The freezing temperatures usually came with night fall, thwarted by the sun in the daylight hours. However, one day i listened intently to the radio as the weatherman predicted a low of 24. As i scrolled through the weather app on my phone i realized that it would not be above freezing again until 10 am the following morning. The blankets alone would not be enough to keep the young fruit trees from freezing with temperatures in the twenties. They would need the heat lamps. But the heat lamps could not be run without human supervision and a fire extinguisher on stand by. I had work in the morning. I bit my lip. The weather had thrown me a curve ball. What to do? What to do? Finally it came to me! I usually woke up around 2:30 am and made it to work at 5:30 am. I did this for two reasons. Most of my job involved assisting people with safety and independence during dressing, toileting, and bathing tasks. Once the patients had done these things for the day they weren’t typically willing to do them again. If you missed the shower they were not going to take a second one just because you asked politely. No, if you wanted to catch the self care tasks you had to get up before breakfast and see the early birds first and see the patients that got dressed after breakfast second. The other reason i went in so early was my multiple jobs on the side. If i needed to travel to a different facility in a different city before the patients began supper i had to start at my full-time job fairly early to fit it in. It would feel very strange to be just beginning my day around lunch time but if i could manage to go in to work later than usual i could keep the heat lamps on the trees until the temperature reached the thirties. It was decided. I would go in to work around 10 am the morning after the hard freeze.
It was strange to see the sun rise the following morning. I was used to leaving the house in the dark. There was ice on all the blades of grass and they crunched under my feet as i went to check the heat lamps in the tree boxes.
Ice crystals had formed in patterns on the side of the car and a thin layer of ice covered the side mirror sticking straight up like little hairs in a buzz cut.
To my utter delight, though it was 25 degrees outside, the fruit trees were warm and toasty in their boxes and all 3 heat lamps were still working.
The dogs, seeing that it was past 5:00 and i was still home decided we were having a day off and settled into our weekend routine. We were not having a day off, just a late start, but they didn’t seem to be getting the message. They enjoyed my company, drank a ton of water, and hunkered down in front of the space heater for warmth.
At 9:40 i could wait no longer. If i didn’t leave right then i would never finish my list of patients to be seen before they went to bed for the day. It was still only 29 degrees. It didn’t matter. I’d given the trees the best chance i could. It was time to go. I switched off the heat lamps and covered the boxes quickly with blankets to trap the heat inside. I loaded the car, put the dogs up, scraped the windshield, and headed for work. It was a strange day. I felt very far behind upon arriving to work. I had to work harder to coax the patients into working on their self care because it was already mid-day, but i was determined and persuasive and most all of them worked on the goals i had planned for the day. I felt massively depressed that my paperwork had just begun mid-afternoon, at a time when i would normally be in the car headed home already. I was big on routine and didn’t normally deviate from my usual schedule. However, i felt an enormous sense of accomplishment in that the fruit trees would probably survive. And they did. I didn’t get to leave work that day until almost 8:00 pm. However, upon returning home to put the lamps on again i found the trees were in good condition, none of the leaves wilted or frosted.
As the temperatures became colder i settled into the comfortable grooves of a winter routine. In the mornings i would put the space heater in the bathroom and warm it up before taking a shower. When it was below 40 degrees there was at most 2 minutes of hot and 4 minutes of luke-warm shower water. However, i was putting so much of my energy into work i couldn’t afford to spare the time it would take to boil water for a bath. So i washed my hair every other day and i stood in the icy water with the knowledge that the heater was coming soon and that sensation would give way to dry warmth shortly. After my shower i would scrape the ice from the car so that i could drive to work. Then i would switch the heat lamps off and put the blankets over the tree boxes to trap the heat and keep them warm until the sun rose, bringing above freezing temperatures. At night i left the heat lamps on and kept an eye on them through the window by peeking through the curtain every couple hours, in case a bulb burned out or an animal knocked one of the lamps from where it was clipped. I also left the space heater on at night. The place where the dryer was supposed to have a vent to the outdoors (wasn’t hooked up yet) was still just a hole leading to the outside with a thin plastic vent-cover over it. The “mr cool heating/cooling unit” needed some help to warm the place. I checked the weather report daily on 2 different phone apps, the radio, and my outdoor thermometer on the porch. They all said something different. Knowing their track record/patterns for being above or below the actual temperature when standing on the porch, i combined all their predictions to guesstimate how far off each weather source was going to be. If one of the phone apps (the one most far off) predicted a low for the night at 41, you could expect freezing weather. At a forecast of “40” i would wake up to “29” degree temperatures. If it said 41 i had the heat lamps on and ready. I was determined to nurse those fruit trees through the winter. They looked cozy standing out there in their boxes at night. They looked like bright orange glowing squares in the dark vastness of the night. I didn’t sleep much on freezing nights. I was worried about bulb burnout, critter interference, and fire hazard. I was constantly checking out the window to make sure everything was as it should be…that the bulbs were still on but not on fire. I went over the steps to using the fire extinguisher in my mind and reminded myself that if the extinguisher ran out before the fire was contained my coat could be used to smother flames.
