Heatwave, Voles and Placemats (Cont.)

For now, the heatwave that we've been stuck in appears to be over -- temperatures over the next week are forecast to be in the mid to upper 90's.  Amazing how just five degrees can make such a difference.

The marshy area below the dam

The voles, mice and gopher numbers continue their slow decline, but we're not letting up on hunting them.  On Wednesday I saw a vole scamper under a small, moveable deck we have behind the house.  I had a strong suspicion that this was the one chewing down the stalks of my potted lilies.  When Bruce got home, he got the pellet gun and we worked together to lift the deck to expose the vole that hopefully was still underneath.  The vole was there, all right -- but only as a bulge in the middle of the rattlesnake that had killed it for us.  The dear thing was preoccupied with digesting its hearty meal, so lay still and never so much as rattled.  In a quick change of plan, I ran for the snake tongs and a covered lard bucket while Bruce kept watch.  With the tongs, Bruce gently lifted the snake into the lard bucket, put on the lid and off we went to release it.  Usually we take rattlers to a place several miles away where there is a source of water but very few people.  However, we decided that this snake had earned the right to stay at Frogpond.  We carried it down to the wild blackberry bramble that sprawls in the marshy area below the dam and let it out.  There are plenty of voles there and they should keep him/her well fed.






The weaving goes well.  To my pleased surprise, there appear to be no flaws in my threading (this is a bit of a miracle, considering my tangled mess of warp).  I'm about halfway through weaving the color sampler -- I've got stripes of the various colors I'm considering plus am treadling them in two different ways (rosepath and undulating twill).  I like many of the color combinations and the hard part is going to be settling on only one or two.  A pleasant sort of problem!

 I'm learning a lot about the design process with this piece.  In my desire to break free from the "stuck" place I was in, I chose to not plan out my design on graph paper.  The placement of the stripes is counted out and regular, but the individual threads do not pick up the patterns in perfect symmetry.






It's not easy to explain, so here are closeups of the four orange stripes:

First Stripe

Second Stripe

Third Stripe 

Fourth Stripe

Each of the stripes is composed of four orange threads that are following the same threading pattern.  But because I didn't plan on them landing in exactly the same place in the pattern, the stripes look different.  I  greatly prefer the look of the first stripe and don't really like the messiness of the third and fourth ones at all.  However, I'm also drawn to the element of randomness this gives the overall look.  The variations give it a naturalness and interest that absolute symmetry cannot.

Either way, I'm enjoying the process of watching the weaving reveal itself to me as I throw the shuttle and step on the treadles.  It's a kind of magic.

Heatwave, Voles and Placemats

This seemingly endless heatwave continues.  Every day is very hot, but yesterday was exceptionally so -- 108 degrees by late afternoon.  I turn on the misters in the chicken coop and behind the house to provide some relief to the birds.  The chickens very quickly learned where to stand to get the maximum amount of spray.  Out back, the wild birds -- scrub jays, woodpeckers, hummingbirds, titmice,  finches -- come and go all day long to cool off.  They flit about the mister strung through the trees and shake their feathers and preen the droplets drifting onto their feathers.

The battle against the voles continues.  I read in our local newspaper that this rodent explosion that we are suffering from is going on all throughout the county.  The article (front page) corroborated what I'd heard that this is a direct result of our exceptionally wet winter that produced a super abundance of grass.  The irony isn't lost on me -- what a price to pay for finally getting relief from our drought.  These days it does seem like we are being hit by extremes of everything:  deluge of rain in the winter, unrelenting heat in the summer, huge populations of voles and gophers and the perfect conditions for catastrophic fires on a regular basis.  Is this what climate change looks like in our little spot on the planet?

In between occasionally killing voles with a shovel and running outside at regular intervals to move the hose from one surviving shrub or tree to the other, I've been working on a weaving project.  Actually, it's taken me over a month to get to the point of actually getting the project on the loom.  I was a mass of paralyzing indecision at every step along the way:  what I wanted to make (a shawl?  a throw?  A runner?  I finally settled on placemats); the colors; the type of yarn; the pattern... Even after I'd decided on something, I'd go back later, undecide it and then have to plan everything all over again.  It was an endless loop.

