump which I have begun sealing as best I can with repeated coats of spar urethane on the cut surface, giving it a clear semi-gloss coating to protect it from rain, moisture and temperature. It will soon be the perfect place to sit out in the yard.

The yard is now open to more sunlight with an improved view looking toward the southwest. Big improvement in the balance of the yard in the opinion of everyone standing around. Besides that, a tall dead tree is not a pretty sight from any angle. Tomorrow good neighbor Randy and I plan to cut one of the branches with a two or three inch diameter into inch thick slices to toss in clothes drawers. Buy the same thing all wrapped up pretty at Bed Bath & Beyond and spend $25 or more.

Don’t Leave Me!

Most of the time when I’m going somewhere farther than next door or down the road, the dawg goes with me. She’s as used to riding in the truck as I am driving it. She expects to go wherever I’m going and all I have to do is open the door and she jumps right in. She knows all the routines of a truck ride, knows she’ll have to wait a few minutes while I run in the store or the library, but also knows that wherever it is, she’ll get the chance to get out and sniff around, “read the newspaper” and have a pleasant, leisurely walk around. That’s most of the time, but occasions arise when she can’t tag along with me and has to stay at home by herself. She’s never locked up in the house, can go out or come in through her dog door, free to spend the time alone chasing armadillos around the yard or dozing inside the house. My guess is, she spends most of that time sitting in the driveway watching for my return.

Farina has a separation complex. People usually talk about that condition in relation to young children, but dogs can have it just as bad. The magazine, Psychology Today says that a separation complex is a normal stage in an baby’s development, that it helped keep our ancestors alive and helps children learn how to master their environment. It usually ends at around age two. To deal with the problem, experts say you should stay calm, be matter-of-fact and sympathetic and that you might say something like, “I know you are upset that I have to go into the kitchen, but I need to cook dinner.” Yeah, if it were only that simple. I’m not sure how it works with young children but I got a lot of experience with the problem in my dog.

In Farina’s case there are only two sides of being left alone: depression and ecstasy. The first happens when it becomes clear that I’m going somewhere and she isn’t, the second when I come home from wherever. It’s pretty hard for me to walk away from the look that comes over Farina when she realizes I’m about to leave her alone. She never follows me to the door, never whines, just retreats to one of her spots, lays her head on the floor and stares at me with big sad eyes. I suspect she stays in that same spot for a while brooding. I try not to stay away for more than a couple of hours but whether it’s two hours or twice as long, when I get home she goes into a frenzy of happiness and relief, jumping up on me, running circles around me, bouncing, dashing off for a spin around the house and yard, back again to jump on me some more.

Unlike a human child, I sort of doubt my dog will ever overcome her separation complex. I should blame myself for nurturing that fear of being apart from her master, but then I also have not fear but regret at being away from my dog. I spend so much time with her at my side that I too am uncomfortable when she’s not there. Lately she has started something new involving closeness. Never anxious when I shoot my .22 rifle or one of the BB guns (just the opposite), when one of my neighbors starts firing a high-powered pistol or rifle, it spooks Farina and if she doesn’t retreat to the bedroom closet, then she presses right up against me, lays across my feet or stands against my leg. Last New Year’s eve she lay tightly against me shivering while the fireworks boomed hour after hour. Maybe I should buy her one of those thunder coats they say soothes a dog during times of loud booms and thunder.

Though I like my dog every bit just the way she is, I do kind of hope she outgrows her fear of being left alone. At almost 4-years-old, she’s no longer a baby.

Simple Choices

One of the good things about life out here on the edge of full-blown civilization is the peaceful nature of days when pressure to get out and about is absent. Like this Saturday, the whole day yawns in front of you with simple choices, all possible with easygoing requirements. Sit in a chair for half the day and watch the wheels go round, wander around the yard to pull a few weeds, pick up a fallen branch, water a few outdoor plants or romp with the dog and a ball. This time it was half an hour with the leaf blower around house and carport followed by several hours in a chair on the back porch reading or watching Farina chase squirrels. 

