Taking a rain day, or March Misery

The Wood Pigeons in their Tulip Tree

After a long and difficult day on the couch, writing, organizing photos in my laptop, and preparing for Couch by Couch West (enjoy Neko Case and Liza Case), I decided it was time to go out and take relief in the garden, maybe sawing out the rest of the overgrown ivy climbing the garden wall up into the neighbors' neglected fig tree, or maybe raking the bottom garden lawn and burning some more stuff before the rain begin, for it will begin. I have learned in 9 springs in my garden that March is the dry month, making it the perfect month to do the garden clean-up and pruning and burn the cuttings.

Of course, if we are allowed to burn stuff in our gardens, it is because it is generally assumed that this is still the wet time at the end of the winter, so it is generally safe to burn stuff until May, when it begins to rain, and it gets dangerous, but it is supposed to be dry and warm by then, so --

Never mind.

The month -- and I am making an allowance for February 28 by counting it in the month of March for literary purposes -- began with a severe pruning of the two yews, my "sentinel" yews, at the top of the stairs down into the garden. Start, I figured, with what you see every time you leave the house, and that of what your husband complains most.

Ah. Peace and quiet, and thanks. Gratitude is lovely.

The next day, March came in like a lion's maw in my garden, and it's not over yet. No wind, but a whirlwind of pruning and burning. Almost every day, the burning pile reformed and then disappeared in a conflagration, smoke, flames, ashes and sparks jumping into the air. I have ruined one fleece top I have worn for skiing and everything else for 13 years, and one of my husband's favorite organic cotton, long-sleeved shirts I was wearing underneath. They have identical perfectly round holes in exactly the same place on the right upper arm. Now I know why it's important to make clothing anti-inflammable.

I attacked the whatever that tree is down by the gazebo. The one that looked like a Blow-pop pruned, the head of which was leaning over the Rose of Sharon along the bottom garden wall after the weight of snow it carried in December.

I was not sad to see it go.

That was followed in the same afternoon by the gigantic yew just below that had also been damaged by the heavy snow of December. Heavy for Moosesucks.

We were especially not sad to see it begin to disappear.

Aching and feeling my carpal tunnel making its return, hands sound asleep long after I awoke in the mornings, I went after the second terrace plants and shrubs -- the Vanhoutten Spirea that looked like Animal, the Fuchsia magellanica, lavender and the lush and abundant moss in the sparse grass. Slender branches. Easy prey.

There won't be many -- or even any -- sprays of tiny white flowers on the spirea, but that's the way it goes. I'll prune it in November this year.

Then what? Oh, in between the Vanhoutten Spirea and the last of the lavender and fuchsia, I cut down the several meter high trunks of what was supposed to be a Snowball Viburnum bush. Bushes are not several meters high in my book. I call those "trees". This one had lost it years ago, and all that grows now are suckers and these trunks.

This was the first step in destroying its stump and getting rid of it altogether as part of the clearing of the bank and these plants, as well as the hedge across from it, to make place for some sort of shelter for the motorcycles, the old wood boat behind the low cinder block walls, and garden shed. Dream on. I can't even seem to manage to finish the inside of the house.

I am hearing about that from my husband. Trust me. It isn't as easy as pruning down the sentinel yews.

Partially recovered, anyway, I attacked the next big horrible project -- clearing out the top of the high wall behind the barbecue on the gazebo terrace. The last time I did this was 2005. It was, if that is possible, worse then. But back then, it probably hadn't been done since the barbecue was built in 1991. This took two days, March 10 and March 16.

I am still recovering from the bug bites (fleas, I think) and the thorn pricks from the Firethorn shrubs, with their poisonous (for me) several centimeter long thorns on each and every unyielding branch. If Hell has hedges, they are certainly made of Firethorn shrubs.

Between the two skirmishes of the Battle of the Top of The Wall on the 10th and the 16th, I did something. I know I did. Let's see -- yes, I took a little vacation and hand pruned the Saint John's Wort down to the ground.

So, where did I start this? Yes, I got up off the couch to go out and continue, and what did I see, other than the pair of Wood Pigeons in their Tulip Tree? Rain. Rain falling in the fish-pond-in-the-old-fountain. Rain falling into the shocking pink and deep blue hyacinths.

