First frog, and a foal for Zenyatta

First frog of the spring

The sun lit the slats in the metal shutters of my bedroom window with the brightness and intensity that announces a beautiful morning, encouragement to get out of bed, in spite of the aches and the pains from yesterday's labors in the garden. It has been 3 years since the last time I pruned the linden trees down to the ham-fisted main branches, and so it was time to do them again, lest the linden trees overtake us and leave us in the dark. I did one in the morning, and the other in the afternoon, going up and down my wooden ladder and wielding a 3-ton 45-inch chainsaw at arm's length.

I now have two very large stacks of 3 to 4 meter long branches of which to dispose, and I need to find someone who can come and feed them into a wood chipper for a modest fee.

Come summer, there will be a whole new crop of wand-like branches growing from the bumps at the end of each solid branch, sending forth a dense canopy of large leaves.

Taking note of my bruised state, little didn't hurt, I rolled gingerly out of bed and made my way, stiffly, to the coffee machine, but the lure of the warm March sunshine was too strong, and I got the fish food instead and headed out to feed the fish and see how nature had been faring since my first exploration and photography session earlier this week, after I had lifted finally the soggy mat of linden leaves off the planting beds, prying them gently from the fresh green spears of the new tulip and hyacinth leaves to expose everything that the warming soil was sending up for another round of the eternal display of nature's simple glory. 

These are the days when you can feel the activity in the soil and the leaves, the energy unfurling progressively more vegetable matter, the chloroform machine working at full tilt, catching the sun's rays and radiating the purest, most joyful green from the effort. I hum right along with the plants and the blades of grass of my garden and all of nature beyond; I began my day brimming with energy and enthusiasm. 

I bent down and called the fish over for breakfast, waiting for the one large female I know is principally responsible for the healthy growth in population since the devastation wreaked by some cracks in the converted fountain's low walls and a sudden, terrible freeze one January, when the water level was too low killed dozens of fish, leaving 4 miraculous survivors. 

She eats first, and she and everyone else know it. She swims right up to my outstretched pinched thumb and forefinger, a koi stick presented to her, and we struggle to get it in her puckering mouth. Some mornings we get it on the first try;  other times, she's either too hungry or too overexcited to get it on anything like the first try, and we nearly give up, but that would be sending a poor message, and so I never admit defeat. She will get it or no one will eat, which is out of the question. 

This morning she was a little late arriving, and my attention drifted off to the others, swimming about in front of me, others heading across from under the old stone sink where they have their hide-away, and which has served as the favorite spot for the frogs, who have come to make the fountain-turned-fish pond their home. She caught me by surprise, suddenly there in front of me when I lowered my gaze again, and ate her koi stick on the third try. I turned the container, sprinkled a generous serving for everyone else, and watched it float out from the center. I love the "fish pond". 

Yesterday, a neighbor's little girls discovered it; I told them there were frogs, too, but they were still asleep, down in the sediment from the decomposed leaves that fall into it and the aquatic plants. They asked when the frogs would wake up, and I said soon. Perhaps in a couple more weeks of this warm early spring sun. They are not like the other neighbor's children, little boys, who run around the fountain and stick their arms in, pulling on the plants. They nodded and returned to watching the fish swim about, and I had a feeling that soon was maybe sooner than I had said; it was the right weather for the frogs to wake up.

Squatting next to the fish breakfast party, I saw movement over near the mossy edge of the stone sink. It didn't move like a fish; the plant leaves disappeared below the water and surfaced again along with the head and large, globular eyes of the first frog of the spring. As if the day did not promise enough wonderful things, with the aubrietta in flower on the tall wall behind the gazebo, the transcandentia sending up its first purple-edge leaf swords, and both the biathlon and the nordic-combined world championships on television, the frogs had woken up.

I said hello, quietly, and asked it please not to move while I went for my camera. They take fright easily, some eventually learning to relax around us, others never failing to dive into the water directly I or anyone passes by them. He, or she, granted my wish, for a moment. In another second, he had ducked back into his watery place to hide, and I went off to see what was sprouting in the garden.

Now, it was time for my coffee and my morning email, Twitter and Facebook correspondence, and to upload my photos and consider a blog post. My old laptop takes its sweet time to boot, time to check the day's events on Eurosport, and when the first Tweets scrolled past, there was news of Zenyatta. She had given birth! A dark-bay colt, the spitting image of his lovely mother. 