Sometimes I gaze at the bird feeder wondering where all the redbirds have gone. They used to come around regularly but lately they’ve been off somewhere else. Maybe tired of the particular mix of seeds I’ve loaded the feeder with. Even the squirrels are less interested in getting at it recently. I don’t have the passion to research and run down special (and expensive) mixes of seed to lure them back. Birds are plentiful even if they aren’t gathering around the feeder.

The book I’ve been reading is a crime novel by Nicolás Obregón called Blue Light Yokohama, set in Tokyo, a story about chasing down a serial killer with connections to a cult. The thing I like about this book is the Tokyo setting which the author has done a good job of characterizing. Obregón has made the city another character in the story. I give him credit for doing the job so well considering his semi-brief stay in the city. The back flap bio says that he spent a brief time in Tokyo on a magazine assignment and lives in Los Angeles. Another thing I like is the book’s cover which is a photograph by Masashi Wakui titled Rainy Night in Tokyo. I’ve been a fan of his photography for a while and when I first saw Blue Light Yokohama I felt it was a good sign and checked it out of my local library. I couldn’t figure out the book’s title until I got into it and discovered it is the name of a popular song recorded in 1968 by Ayumi Ishida. The connection is that it was a favorite song of the detective working the serial killer case. I recommend it to anyone who likes crime (mystery) novels with an exotic locale.

Last week I had a day of roof repair and coming up next is cutting down a big pine tree in the front yard. Over the past year the tree has slowly died and now looks a little like it was hit by a sudden freeze or flash fire. Someone is coming out next week to see about cutting it down. Not sure when that will happen since the guy has to look at the tree first and then figure out when he can do the job. What I’ll miss most about the tree is the pretty coat of liverwort growing around the trunk. After a rain it always turns from a crispy brown to a fern-like green. What looks like a big doghouse to the right of the tree is the well house; the larger structure behind that is an unfinished mother-in-law apartment. It’s hard to see the “dead” tree clearly in the picture but believe me, it’s deader than a doornail.

The Saturday air is heating up with a honky-tonk hootenanny back at the sawmill through the trees. Might be the folks there have invited a bunch over for a Bike Week party. I’ve seen a few motorcycles heading back that way and can hear the party heating up. Doubt it’ll be long before the guns come out and the woods ring with gunfire. Poor dawg will have to retire to the bedroom closet where she feels safe.

Pee On It and Walk Away

They grow big on Old Dixie Lane

Without opposable thumbs and a tongue to make words, the dog relies on gentle biting, licking, chewing and her flexible body to communicate with me. Farina’s eyes and the expressions on her face are another way she makes clear what words she would say if she could talk. I look at her every day and understand that by turn she’s confused, angry, happy, impatient or maybe ashamed. With my opposable thumbs and all the words on my tongue, it’s usually me who can’t make himself clear, teed off and impatient that my words and gestures aren’t working and baffled at how a honey-colored bundle with floppy ears and big teeth has grabbed hold of my heart.

It’s slipped my mind where I saw it—probably on a Hallmark card for dogs—but being the dog person that I am, the words struck me as a damn good suggestion and I wrote it down. Here’s what it said: Handle every stressful situation like a dog: If you can’t eat it or play with it, then pee on it and walk away.

Farina went flying out her door this morning, sights set on a squirrel in the backyard camphor tree. I couldn't see what she was bouncing up and down about until I looked hard into the leaves and saw perched on a limb a curved back and fluffy tail outlined against the sky. I brought out one of the two Red Ryder BB guns and took casual aim, not expecting to hit anything. A quiet puff of air, a distant thud and the squirrel went flip-flopping through the air and down to the ground. It rolled to its feet in a second and made a mad dash for the nearest tree with nothing more than a BB dent in its pesky hide. All too fast for the dawg.