Rain.

I felt relief.

I have pruning elbow from all of this. I think I'll watch the quarter-finals at Indian Wells.

....

A concession to Maria

The Tulip tree

It is perfectly quiet. There is only the sound of the logs burning in the wood stove and Rapide's soft snoring to mask the only other possible sound, besides my fingers tap-tap-tapping on the keyboard: Shadow's fireside bath.

Fia is napping in her corner of the kitchen, and the leaves are turning yellow, rust and gold out in the garden, past the French window. I am stuck on the sofa, mostly, having strained the left dorsal lifting a bag of old concrete, sand and dirt that had soaked up too much of the recent heavy rains out in the still unfinished courette d'entrée. My husband had decided that we were at least finally getting rid of the latest impressive crop of plastic bags, filled just to the point where I could still carry them from one end of the uppermost terrace to the other end 20 meters away near the gate, were -- they sat. For a good long moment.

I had other things to do.

It started out a just little pain. The kind of pain that ask that you take but polite, slight notice of it, making a little wince of annoyance when you turn or go to lift the dishes to set the table, which you do because your husband's attention span does not permit him to get further than the place mats, the plates and a couple of glasses before he gets distracted by the television between the verres à pieds and the water glasses for the kids and the silverware.

"On a besoin de couteaux?" he asks when he eventually returns. Every time.

"On a toujours besoin de couteaux," I reply -- every time --, and then he wanders off again to stand in front of the television. Returning, he notes the completed glasses and the silverware.

"Ah! Mais tu l'as fini!," he exclaims with enough étonnement in his voice to convince you he really is still surprised -- every time -- that he has been gone long enough for you to complete the job. "J'allais revenir le finir, tu sais," he adds for good measure.

"Oui," I tell him -- every time--, "je le sais."

It was after lunch when I couldn't move any more. The pain came on progressively as I struggled to bend my knees to pick up light things I could limp over to the car, while he loaded it for the dump runs, expanding to include an ever larger area of the left side of my back until it spasmed, stopping me in the middle of an attempt to rise from the sofa, where I had finally retreated to watch the beginning of the women's Masters tournament. It hurt to gasp in pain.

Maria was maybe a little bit right. I suspected it had really all begun when I was raking the ivy up the flames to get it all to turn to ash the evening before. Rakes are back killers. Not, of course, that I plan on heeding Maria's admonishments. Little enough gets done around here. If I waited for my husband to take his next days off from the hospital, never mind.

"Je sais," said my husband, on a trip through the house. He used to specialize in what the French still call quaintly, I have remarked before in this blog, lumbago, until I got him to start working with my personal trainer, who is a genius. Unfortunately, he is also working at opening his own training center right now, and we're on our own.

Lumbago. It sounds like it should be part of a stew, or a beach dance at Club Med.

He had things to do, however, before he could get to the pharmacie, like take a shower.

"J'ai envie d'une douche," he pronounced in a tone I dared not contradict, despite my pain. "Je me sens sal, et je voudrais prendre une douche avant de partir."

I considered this, and it seemed to me that if I were planning on asking him to be my slave all evening, it might be right to let him have a shower before I started with my requests from the sofa. Besides, I had taught Lamaze. I knew how to breathe through the pain, and a yoga class or two had taught me to breath to the muscle screaming at me.

By the time I had taken two Aleve, rested several hours with the hot compress against my offended muscle and had the muscle relaxing ointment rubbed into it, I was moving around again like an agile and spritely old woman.

"Regards!" I said brightly to my husband, seated at the end of the dining table in front of his solitaire game, his face lit by his computer screen. He looked up and watched me approach, upright (I had earlier taken 5 minutes to cross the living room on elbows and knees, keening like the gypsy women in the Métro with their poor, drugged babies and young children). "J'ai regagné au moins 80% de mon mouvement!"

"Attention," he cautioned me. "N'en fais pas trop. C'est l'Aleve." It was, he said, the Aleve that was making me as spry as a 90-year-old former martial arts professional with mild arthritis, and I'd only do more damage to the muscle if I lost sight of this precious fact. I crept back to my place on the sofa and stayed very still until bedtime, when I took another.