As if the day needed another miracle to remind me of how beautiful life is. Sweet, intelligent and wondrously gifted and large-spirited Zenyatta, The Queen, had given birth to her foal with Bernardini, just hours ahead of her due date, under a full Kentucky moon, and her fans were rejoicing a new hope, another racing phenomenon to love and admire and cheer on, born of the intermingling of proud parents' proven genes. 

For now, it was quiet in her box, a mother kissing her long-legged, gangly, adorable newborn child, full of the promise of his family history, everyone who loves and cares for her daily at Lane's End Farm nearby to witness another legend opening its next chapter, and the season of foaling beginning with the greening and unfurling of the grasses.

....

http://www.zenyatta.com/diary/diary-post-454

When the thieves come home to crow

Evening, both lindens are done

No, it's good; I still have partial use of my hands. Both of them. I can't get my rings off, but my mother-on-law wouldn't like it if I went without them, anyway. I should take that as a compliment. I do.

My timing, if not my hands, was exquisite. My hands look like they belong to someone much, much older and coarser than I.

Ahem.

The weather was beautiful for several days, before the clouds scuttled in yesterday afternoon, and a chill wind blew, bringing rain last night and again this afternoon. I don't remember when it started, only that the sun shone. Sunday, I worked outside and cleaned out the daylily border on the right intermediate terrace. For those of you who haven't been reading me -- doggedly; I'm sorry -- since last year, I provide the link to the plan. It will help you to understand that the house sits on the top of five terraces. For the complete description, see that post, but for our purposes, it will suffice to know that the two linden trees are the big rounds on the house terrace. They look -- please excuse me -- like breasts (the guys just ran to check it out). The other circle, the one between them and a little higher, is the old fountain that Audouin turned into the pond-in-a-fountain, or basin (full account of his efforts in the same post).

You'll notice that there is a stair that cuts down the "center" of the garden, on axis with the French door into the main living space of the house, and that the garden is approximately symmetrical about that axis.

Descending the first few stairs, you arrive on the shallow second terrace. The raised planting borders on the southern side (downhill slope) contain the lavender bushes, the two weeping roses, and several very old, woody tea rose bushes. Roses are not particularly compatible with lavender, preferring a moister, heavier soil, but they manage. I cut them back exceptionally vigorously this year, and to my chagrin, I later realized that I left nothing but a single overly large woody stem from the first white one on the right. I'll have to replace it. It did quite well, too. That will teach me to cut back with such vigor before I have adequately pruned the lavender and can see what I am doing.

At one end, there is an enormous bay, and at the other end, there is a set of stairs, leading to the perpetually humid and moss-covered guest room terrace. It doesn't get sun. If I cut out the overgrown ivy and the ancient, lichen-covered unrecognizable apple tree, that should help. Beside the stairs is the dogwood I planted a couple years back, and behind that, the suffering rhododendron Victor and Tony gave me the firesale price for last summer, with a wink. They knew I'd get it to thrive. It's doing well, and Chloé lies just beyond its roots now. She'll have many beautiful spring flowers. Perhaps I'll plant her a new apple tree. A crab. We'll see.

From this point, three stairs lead to three different areas. The stair along the axis leads to the bottom of the garden, half civilized, with a pool, and half overgrown and waiting for my administrations, and a garage.

The shorter stair to the right leads to what I refer to as the right intermediate terrace, and the same stair to the left leads, most sensibly, to the left intermediate terrace, and a farther one, somewhat lower, where the garden widens at its lower levels, behind the France Telecom utility building at street level. We'll get to that one. It's just above the side of the bottom garden that has the pool, and the birch and tulip tree cluster.

The right and left intermediate terraces each terminate on the downhill side with a very tall -- 9-10' -- retaining walls. Each terrace is made of banks of St. John's Wort, which tumble from the roses and lavender to the paths at the borders, daylilies on the right and sage and oregano (not a particularly good idea) on the left side. The retaining wall is topped on the right with a series of 7 urns that punctuate the daylilies with cascades of petunias in the summer. The right side being larger, a niche is cut into the center of the sloped bank of St. John's Wort with a small retaining wall, against which is placed a bench.

The remaining terrace to the left, off the left intermediate terrace, contains an octagonal gazebo, called a "gloriette", and a barbecue. Both need rebuilding. Another project.

