It’s the first day of March, so you know what that means: in less than three weeks the 1st day of Spring will be here! The cold and dark days of January and February are behind us for another year. Huzzah!
The first of the month also means it’s time to me to hold myself accountable for my New Years Resolutions (hereupon simply known as “my Resolutions”, for it ain’t a New Year anymore).
Let us now review my progress over these past 29 days of February misery.
Travel: Outstanding! No, I didn’t take MrsVintage anywhere new in our great state of Colorado, but we did go back East to be with our daughter and her family as she gave birth to healthy newborn boy!
Bicycling: meets expectations. I went on no rides in the month of February, which is par for the course for me in winter. This February was particularly brutal, as we had nearly twice the amount of snow for the month than average, and 20 of the 29 days were below average temperatures. Bicycling in that? No thank you.
Reading: above average. Continuing to read most every day, and I am finding my ability to concentrate is much better than it was on New Years Eve. I just finished “On Gardening” by Henry Mitchell last week, and now I’m roughly halfway through “Dodge City” by Tom Clavin.
Gardening: meets expectations. Finalized plans on the garden renovation I have planned for by the bird bath, watched Comcast tear up sections of the yard I hadn’t planned on fixing (see here: https://www.mrvintageman.com/unexpected-garden-disasters/), and purchased a few plants that were on sale at one of my favorite mail order nurseries (Bluestone Perennials). Yesterday was warm enough, albeit cloudy, for me to get outside and clean out last year’s plant carcasses from the containers. Now that the days are getting longer and warmer, I expect the tempo to start picking up.
So that’s the progress I made in the past month. How about you? Are you still making progress in accomplishing your resolutions? Are you enjoying the effort?
I’m a sucker for books about bicycle touring. Especially ones about riding the United States from coast-to-coast. I’ve day-dreamed about doing such a trek myself, but that is about as far as I’ve gotten. I read these type of books as a way for me to ride vicariously through the eyes of those who have done the deed.
Neil Hanson is a fellow Colorado resident and a man who was pushing 60 years of age at the time he set out to ride from California to New England (he turns 57 during part of his ride in the book). Pilgrim Wheels is part one of a two-part travelogue. Part one starts in San Francisco and finishes in Kansas. Mr. Hanson approaches the ride with both trepidation and a positive outlook.
He goes on at some length about the sense of spirituality he derives from his “pilgrimage”. He feels this most acutely in the quiet and remote parts of the desert Southwest. While his musing are in no way profound, they do make for some enjoyable insights as to why he is making the journey. Plus, Mr. Hanson is obviously a genial and upbeat individual, and his ability to enjoy the moment makes for fun reading.
Mr. Hanson tries to, often unsuccessfully, avoid developing a sense of superiority over his chosen means of transportation. He’ll make note of how he is able to observe the natural world around him in closer detail than someone who whizzes by in an air-conditioned automobile. He becomes aware of how judgemental his view is, and attempts to be more humble, but it comes off more as a humble-brag. It’s not a good look.
(As an aside, this attitude is a big part of why bicyclists are despised by many. There is nothing virtuous about riding a bicycle. If a rider wants to save gas by riding, or get some exercise, or even “save the environment” have at it. Just be aware that the act of bicycle riding doesn’t make the rider special).
I mentioned at the beginning that I am enchanted by these coast-to-coast riding adventures, but I find that the more of them I read the less enchanted I get. That’s because I’ve come to realize that most of these authors never go or see anything on their riding adventures. Mostly they just wake up, wolf down breakfast and head onto the road for another day of riding until they find somewhere to stop for the night. They do this day after day until they reach their final destination. Whee?
For all Mr. Hanson’s rhapsodizing about becoming one with the surrounding natural world, he never actually explores any of it. He just cranks out miles on the way to a pre-determined destination. While he avoids major interstates in favor of the backroads, his view of the passing countryside is still limited to what he can see from the road.
By my reckoning, here are just a few places he could taken a detour and spent a few days exploring: Monterey, Paso Robles, Napa Valley, Sedona, Mesa Verde, Great Sand Dunes National Park and more. Nope, it’s just nose to the handlebars for 1500 miles for Mr. Hanson. It’s his ride, and he has at least done it unlike myself. But it seems like there should be more to this type of adventure than just racking up miles in the saddle.
Still, Pilgrim Wheels is a fast and overall enjoyable read and I do intend to read the sequel (Pilgrim Spokes) soon. If you enjoy books about bicycle touring tales this is a good addition into the genre. If you are not into such books, this is not a book for you.
