This cost too much

Our city is doing sewer separation to keep the storm run-off from filling the sewer pipes and overwhelming the water treatment plant in the event of a large storm. The main sewer line runs down the center of our street so we were told to expect the mess and disruption of the street getting torn up.
In a good cause, of course, because naturally none of us wants the sewer to back up and cause problems for homeowners and potentially Lake Erie as well. All homes built after 1971 were required to separate waste water and storm water. Nearly no houses in our pocket neighborhood were built after 1971. Until recently, many homes had a ditch out front that the gutters and other rainwater drained to.  So, progress. Good for Lake Erie. Good for the community.

Unfortunately, our city chose to contract the job to the cheapest contractor who then subcontracted some work to an even cheaper outfit. As a result, the city -because that is who is ultimately responsible here, no matter what the city engineer suggests- is complicit in the destruction of no fewer than five trees over the age of 20 and at least two that were about 200.
Our neighbors' 200-year-old oak, older than the city itself, had withstood centuries of "progress" only to be deemed in the way by the lazy contractor and eliminated.
This tree had survived the founding of the village, the building of the little vacation beach houses all around it, the piping of sewers, water and gas lines. Electricity came in and worked around it. The houses it shaded were built respecting its presence, The street was paved, first with gravel, then with blacktop and the tree was undisturbed.
But somehow, the lazy corner-cutting shits that are replacing the sewer under that very road had to have that venerable 150 foot tall, 200-year-old oak which was perfectly healthy, cut down. That irreplaceable tree now lays in pieces at the side of the road, a testament to the expediency at the cost of long-term value.

Interestingly, there is a board of municipal utilities in my city. And they are elected. I wonder if that idiot city engineer is elected too... .

And I have the blisters to prove it.

Hey! You know what we did this weekend at the Punkinhouse? (And no guessing "read" because that is a given.)
We raked leaves!! All of the leaves. In the State of Ohio.

An anonymous Internet user's image of what our leaves kinda look like.

Well, it seemed like it.

“I perhaps owe it to flowers, that I became a painter.” ~Monet

Between 1896 and his death in 1926, Claude Monet painted about 250 pieces in the Water Lilies series. Sixty of them, eight full murals, reside in purpose-built oval rooms in the Musée de l'Orangerie. The other 190 are scatter throughout the world, primarily in museums, as individual pieces (for the most part).
The Cleveland Museum of Art has one. It is part of a triptych whose other parts are in Kansas City, Missouri, and St. Louis, Missouri. They have been reunited for a brief visit (until the new year).

The Cleveland Museum of Art and the Royal Academy of Arts in London have organized an exhibition that examines the role of gardens in the paintings of Claude Monet and his contemporaries.
Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse

I loved seeing the immensity of the three water lily paintings together, but this exhibition is large and comprehensive. Some of my favorite pieces weren't even by Monet. There is a striking Sargent and an ethereal Berthe Morisot. Cleveland is very lucky.

not the John Singer Sargent on display in the exhibit

Peep show

I've never understood why people think Vermont is so damn awesome in the fall for "leaf-peeping." Ohio has some pretty spectacular leaves to plant your peepers on too.

Although it seems to be taking a long time for them to shed their chlorophyll this year. At this rate, I'll be raking leaves --the downside of all that autumn glory-- at Christmas.

Tree hugger

After a violent storm ripped through the Irish town of Collooney, locals were shocked to discover the remains of a 1,000-year-old skeleton hanging from the roots of a fallen tree.

The body, which belonged to a young man who appears to have died a violent death, was found beneath a 200-year-old beech tree. In a scene that must have been quite macabre, the upper part of the skeleton was found raised in the air within the tree’s root system, while the legs remained in the ground. 

Is it wrong that I read this story and my first thought was, "Oh, no! Poor tree!"?

To Do

I took three days off work starting today. Whenever I do this, I feel I should have grandiose plans. But I end up at home doing dishes, scrubbing the toilet, reading a book. Don't get me wrong. The reading is great and the other stuff needs to get done, so it may as well be at a time of my choosing instead of after a long day at work, but I feel like I should DO something.

So tomorrow, I plan to visit the Cleveland Botanical Garden. I need to climb a tree.

That explains it.

So I read this article in the Wall Street Journal online (which I will graciously assume to be opinion) about the "anti-science" certitude on climate change. The author shares the story of the planet of Vulcan which was theorized to exist based on Newtonian physics and later disproven by using Einstein's theory of relativity. This anecdote from the annals of science history is supposed to illustrate that climate change is only a theory and could (totally) be disproven 100 years from now just like Vulcan was.
He also argues that because climatology as a discipline is only 170 years old, we can't predict stuff on such short history (even though we have --and use-- the ability to get a reliable historical model on temperature fluctuations and climate data from ice cores, sea floor cores, and old-growth forests).
Finally, he points out that calling people who deny that climate change is real "climate change deniers" is mean.


The reality is, 99% of all climate scientists agree that climate change is real and potentially catastrophic. Why would so many scientists agree? What do they gain by warning us of  possible doom? This was the one thing that I could never comprehend. I see all these conservatives denying the reality of climate change in the face of so much evidence. And their argument is that the "evidence" is self-serving. What? Thousands of scientists are talking about climate change to get grant money? Hundreds of "liberal" politicians are trying to pass legislation on emissions because their goal is not mitigating damage to our planet, but to "increase government control over the economy and the personal lives of citizens." What?