Very little of this was visible -- practically -- 8 years ago, when I saw it for the first time. The garden had not had a caretaker, a gardener, for many years, although some of the structures appear to date from 1991. While they knew how to build an ugly barbecue, they seemed unaware that plants require pruning, borders weeding, everything care.

The daylily border rid of the dead leaves from last year, left to protect the roots and help mulch against weeds, and the paths rid of the several tons of leaves the wisteria on the arch over the central stair is capable of dropping, I decided to undertake the biannual pruning of the linden trees, described yesterday and the day before. I have already exhausted two chains, after just these two trees. I did cut out a fair number of extraneous main branches that were growing into each other and making the canopies too dense. I hope that with them gone, more light will filter down to the ground below and give us some mottled sun, rather than deep shadow. Audouin lay in his sickbed, offering, "Tu travailles bien," and a weak smile every time I came up to see how he was faring.

In 6 1/2 years, I have never seen him not go to the hospital 2 days in a row. I avoided our room like the plague it promised, delivering glasses of water, Coca-Cola, orange-mango juice that went undrunk until yesterday, when the cortisone opened his swollen, angry throat enough to let him get some sips down. Before that, most everything came back up, the unpleasant way. I guess there is only one way it can, and it is unpleasant. I stood and watched him, waiting to see a sign that there was hope for a full recovery. It came yesterday with his first real smile.

The one that makes me wonder why I think I need to divorce him half the time, when I am really furious for one reason or another, and why suddenly seems frivolous.

I know it's time to get out of there and back to whatever I am doing, wherever there is, and whatever I am doing, when he smiles it.

He does deserve better, doesn't he?

....

We're all lovin' him

It looks like taking my advice to keep talking to the American people, which you have been so good at doing, and not to their elected representatives in Washington (for now), which no president is so good at doing (it's their job, as they see it, to resist you), is working, Mr. President.

OK, so I wasn't the one to whom he was listening, but I did say it, somewhere in here, back in January. Today's Wall Street Journal online article "Obama Gets Strong Support in Poll" shows that it's the way to go:

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama enjoys widespread backing from a frightened American public for his ambitious, front-loaded agenda, a new poll indicates.

He is more popular than ever, Americans are hopeful about his leadership, and opposition Republicans are getting drubbed in public opinion, the new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll suggests.

Which is one piece of good news as we have to swallow another less than palatible one, which is that the ex-leadership of Countrywide is profiting from the bad loans they offered that catapulted the global economy into catastrophic free-fall.

“It is sort of like the arsonist who sets fire to the house and then buys up the charred remains and resells it,” said Margot Saunders, a lawyer with the National Consumer Law Center, which for years has sought to place limits on what it calls abusive lending practices by Countrywide and other companies.

It figures. Win on the upside, and win again as it's all coming down around everyone else.

Is it that this requires a special talent, or merely the overriding of all personal ethics, which some of us seem unable to do?

Oh, it's nice to hear that this is at least helping some be able to hold onto their homes, with 50% decreases in their mortgage interest rates making their payments affordable again.

....

Of frogs and fish

Audouin was most certainly mistaken. It must have been his own voice croaking weakly in his feverish head that he heard because there is no sign from the frogs, somewhere in all that siltish muck.

I'm waiting.

The fish, on the other hand, appear to be taking courage in their little public housing project temporary residence in trash can and concrete block. I pulled one of the Eric Tabarlys over, the ones that have been sitting in pots, waiting for the house to be finished for replanting in their newly christened planting beds below the balcony (I hope they are as patient as I have to be, and Job), and let its oddly horizontally growing stem hang down over their concrete block and water. It makes a little reflection and gives them something to look at, like a crib toy.

It's raining. I won't be burning all of this pruned wood today. I guess I'll clean our bedroom and save the walk with the dogs for later. I missed our window of opportunity.
....

Shave and a haircut, two trees

Linden trees, left and right

not done and almost done

It's February vacation, or just past it. Time to prune the linden trees.

This ritual in the garden takes place every two to three years. Audouin used to do it, but I have taken over the task, because he works hard, and because I can.

Why do we do this? Because if we don't, the trees will grow taller and taller, until they dwarf the house completely and block all sunlight from the top terrace and the inside of the house. Since all but two of our windows face the terrace, this would not be acceptable. They were planted as ornamental lindens, with a nice round top, one on either side of the terrace; part of that one-two symmetry that is all over the garden. So, every couple years when I am back from skiing, I get out the ladders, the chainsaw, a long extension cord, I and cut the branches off at their bases, the clumpy ends of the main branches. These will sprout new, supple branches in a matter of weeks to form a new canopy of diminutive proportions, providing a sheltered nesting place for some of our garden's birds.