Today, I let the 12 hours pass, just, you know, to see what would happen. A muscle spasm reaching for my laptop sent me creeping for the box and a glass of water.

Today's program: canceled.

At least there are no more sacs of sodden stuff in the courtyard, and now you must excuse me. It's time to take Mlle Fia Lux out to faire pipi and then settle on the sofa for Doha.
....

Women's work

The ivy burns

"That's no work for a woman," my elderly Portuguese neighbor stated firmly.

Her companion, a neighbor from her end of the street nodded, or smiled, in something vaguely resembling assent, and I felt as though I should stop immediately what I was doing and go take a shower and put on a dress. A little powder and lipstick.

Maria had told me this the day before, when she had first been on her way up the lane to collect walnuts from the tree in her garden, bordering the fields beyond our bottom garden and the lane. I considered whether she said this with disapprobation or sympathy, but since my husband was not next to me to defend himself in the latter case (or the former), I decided it was up to my to stand up for my honor, which was possibly, almost certainly, as much in question as his own. I chose to smile and reply with alarming candidness.

"Oui, mais mon mari --" I thought of him, working at the hospital, and myself at home, doing as I pleased and what needed to be done by someone, "il a autres choses à faire."

Her companion smiled, and nodded. I thought I had found an ally, someone who understood that someone had to earn a living around here, but I thought I'd add for good measure and to make sure my case was plead, "Quelqu'un doit travailler pour gagner la vie, et un jardinier pour faire ce travail, ben, c'est cher," and suddenly worried that I had brought us too low in their estimation, I hastened to add, "et puis, ils ne font souvent pas ni aussi bien que soi ni comme on veut." I finished with a brilliant smile and brandished my long handled pruning shears to go at the seriously overgrown ivy again.

Maria did not look convinced and continued to grumble amiably enough under her breath about work "fitting a woman" and this being "too much for a woman."

Later, my husband heard the incident and said, "Elles ne te connaissent pas évidemment."

I am not certain that that would have helped my image any more, either.

And was that what I was expecting when I left Barnard and the Ivy League with my diplomas all those years ago, my feminism shining, my certitude in my brilliant future even more radiant, until it came time to look for a first job, anyway, to arrive in this ivy jungle, where I prune and burn the garden's excess growth for my doctor husband, raise my puppies and care for my animals, bury even the wild ones who come here to die, and penning what amounts to a public journal to keep myself from wandering past the irretrievable edge?

He tells me, "Do whatever you like. All I ask is that you be content in return with what I can earn, and that you be happy," and he means it honestly, but he is happiest when I am involved with and kind to his plentiful offspring.

I can tell you about this woman's work, but I can also tell you about Maria's, a woman who spent her life tending to her neighbors' housecleaning and ironing for small pay, caring for her husband and children for none, and mourning the one who lay as peacefully before her eyes on the pavement, his school bag knocked from his small arms, as he had only moments before in his bed, hit by a car while he waited for the school bus to come.

I imagined I would hire someone like Maria to do the woman's work, while I went to the office, kissing my children good-bye and leaving detailed and enlightened instructions for their excellent care so that I could do the same at the office to get office towers and museums, airports and schools, or at least homes, built. Would she have looked at me disapprovingly for that, too? Was my life really so much harder in her eyes, cutting out all that overgrown ivy and dragging it to a monstrously large pile, than her own? What is the difference between a constantly replenishing mountain of someone else's laundry and your own to iron and a constantly replenishing mountain of ivy to cut back, and your own mountain of laundry to do, as well?

What, Maria, is a woman's work?

All the ivy is on the burning pile, which is sending a thick column of smoke into the drizzly October sky. The season to burn has arrived, just in time, but someone took half of what I had piled at the corner of the field until the time to burn came. I cannot imagine why, nor that it was from kindness, unless the village caretaker had room in his truck and more than a little pity for me, knowing my hands are full with a new puppy.

Or maybe Maria told him to help "cette femme qui fait le travail d'un homme, le travail que son mari devrait faire" and went on her way to collect her walnuts the tree in her garden gives.
....