In the end, what "unstuck" me was attending my first meeting with a small group of weavers I'd been invited to join.  After a potluck by the river, each of us brought out a piece of work or finished product that we wanted to share.  I brought my patterns, a basket of yarn possibilities, and a ruler wrapped with the sequence of stripes I was planning on using (or not using).  The ladies gave me the exact kind of support I needed and my fixation on achieving perfection dropped away. Such a relief.  My marching orders were to be ready to bring what I'd made to next month's meeting.  Somehow, through them, I've regained my ability to accept shortcomings and mistakes.
                                                             

The planning stage: after endless calculations, I still got the width wrong and had to remove two stripes.

The kittens sleeping below the loom

I think my two "helpers" were busy

Hecuba holding things down

 

Two days later: Despite a tangled warp (how on earth did it get that way?), incorrect yarn calculations, a broken warp thread, and a skipped heddle, everything was sorted out.










Today I start to weave.  This is the part of the process that always has me biting my fingernails -- all flaws will be revealed.

I'll start with a sampler to check for threading errors.  After I've fixed what needs fixing, I'll go on to experimenting with the color(s) to weave as my weft.

Saturday Morning at Frogpond

With another hectic workweek behind him, Bruce relaxed outside.  

Coffee -- check  

Cat companion -- check

Picnic table with shade  -- check

Llama munching hay and supervising -- check

Pellet gun for murdering voles -- check

Wife dancing around with glee every time she hears the gun go "Crack!" -- check

More and more,  I wonder if maybe we've lived out in the country too long.  I can hear the banjos twanging.

Hecuba Zonked

What can I say?  This little kitty knows how to abandon herself to sleep.

The two kittens joining our family has definitely made life around here more complicated.  Logically speaking, adding two cats to the four we already have is so going in the wrong direction. That said, they have brought such joy and spark into our lives that I can't imagine not having them. We are smitten by kittens.

Discovering the Compost Playground

Hecuba and her Magical Lightning Bolt

We've been letting the kittens go outside for about two weeks now.  I would have preferred keeping them inside until they were full-size cats.  However, living in a small house with a cat door and four other cats, this grew more and more difficult as they grew older and more active.  I keep them under my eye as much as possible when they're outdoors and soon they'll be at a size where they won't be snack-sized for a hungry owl or hawk.  They do seem to have an innate sense to stay near cover and are aware and vigilant.  Perhaps this comes from having a feral or semi-feral mama.














 The compost heap exerted its charms on a new generation of Frogpondians.

 

 Both the hens and the kittens ogled each other  for a short time, no doubt each wondering if the creature they were looking at might be edible.  "Too big," seems to have been the joint conclusion.

The hens have accepted the kittens as part of their universe and now everyone mostly ignores each other as they forage.  There's more than enough compost heap to go around.

The Battle for Tomatoes

This is the second summer that cherry tomatoes have self-sown in the packed earth next to the carport.  Surprisingly, they bore more fruit than the store-bought plants in the raised beds.  I built on last year's success by preparing more of a bed for them and adding several loads of compost, a ring of rocks and fencing to keep the chickens out.  In the spring, seedlings again sprouted and the four I kept did splendidly (they are as tall as I am) until the rodent army descended.  After the voles and gophers had destroyed everything else farther from the house, this bed has become the last battleground. It's easier to guard because it's got the concrete pad of the carport on one side plus the back door is glass and looks right to it.  However, the enemy is sneaky and patient...

Voles adore almost-ripe tomatoes.  They scamper up, down and through the plants as they search for the largest fruit -- the same fruit that I've been keeping my own eyes on because I also adore tomatoes.  They also break and bend branches as they fill their bellies.

BV (Before Voles)

AV (After Voles)

Yesterday afternoon when I returned home from visiting Dorothea, the plants looked fine.  When I came back outside a few hours later, the plants had been ravaged -- branches bent down, bare stems where larger tomatoes had been and a scattering of small green ones thrown about the carport.


I stood there and felt the same helplessness and resignation that always comes over me when confronted by this destruction.  Then I noticed fresh digging at an old gopher hole on the edge of the carport and suddenly something in me snapped.  I got a shovel and stuck the hose down that hole and turned on the water.  Then I waited above the hole with the shovel head pointed down.  When that first vole stuck his wet snout out of the water, he never knew what hit him.  Ditto with the second vole that popped up a little farther down.  I have always shied away from killing, but yesterday something shifted inside myself -- I had no squeamishness or hesitation with that shovel.  And I felt absolutely elated afterwards.

This morning there was no vole damage.  Feeling incredibly competent and proud of myself, I went over to congratulate the tomato plants...and discovered the just hatched baby tomato horn worms.