Gardening can be such a enriching and rewarding activity. It provides the gardener an opportunity to work the soil in the ways of his or her forbearers. It can be an awesome form of physical activity; try digging a tree stump out for a few hours; you’ll get both aerobic exercise and a strength training workout in, along with copious amounts of sweat, cursing and bloody blisters.
Gardening also provides the practitioner a chance for quiet contemplation and peaceful introspection.
But gardening also has a darker side; for it can be humbling and heartbreaking activity chock full of failure and frustrations. Experienced gardeners become acutly aware of just how small and helpless they are in the face of nature and the elements.
Late season snowstorms can rip large branches off of trees, or even snap them in half. High winds can blow mature trees down. Droughts may leave nothing in the garden but dessicated sticks and twigs. Torrential rains can cause flooding and mass destruction. Insects and diseases can turn the landscape into a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
A gardener really only has two courses of action in the face of these calamities: accept that this is a part of gardening and move on, or rail at the clouds about the injustice of it all and then accept it and move on. I myself lean more toward the latter.
And then there are unexpected man-made disasters. Such as when the power company whacks back tree branches that are getting close too the power lines, but leave behind a tree that looks like something out of a Salvador Dali painting. Or a neighbor who indiscriminately sprays week-killer chemicals on a windy day and some of that spray lands on a prized plant in your yard.
Or when the cable company, of which you are not even a subscriber, comes in and tears up a portion of your landscape and causing untold damage. Such a thing happened to me recently.
Last week Comcast invaded my little slice of Eden in order to install an “emergency” conduit. Most residents who live in housing developments are usually aware that the six feet of your property, going from the sidewalk into the yard, is an easement. The city or utitilties can access this section for various reasons, including widening the street! I suspect a lot of homeowners aren’t aware that this six foot easement extends around your entire property line. You never read that little tidbit of information when gardening magazines or online articles talk about installing a garden bed on your landscape perimeter.
I found out about this fact the hard way about ten years ago when one-third of my driveway border was dug up to access powerlines. I lost several plants that year, and it took a long time for the new plants that replaced them to mature and fill in the blank spots.
So, when paint markings and utility flags mysteriously appeared in my yard, I immediately knew something was in the works. The markings started in the street, worked their way up the border next to the driveway and into the backyard.
Thus I was not terribly surprised when a slew of trucks, towing various trailers of large equipment, showed up on my driveway and disgorged work crews to stomp on my garden beds.
I wandered out to talk to the foreman for an update. He was a very nice man, about my age, who was very apologetic about the havoc he was about to wreck upon my landscape. He explained why they had to go through my yard to install the conduit. I thanked him for his time and went on about my business. These are the vagaries of gardening life.
As you can see by the pictures below, Comcast at least attempted to limit the amount of damage unlike the power company ten years ago. I’m truthfully not too upset by all this, because as I stated at the beginning, gardening has a way of making a gardener humble. And I knew there were risks that things like this might happen when I put my borders in on the property.
By the driveway. They had to pull up a large flagstone to gain more access. Access hole in the birdbath garden
.Giant hole in the backyard corner.
That doesn’t mean, however, that I’m particularly happy about all this either. There is no way to tell right now just how much damage has incurred, but I suspect a few plants will not be returning this year. I won’t know for sure for several months.
If I had been thinking properly, I should have told them that if they needed to, they could access their lines by digging out the serviceberry in the bird bath garden. The one I intend to remove anyway. Would of saved me a lot of labor later this year. 😉
To add insult to injury, the Comcast folks hit a power line and knocked out power in the neighborhood for several hours. Fortunately, after I informed them they got right on it and the power company came out and returned power in a few hours. Well, some of us anyway. I found out later that parts of the neighborhood didn’t get their power restored until early the next morning.
There is one positive I am taking from this whole situation. Gardeners are always falling in love with a new plant. I myself recently found out about a salvia called “Mojave Sage”, and this plant really intrigues me. Hardy to my zone 5 region, it requires no supplemental watering when established. The only real requirement it needs is dry conditions in the winter. My driveway garden would be perfect for such a plant. So should some of the plants have perished in this setback, I already have a replacement in mind.
Mojave sage. Perfect plant for the hot and dry driveway garden.
What’s the worst catastrophe to ever afflict your garden? Did you just return the garden to its status quo, or did it provide you an opportunity to try something completely new?