While i waited for sunrise and fretted about the survival of the trees and the duties of work the following morning i enjoyed a cozy silence with the dogs; time in which nothing specific was scheduled to be done and i could just exist. I had bought many bags of gluten free oatmeal on clearance for 1 dollar and was now making use of it. Oatmeal for breakfast and late night snacks every day. I mixed in spices, vanilla hemp milk, and grapes to add some form of sweetness. I had forbid myself honey in an attempt to avoid catching more sickness during the winter season.
Though we had the space heater, whether it kept the tiny house warm depended upon the temperature when i arrived home. If i put the space heater on when it was still 50 degrees or above it would keep the tiny house toasty warm all night. If it was 41 or below when i put the space heater on, it was already too cold in the cabin and it would never warm the air at a rate faster than the cold air was coming in. I dealt with this by wearing layers. I picked a pair of tightly fitting pajama pants that i wore underneath my scrubs at work like long johns. They kept me warm. While at home, i layered an undershirt, a sweater, and a housecoat for my top and 3 pairs of pajama pants for my legs. It was enough to keep me comfortable.
The dogs parked themselves in front of the heater and slept over the warm spot where the heat reached the floor. The drinking water lived inside the house so it wouldn’t freeze and crack the plastic jugs in the shed.
Winter was an anxious time in the hill country. It was not severe enough to let go of anything that would be lost to snow and ice in other climates but it was always dipping just below the freeze mark on the thermometer, as if teasing the farmers about their luck in a game of chance.
i can’t do it anymore because it’s been established that Cashew will chew the outdoor extension cords stretching from the house to the fruit tree boxes if unsupervised but i used to just open the door and let the dogs out before climbing back in bed on my days off. They were used to waking up at 2:30 am on weekdays and during my two days off Cashew would start thrashing around in her crate near 5 am and running noisily in circles until i woke up and let her out. I would just open the door and go back to sleep until around 8. I just wanted sleep. My god, why couldn’t this dog understand the concept of our schedule…complete with two irregular days where i was allowed to sleep in until the time when normal people woke for work? On one such morning i had zombie-walked to the crate and then the door and released both dogs into the wilderness, eager to return to my much awaited and anticipated slumber. It was a peaceful and warm rest. When i awoke i heard the sound of rain falling softly on the tin roof. It wasn’t pouring but it was a steady noise. I looked outside and to my surprise the dogs were not sheltered on the porch under the roof. They were nowhere to be seen. I whistled for them and suddenly they emerged from the trees. Sili was drier than Cashew. She was damp but not soaked. Cashew’s fur was dripping. There was mud from her paws to her elbows on each foot. She looked somewhat like a swamp monster. I didn’t have a dog towel in the house. They were all in the shed. If i went to get one it would get wet on the walk from the shed back to the house. I sighed. Then an idea popped into my head. It was only 51 degrees out but with the rain both dogs looked cold. I plugged the space heater in and turned it up to “high”. I let the dogs in. Then i quickly zipped myself back into my mosquito net tent around the bed. With me out of reach both dogs sauntered back over to where the heater had been placed. They stood or laid in front of it continuously all morning and licked the mud from their fur. Cashew used the heater coils kind of like a hair dryer. When she was finished she was very fluffy!
i was taking the trash out one day when i noticed a pile of gray sticks in the soft dirt. Upon closer inspection they were perfectly good screws. I lamented the loss of even 1 stray screw when engrossed in a project in the yard. I wondered who on earth had parted with 12 screws voluntarily. Did they not know they lost them? Were they being chased by a mountain lion or a rabid coyote? Who on earth would part with an entire handful of screws without returning to search for them? Did they not know how much home depot was charging for a package of these things? I quickly collected them in my apron pocket and scurried off to my tool box. If someone wanted to leave 12 perfectly good screws in the dirt, i would gladly make use of them.
As we sunk further into autumn with each day the trees began to change. I waited for the tree the sellers had said was a spanish oak to turn a dark maroon like the ones on my neighbors’ properties but it never did. One tree that did begin turning red was my beloved sumac tree. I fretted about it often being that it had grown completely sideways to get out from under the shade of the larger trees around it. It was wedged across another tree’s branch and that appeared to be the thing supporting the skinny horizontal tree. I had an intense need to help it in some way; a need i suppressed as the tree had been doing fine for over twenty years without me and if there was anything i learned about man’s relationship with nature it was that we often fouled perfectly good things up in our quest to make things more efficient or better. Best to leave the tree alone.
By early november the tree’s leaves had gone a pinkish color which would later turn flame red. Unfortunately, by then i was used to the color of the sumacs and spanish oaks all around me and forgot to snap a final picture of the progression.