Butterfly

I have a giant clump of bronze fennel in the garden that appeals to the papilio polyxenes. We have no fewer than six black swallowtail caterpillars chowing on the fennel right now.

Edit to add best pic of all:

It wouldn't kill you to skip a day

I participated in a lively discussion about showering today on a friend's Facebook page.
What struck me the most about it was not the whole back-and-forth of how often it's appropriate to shower, but how many of the posters considered a daily (or even twice daily) shower as a necessity. And how very arrogant and wasteful that is.
There are places, even in our own nation, where water is a precious commodity, but some of us treat it as if it were unlimited and all ours. Even though our pocket of the world is not suffering from drought, doesn't mean that we should treat water so cavalierly. We are all interconnected and water is valuable whether you have a little or a lot.

New house

I think I found the MOST ADORABLE WAY to upgrade the sadly deteriorating playhouse in the back yard that LSH fondly refers to as the "mother-in-law suite." I am very impressed with this guy's work! If only she didn't need a bathroom...

Look-alikes

Copper beech trunks look like elephant legs.

Old hickory

We have a sick old hickory tree that, I believe has beetles and cannot survive. It is enormous and used to shade a large portion of the back yard. I wish I had thought to get a picture of it in autumn when the leaves are deep gold.

The difference a little rain makes

Poppy

Poopy

Planters Anonymous

A long time ago, when Punkinhead was just a teeny baby, we lived on the second floor of a double in Cleveland. It had the typical screened in porch out front and we loved it all summer long.

It was in that house that my addiction to annuals began. We had the cheap plastic chairs and bought some sand buckets at the dollar store and three window boxes for the porch. And we marched off to KMart to buy a flat of impatiens for them. (It was very shady on the porch.)
In all the years we lived there (seven!!), the impatiens never thrived. The big sycamore out front and the enclosed deck made it too dark, even for them. But my addiction to annuals needed to be satisfied.
Now we have a lovely home with a slightly shady back deck and instead of three window boxes and three sand buckets, there are about 20 terra cotta pots and five window boxes. (But still the cheap --but slightly classier-- plastic chairs.) And now, to feed my addiction, we buy a full gross of impatiens: 4 flats of 36 plants each.

Planting 144 impatiens isn't much fun, but the end result is very satisfying. And that is something a lot of addicts can never say.

temperate

Yeah, winters in Ohio kinda suck, not necessarily because they are gray or super-cold, or long, but because they are all of those things. But the rest of the year, from about the middle of April all the way until nearly December, the weather here is pretty damn awesome. And I don't understand why more people don't appreciate that.
Our summers tend toward the hot and humid, which isn't fun for me, but I understand a lot of people enjoy that sort of thing. And it's certainly no hotter than Florida where all the retirees spend their winters complaining about the gators before coming back north to complain about the mosquitoes.
But our springs and autumns are unrivaled.

Be nice to the earth today --and everyday!

Find out what kind of creature you are for Earth Day thanks to Google.
I am a squid.

Temperature's rising

Cooler near the lake. Four words that anyone who lives on the shores of a remotely sizable body of water dread every spring. Yes, we get the bonus of a warmer autumn, but in April that is hardly a consolation.

Journal-ist

I wish I was one of those thoughtful people who keep a journal. Specifically a garden journal. Each year I could note the new plants that I add and the ones that failed. I can record the date the crocus bloomed and the crab-apple. If we had an especially large crop of pears or acorns, I would write that down. And when the first red-winged blackbird appeared. Or the first hummingbird. All of this information would be useful for keeping track of how the garden is doing right now and would make a lovely gift to my future grandchild (no pressure, Punkinhead).
Alas, I have never been dutiful about diaries and the recording of mundane occurrences. So I will not remember from year-to-year if the pieris is blooming late or early. And my future grandchildren (no pressure, Punkinhead) will have to be content with inheriting my biting wit.

This counts as exercise, right?

Now that it is officially spring, the clean-up in the yard has begun. Never mind that the HIGH temperature today is expected to be 30°F and there are rumors of snow on the horizon. Last year's leaves must be removed.
Saturday, before the balmy 44 degree temps began to tumble, we managed to completely rebuild the birdbath fountain and rake out about 75 square feet of flower bed. We filled six brown bags. Sunday was freezing. Literally. But we forced ourselves outside for the "fill a bag" challenge. (I lost because I took longer to fill my brown bag than LSH did.)
We have completed precisely 1/8th of the cleanup. Unfortunately, the mulch comes on Saturday.

C'mon springtime

You may have seen a couple of recent photos of our Great Lake, Erie. Notable is its current lack of visible water due to a thinning but still persistent layer of ice.
This is what springtime currently looks like in Northern Ohio. Granted, it is not "Spring" yet. We're still 8 days out, but close enough. Ice jams are forming on all our rivers and all the winter poop is waiting to be scooped before the first really good rain. But I haven't seen a single bud.
All of which makes this picture that my aunt took in NORWAY, LAST WEEK, so annoying.