Neighbor Randy is a dedicated fisherman and usually out in his boat three or four times a week. He brought over some fresh caught trout the other day. When I think of trout it’s mostly a fish about a foot or foot and a half long. The trout they catch in these parts are sea trout and close to three feet, salt water fish. Randy gives me long, thick filets of it that I batter in Louisiana Seafood Mix and pan fry. Can’t say it’s a Michelin star restaurant in Paris, France but it’s a pretty good supper.

Thorn

Weeds, stickers, thorns and a few dozen kinds of grass flourish in these coastal woods of Florida located at 28° N, 80° W. I’m pretty sure this is the place the man who invented Velcro found his fortune. I can’t walk across the yard without getting patches of Velcro-like stickers all around my cuffs, grabbing a thorny vine by mistake and getting half a dozen burrs on socks and shoelaces. We got it all out here: bedstraw, beggar’s lice, scratchweed and catchweed. Most of the time it’s a minor irritation and plays second fiddle to things like red ants and mosquitos. All part of the big picture out here, which is on most days a good place to be.

A couple of weeks back when I was down the road doing something with neighbor Lamar, the dawg wandered into a patch of grass that was mostly what I call devil burrs, tiny round bulbs spiked all over with needle thorns. Whole thing’s no bigger than a green pea but plain hell to get shed of. Not for the first time Farina came hobbling out of the grass with her pads stuck full of burrs. I did what I always do and pulled the burrs out of her feet, shaking them off my fingers as best I could. I thought no more about it until I got back to the house and felt something in my thumb. It was one of those needle thorns so small I could hardly see it stuck in my thumb.

I tried a dozen times to get that thing out and never even got close. Like I had a sliver of glass in a finger and couldn’t do anything about it. I walked next door to see if Randy’s wife Jean could work the thorn out since she had once before pulled a small splinter out of my hand. She dug around in my thumb for a while, saying she might have gotten it, she couldn’t see anything in there. I went home satisfied but felt the thorn again the next day. I lived with it for a few days, thinking it would work its way out. Never happened. Next time I went over to see Jean she said she was going to try something her mother used to do. First off, she worked a needle around the sore spot to open it up, then took a small piece of salt pork and taped it to my thumb. You coulda wrapped a package with all the tape she used. The salt pork was supposed to draw the thorn out of my thumb. 

But it was all for naught, just as all the digging with needles, spotlights and magnifying glasses were. On the second day of the salt pork poultice I started to worry that aging animal fat pressed against an open hole in my thumb was creepy and risky sounding so I snatched it off and saw the chitterling-sized bit of pork fat had dissolved into my thumb-hole. Now I'm worried that while the thorn is still there, I might contract a case of end-around trichinosis.

Spent a good part of yesterday on the back porch, the air, weather and sky perfect in every way. Hearing the acorns, bits of twig and branch fall onto the tin roof in the breeze, it made me think about the sound of a child’s blocks or Tinker Toys clattering on a tabletop in the next room. The backyard is pretty and trim now with a fresh cutting and the red ants are checking out of their gasoline bathed nests. Sitting there with the newspaper I read that in New York City, a 12 year-old boy pulled a gun on a girl in the subway station and demanded one of her chicken nuggets. She refused to give him one.

Almost forgot, when I was at Lamar’s pulling burrs out of Farina’s feet, Lamar’s fishing buddy was there. He drives a dusty old Chevrolet, faded red with a bumper sticker that says, "Redneck Lives Matter." I wanted to take a picture with my phone but was afraid I might rouse suspicions. 

   

Dawgs & Dollars

Somewhere I read that a long time ago it wasn’t too crazy for a hunter to buy an old mule or horse, take the animal to a remote spot near home, kill it, cut open the hide and then brings his dogs for a feed. A big meal like that could last a good while but sick dogs were common from the decaying meat and the flies. Years later, at a time when dogs still ran free of leashes, when flea collars were unheard of and a can of Alpo was about 50¢, feeding and caring for a pet was still unlike today. Back in the 1950s my dog Jack got by on one can of food a day, didn’t require treats other than a ginger snap now and then, almost never went to the vet and never cost the family more than $4.00 a week. Probably many dog owners spent less than that and had healthy dogs, getting by mostly with scraps from the dinner table. Keeping a dog now is a whole ’nother thing. 