This actually works very well, too, that it happens to be the linden tree pruning year because if we ever get the work done on the outside of the house, I will be completely turning over the old lawn, ordering a delivery of real, good topsoil and planting my lawn.

Again.

The delayed leafing out on smaller branches will help the grass to come in.

Again.

Sam came up from parking his scooter at the bottom of the garden and stopped to talk to me, up in my tree.

"How was your day?" His first back since his bacs blancs and two weeks of vacation.

"Sucked." It's automatic. "Oh! Do you remember that I said that I got my history and geography bac blanc back the Friday before vacation? Well," he didn't give me time to answer, "I didn't. I was sure that I had, and that I had a bad grade -- the 6 [they are graded out of 20, and single digits are all too common] that I thought I got? I didn't. She handed them back today."

"How did you do?"

"A 9. I was really happy." Only in France. "That's like a 12 on the bac." 12 on the bac. A good grade, believe it or not. There is no such thing as grade inflation here. It's more like grade depression. If he's happy, I'm happy.

"Did you give your notes to your teachers?" I had had him write notes of apology for his less than bright and shiny attitude in class to his teachers, all of them. He wrote it a week before vacation and then did nothing with it until I insisted last night. It was a good note, too. I decided that it was time to teach a lesson in the powerful and seemingly magic effect of changing one's own behavior and seeing how that impacts a relationship. If his teachers are more than annoyed with him, it's not entirely their fault for failing to appreciate him.

"Yeah."

"Did any of them read it in front of you?"

"No, but Madame Martin told Madame Foubert [the head teacher] about it."

"And? Did Madame Foubert seem pleased?"

"Yeah. And if you don't believe me that I did it, I still have the one for my math teacher in my bag because I didn't have math today, and I think Madame Foubert is going to mention it to you."

"Sam, see, you can trust me from time to time, and come back out here and help me get all these branches down to the burning pile."

Strike one up for the mother. Eat a little shit now, eat far less later.

A few minutes later, it was nearly the Moosesucks Chainsaw Massacre. The ladder slipped, the chainsaw running and weighing heavy in one hand. The other flew out to grab the nearest thing, and I edged my hip into the closest tree branch.

"Sam? Sam, can you come here please as fast as you can?" I tried to sound calm so that Audouin would not panic, helpless in his sickbed (we'll get to that). Sam's face appeared in the panes of the window at the door closest to the computer. He looked at me up on my ladder. I suppose I looked just fine up there on my ladder in the tree. I was trying pretty hard to do just that. If you don't worry, nothing bad can happen to you. Right?

"Sam, please come very quickly. The ladder is falling." He scowled. He heard me. I saw him pass the living room window, moving at a very relaxed pace as I clung to the tree, trying to hold the ladder in place and not drop the chainsaw, 2 meters up in the air. He appeared at the living room door. Why he couldn't have just come out the other door I will never understand.

"What, Mom?"

"I said that the ladder is falling, and I need you to come here as fast as you can and help me." He loped across the terrace. The other day, he was complaining to his grandmother in the US about his friends not going out and sometime later, he was back at it, "Grandma was right," he said, "the French are blasé."

"Blasé?"

"Yeah, Grandma said it, and it's true." Sam, you might say, has become very French.

"Quickly, Sam." I was getting impatient, and I could feel the ladder slipping millimeter by millimeter. Or, maybe he wanted me to fall?

You didn't think of that, did you?

Nah. Couldn't be. I have the great ideas and listen to his stories about the latest fresh pair of Nike Air Force 1's on eBay.

....

Gone a fishin', the survivors

It was an experience neither the four remaining fish from the leaking basin or I is likely soon to forget.

I went into the kitchen and got the strainer I use for draining steamed spinach and returned to locate my prey. Well, not prey, really. The fish I needed to move from the basin to a trash can. Well, not a trash can really. Not now, anyway, now that it is home to the fish that survived the Great Cold and the low water levels of January. It's a fish can now. With a concrete block to offer them pathetic shelter.

They really didn't appreciate my lunging attacks, pinning them in the depths of the silty mud at the bottom of the pond-in-a-basin, which is practically all that is left as the remaining water drains below the mudflats.