The ones I could find have been picked off and dispatched with my foot.

 I'm curious to see what plague the universe has next in store for my last remnant of a garden.

Frogpond Hits the Big Screen

As promised, here are some pictures of the movie making at Frogpond last Saturday.  They really were a lovely group of people.  They absolutely loved what they were doing and had fun, but were totally focused on their craft.  This movie short is in the dystopian science fictiongenre and  will be shown at a competition in San Francisco this fall.  Although the entire movie is only going to be about twelve minutes long, it took them six hours just to nail down this one scene (I think there are to be three or maybe four scenes in the entire thing).

I wish them great success!

Drip-Drip-Drip

This godawful heat wave that has hit our little section of the planet has now lasted for about a month. Although summer rain here is a rare thing, that doesn't stop me from wishing, longing and praying for a bit of rain to come our way and cool things down.

Yesterday my prayers were answered, as we had our very own tiny (but significant) precipitation event: water was dripping from the light fixture in the hallway.  It appears that the air conditioner fan up in the attic sprung a leak from one of the pipes that drains the condensed water out of the house.  We climbed up there to see if we could fix this ourselves, but can't figure out where the water is coming from.  So a call will go to the nice air conditioner repairman this morning after they open.

In the meantime, I have the lovely sound of rain to brighten my Monday.

On Location

So after Bruce got home from the landfill this morning, the day took a surreal twist:  Bruce informed me that a small movie crew was showing up to shoot a few scenes for an amateur science fiction short.  Bruce had offered the barn as a location a while back to a coworker who is the producer.  He insists that he had told me that they were coming today, and I believe him -- but he never reminded me once last week.  He didn't even remind me this morning.  He reminded me as we were getting ready to eat lunch that they were coming at three in the afternoon.  I went a tiny bit ballistic.

The stall they wanted to use was the largest one on the end -- the one that the geese sleep and poop in every night.  I've been meaning to clean out the straw for an embarrassingly long time.  Well, now it's been cleaned.  Another thing I haven't done in a very long time is brush down the streamers of cobwebs that festoon the beams, light fixtures and every other surface of the barn.  We were asked to leave all of them, as they wanted the stall to look very old and disused.  Not exactly something to have me glowing with pride, but I will say that the film crew was very excited by the perfect look they conveyed.  So now the cobwebs in my barn have been immortalized and I'm sure the spiders are quite pleased.

Actually, the seven people who showed up to do this are all very nice (they're still outside finishing up)  and I enjoyed watching them at work.  It also did me good to hear the praise they heaped on Frogpond.  I've been so disenchanted by fire, smoke, gophers and weeds that my own eyes have been focused a lot on failure, disappointment, work that hasn't been done and ugliness.  Today was a reality check that Frogpond is an amazing place.  I needed the reminder.

Pictures to come.

Frogpond News

I just waved goodbye to Bruce, the boys, and the two dogs as they set off for the Milton landfill.  The truck bed was filled with trash and they pulled a trailer tightly packed with dry grass and branches.  Every load that leaves makes me a little more easy.

The Detwiler Fire has grown to 75,000 acres and taken 70 homes, but is now 25% contained.  People are being allowed to return to the town of Mariposa and the news is that the firefighters have turned the corner in containing this fire.  Hopefully they will have it completely out in the next two weeks.  Here is a link to a local paper's report on it:

http://www.sierrastar.com/news/local/article163045583.html


Even though the gopher huge population around here has gone down quite a bit (we manage to kill 15-20 a day), they still are wreaking all sorts of destruction on my plants.  A ten year old scarlet trumpet vine that climbed the fence and a four year old olive tree (that had just begun bearing olives) are the latest casualties.  Gophers also finally discovered my lilies, but at least they were through blooming.  I've decided that when the gophers have been defeated, I won't replant in the areas that are farther from the house.  For some time I've realized that I've given too much time and effort trying to keep the more distant gardens alive.  As long as the trees, roses and vines were doing moderately well, I found it impossible to give up on them, but now that the gophers have had there way I'll pull them up.  If I do replant, it will be with California natives that won't require much care from me once they get established.  With a less spread out growing area, I can then devote myself to more intensively tending plants close to the house.  At least, that's the plan.

Wildfires, gophers, and a heat wave that just goes on and on -- this is certainly not the most pleasant of summers, but I'm doing my best to keep a positive outlook on things.

The last lily to bloom

Plants on the back deck - relatively safe from gophers