Three years ago when I brought Farina home from the rescue place her diet there was nothing special, getting whatever was donated, what all the other dogs got. Fair to say it was the cheapest dog food available. I changed that in a big way. Thinking a puppy needed healthy food for strong growth, I started out feeding her some yogurt, cottage cheese or oatmeal in the morning, a dish of wet dog food at lunch and a pan of lightly cooked boneless chicken thighs or drumsticks at night. She also got a fat vitamin pill every day. I bought some kibble and put it down for her to graze on but she didn’t much like it. With all that in her bowl daily she went from seventeen pounds to thirty pounds in a month. Sometimes I added carrots or green beans to the chicken or maybe chopped apple or blueberries to the oatmeal. She gobbled that up, loved honey and loved peanut butter. Figured that was all good. She got older and I cut back the amount little by little. All this time the vet was telling me to give her nothing but kibble and friends saying she ought never have people food. The way I saw it, the “people” food such as chicken, apple, carrots and green beans were all 100% healthy for dog or man. 

It took over a year for me, with the vet’s guidance, to understand maybe I oughta try getting away from things like chicken, that maybe that was the reason for Farina’s shabby coat of hair. Her beautiful honey coat started to look like it was thinning, with gray hairless spots along her sides. I tried two different antibiotics and that worked for a while but the hair loss started again. I thought it must be an allergy, maybe  something outside like a plant or a kind of grass. The vet suggested cutting all chicken, chicken meal and chicken by-products from her diet. I did that and the result was almost instant. Within a couple of weeks Farina’s hair was growing back to its natural golden fullness, the gray spots covered by new hair. That was the beginning of a radical change in diet. I started reading labels and eighty-sixing anything that contained chicken by-products, especially chicken meal.

The dawg’s coat was soon back to its natural golden sheen, helped along by no chicken or grain and a supplement of Norwegian kelp (seaweed) added to her new diet of Merrick canned food. She also began eating Merrick buffalo and sweet potato kibble, plus a can of Blue Buffalo beef or lamb two or three times a week.

Only problem now is the cost. The Merrick and Blue Buffalo canned food and kibble cost over $100 a month. That’s hard, even considering it’s delivered free in two days and keeps the dog healthy. But then, what are you gonna do? I figure whatever’s good for the dawg’s good for me too.

Ants Big & Bad

The house on Old Dixie Lane

Roofers came to replace a rusted sheet of tin on the roof, the part over my bedroom that’s been leaking the last few times we’ve had rain. Two guys climbed around on the roof a couple of days back and told me they would come back near the end of the week to do the work. Here they came at 8:30 this morning hauling the materials they needed to do the job and jumping right to it, a big section of the tin roof off inside an hour. Hard to believe but they finished the whole job by noon. The next rainstorm will tell the whole story but no reason to suspect the work was anything but a good job.

The gatepost of big ants

I was closing the gate after the two trucks pulled out and noticed a single ant scurrying up the gate post and couldn't believe I was looking at an ant. Bright red-orange and the size of a small grasshopper, half an inch long with two body sections as big and round as peas. Looked like something with a bite that could take down a full-grown man. With these beasts its both a bite and a sting, the bite to get a grip and the sting coming next from the ant's abdomen. Biggest ant I've ever seen, something you'd expect to see in the Australian outback or the Amazon jungle. 

Around here ants are always underfoot. Until she learned how to avoid the red ants, the dawg got stung a bunch of times. Not too long back I was on the way out the screen door on the back porch and saw a thick line of red ants flowing back and forth along the door edge of the rubber mat on the outside walkway. I pulled the mat away from the door and uncovered a swarm of what looked like two million ants hard at work building a nest in the doorway there on the concrete walk. I worked almost forty-five minutes to clear all the ants out of the doorway. I was out of ant spray so sprayed them with alcohol and Formula 409, ants running every which way, into the porch, up the walls and onto me when they were able. I went batshit over the fiery little devils trying to build a nest in my doorway and went overboard killing as many as I could, eventually crushing the stragglers with my thumb. I felt like a victim in that old movie I saw as a kid, the one where army ants—the dreaded Marabunta!—attack a plantation in South America. I think it was called The Naked Jungle.