I got the first one, and it lay there in the muck in my strainer. It looked really dead. I stared at it, and then I realized that I was holding it in the air, out of the water. I was killing the fish. I plunged it back into what was left of the water, trying neither to lose it, nor to lose it. It got a second to breathe, and I high-finned him to the watering can I had filled with basin water.

Well, that went fairly well, I thought to myself, perspiring faintly, my heart-rate somewhat elevated. I prepared to get the next two, watching the proceedings from what they thought was a safe spot behind the reeds, next to the moss-covered old stone sink Audouin hauled up from the bottom of the garden years ago and placed in the old fountain, thinking it would make a nice planter for aquatic plants. I went and got my pruning shears to cut out some of the reeds. I was going to win this one. Me 4, fish 0.

I got them.

There was one last fish to find in all that churned up silt. Bubbles. The give-away. Follow the bubbles. There, there very near the same spot by the reeds, was a shiny patch of glittering pink-orange gold.

A-ha.

He was playing dead.

Or, was he playing dead? Had I killed him? The shock of seeing his comrades, his fellow survivors go like that, after narrowly escaping death already, was it more than he could bear? I didn't give him time to think.

I plunged my strainer -- having lost all sense of delicacy and propriety; the others were already swimming about in the tin watering can, so how much damage could I have done to them? -- and drew it out. He lay there on his side. I whipped him around and dropped him in with the others, got my bowl and started patiently filling it, avoiding the silty muck, to make a nice level of water in the fish can. I poured them in. It took some time for the water to clear, but there they were. Safe and sound, if a little shaken.

Trust would have to be reestablished.

If the cats knew, they probably wouldn't come here.

Speaking of which, our neighbors have not come by either to thank me, nor to give me news of their cat. I left the vet's office in peace today. I was also too embarrassed to tell them that my neighbors hadn't thought it worth their trouble to say thank you. I hope it doesn't mean that they had to decide to have him put down. Such a beautiful cat.

This nearly spring-like, sunny morning, no one was visible at the bottom of the fish can. They were all hiding behind the concrete block, which Audouin thought I was a little daft to put in there.

They like it. It offers them privacy.

I went back inside and got the fish food. One stuck his head out and came to see. He sniffed at it, swallowed a bite, and turned to head back behind the concrete block. I waited. I know them.

A couple of seconds later, he swam back out, accompanied by a second fish, who swam up to eat a bite, turned and headed back behind the concrete block. I waited again. He'd be back with another. They pass the word. Once the third was drawn out by the food and the reassurance, they got the fourth to come out, too. I went to share my fish behavior observations with Audouin.

"J'ai entendu une grenouille croacer ce matin." I had taken the BMW in to have the hood repainted and the front bumber and right fog light repaired, the last from my run-in with a wild boar in Dordogne three summers ago already, and ridden my bicycle back.

"Ah bon? Tu en es sur?" He could have been mistaken in his sick-bed delirium.

"Oui," he croaked. I didn't believe him. I hadn't seen or heard a thing, but I didn't need to disappoint a sick man, who sincerely hoped that now I would remove the reeds and muck if I thought that the frogs had come out of hibernation. He liked my fish story. He thinks I am sort of cute and amusing for caring what carp do in a trash can, or anywhere else.

"Et, je pense qu'il y a deux qui portent des oeufs. Elles ont des ventres," I made a gesture to indicate roundness at the sides, "gonflés. Maybe we're going to have some babies very soon. Speaking of which, you probably didn't get my message, but the neighbor had her baby Thursday." He winced. I thought he might evince a little more interest. She is his patient.

"Boy or -- oh, we knew. Boy."

"Léandre. Like in Greek mythology."

"Audrey est enceinte aussi." Just what this jealous old crone needed to know, my last sister-in-law is expecting their second, her third. Add that to my personal trainer's wife and Peggy at the gym, too.

Just give me baby fish to repopulate the fish basin once we get it repaired, and I'll name them all.

....

Now you see them, now you... don't

No workers today. Audouin warned me last week, saying Joaquim had mentioned that they'd be gone "2 or 3 days" this week, which in Joaquim speak equals a week and a half. I had asked Georges at the end of Friday, and he had looked very surprised.

"Il ne m'a rien dit."

"Oh. Alors, vous serez ici probablement lundi."

"Oui, je pense."

Non.

Tomorrow, back up in the linden trees, if I can get the chain back on my new chainsaw, and make it stay.
....