While the guys were fixing the roof, neighbor Lamar came motoring down on his senior buggy to get help with something confusing about his health insurance. He has a condition that makes him flustered and angry when he doesn’t understand what’s going on. It’s one part of the MS (Multiple sclerosis) he battles most of the time and the doctor told him to avoid frustration and stress. Transportation was included in his insurance coverage, rides to and from his doctor appointments but they told him he got cancelled out of that benefit. He tried to call Medicare to see what the problem was but they made Lamar crazy with their foolishness. So he asked me to help. I spoke to four or five recordings and eventually three or four people and not a bit of it helped. An hour later someone did help and gave us a number to call about transportation. I called that number and someone said hello just when Lamar was on a streak, cussing loud about fools on the phone. I shushed him quick and we got the problem solved. Now Lamar has a renewed ticket to ride the medical van.

It’s part of the disease but Lamar’s brain gets rattled as the MS progresses. Repeats himself and says a lot of stuff that sounds hard to believe. He loves to recount stories of crime, screw ups, bitches, prison, drugs and murder. I think he's experienced in all but murder but I haven't heard the whole story. When we got done with the telephone business this morning he started telling me about a friend of his who sprayed a room full of people with a machine gun, went to prison and inherited a million dollars. Now does that sound logical or probable? One day coming back from the store we came up behind a police car on the road and automatically Lamar said, "That's probably the som’bitch that arrested me last time." That Lamar, he’s a caution. 

Lamar’s trailer in the woods

Under the Camphor Tree

Away from the noise and distraction, days in the Florida wilds far removed from city sights and sounds pass like a slow drip of honey from the comb. Most days, when the sun is a hand span above the horizon, a line of sight blocked by a thousand old oaks, I sit at the backyard table with coffee and toast, the dog at my feet. But while the horizon is hidden from my view, the first light of morning weaves its way through those trees and floods speckled and golden across the yard, a slow moving kaleidoscope of flickering sunlight. For a long hour the morning creeps lovingly across what seems an uninhabited world, the silence unbroken by birds or the hum of insects. The only things moving are light and breeze, gentle stimuli in the stirring of a new day.

The hour turns and countless small voices rise from trees and grass, the slow arrival of a soundtrack that would sound like armageddon if connected to big speakers. In short time a crowded community of life is moving about the trees, clicking, rasping and chittering in the grass, while in my ear the annoying buzz of a mosquito dodging my slaps and waving hands. Soon the ground around the bird feeder is busy with five or six redbirds, another one at the feeder tossing down sunflower seeds to mates below. I once had no admiration for the female redbird, seeing it as dull beside the dazzling male. Not so any more. The nearness of so many has shown that the darker female is the true beauty.

Yesterday I watched a large, black beetle with white spots rolling a ball of dung through the grass. I could see nearby where the beetle’s prize had come from and looked up at Farina nosing in the grass a ways off. I’ve read a little about dung beetles but had never seen one at work. How did the beetle manage to get his cargo so perfectly round?

I was busy scaring a pesky squirrel off the bird feeder, Red Ryder’s BBs whizzing past his furry butt and I noticed a small bird in a jasmine bush close by. Not bothered by my nearness, it searched for something and I could see its color patterns clearly. A small bird, smaller than a sparrow and with a gray back and wings, white breast and pale yellow at the throat. It also had a pale spot of yellow on its back. I tried looking it up online later but had no luck. Every description I typed in came up blank.

Blank. A good word to describe my understanding of the sights and sounds coloring the life out here among the frogs and leaping lizards. Little by little, day by day I untangle one more mystery.