I was standing in the yard one day, disgruntled about some form of unfairness in life, and i decided to channel my frustration into pulling up some of the young tree stumps. The medium ones required a lot of back-breaking work, hacking the thing to pieces with the axe and wedging the shovel underneath roots to try to lift it up. However, sometimes the really small ones could be lifted from the ground with just the shovel. I picked one of the small stumps and dug around it a bit. Then i wedged the shovel as deep as i could underneath the biggest root visible and put my weight into the handle. The stump was lifted from the ground with dirt and tiny spiders still clinging to the scraggly root structure. Where it had been, a tiny crater. Cashew watched me do this with head cocked and ears alert. I looked around the yard and found my next target. I went over and tugged at it with my fingers to see how hard i would have to work to pry it loose; trying to judge if i needed the axe yet. Cashew ran to where i was, pushed my fingers out of the way with her nose, grabbed hold of the stump with her mouth, and tugged backwards with all her might. It didn’t immediately come loose but it was moving. I was thrilled with her enthusiasm for my project so i decided to encourage her efforts. I dug around the stump with the shovel to try to help her pry it free. She bit the shovel and barked at it. She wanted to do it herself. She began digging with her paws around the stump. Dirt was flying in every direction. She was so excited to be useful! Then she grabbed hold of the stump with her mouth once again. She tugged backwards 6 times and the thing came loose, sending her backwards on her rump. She got up and carried the result of her work over to me for approval. I couldn’t believe it! The dog had taught herself to dig up stumps! I grabbed her and kissed her neck. I praised and petted her. Then she carried her prize proudly all over the yard. She did this until she saw me picking out another stump. Then she dropped her prize immediately (which Sili took full advantage of) and ran over to push me out of the way to do the job. She didn’t want any help. All i had to do was touch a stump with my finger and she’d dig it up. I sometimes worried that she’d hurt her jaw or break a tooth and tried to help her but she would have none of it, so i became careful to point only at loose stumps and dig the harder ones up when she was inside the house. I had to be careful not to touch anything i wanted to keep because she understood the finger point as a universal sign of sorts for “dig”. I was thrilled with her new skill. She really aimed to please and if her owner was in the yard she would always look for a task her owner desired her to do and then perform it. I had to learn over my first year with her that the problem arose when her owner was not in the yard. If she could not see her owner, she aimed to please herself. That could mean anything from digging up buried lines running from the house to chewing outdoor extension cords in half. I had to learn that if i was not in the yard, neither could she be. It wasn’t ideal but it was a policy necessary to enact if i was going to enjoy her personality, gifts, and talents without having to yell at her all the time and constantly save her from near death experiences. Cashew was an amazing dog. She was also exhausting. She required a lot of work from her carer but when put in, she was incredible to witness. I had to be careful to remember on days when i was tired that she was not like my beautiful couch-potato mutt, my older dog Sili. She would not be resting with us in the house and there was no universe in which i could expect that of her. It made me cry some days in the throes of mental and physical exhaustion but her talents far outweighed the sacrifices made to keep her happy and healthy.
The chores had to be done whether i was home or in town working. Because i used a laundry line my washing was really at the mercy of the weather. I couldn’t do laundry on rainy days and my 2 days off each week weren’t always the ones scheduled for sun. If it rained throughout my days off i would have to do laundry during the work week. This basically meant washing the laundry in the evening, hanging it on the line as the sun set, leaving it there the following day while i was at work, and taking it off the line once i arrived home. I hated to leave the laundry on the line all day as it would dry in just a few hours and leaving it there for that long would fade the colors considerably. However, it had to be done. There was no better option. I never had the desire to be a stay at home person; minding the chores carefully and holding down the fort until my breadwinner returned. I did however wonder often what men felt like when they returned home and someone had washed their laundry, made them food, and asked about the highlights of their day. Sometimes the notion that a person would be at home continuing the chores while the breadwinner was in town seemed fascinating and magical. I just wanted to be the breadwinner; not the part of the narrative that was supposed to appeal to me. But i digress…Unfortunately, in winter the days were shorter and i did not always get home before sundown. The laundry still had to be done. I would gather the wheelbarrow, the laundry basket, and my machete and go pull the laundry off the line by lantern light while the dogs played and wrestled in the dark. Sometimes you could hear the coyotes and sometimes not. I worked in a quiet and methodical manner to fold each item and place it in the basket in the wheelbarrow, both because i figured my neighbors were sleeping and i didn’t want to call the attention of the coyotes if they were off somewhere preoccupied by deer or sheep. Let them be preoccupied. Sometimes i had to rinse little yellow spots off the laundry i pulled down from the line. This was where honey bees had landed on the clothing to take a rest. Their pollen-laden legs left neon yellow marks wherever they’d been. Other times i had to remove wolf spiders from the garments before folding them and taking them in. I did my best to stay on top of things in the shallow light the lantern provided but sometimes i missed one and then we’d have a roommate for a while. I didn’t kill the wolf spiders as they were known to eat black widow and brown recluse spiders. Often when i dug up rotting tree stumps i would have to be careful to check for brown recluse as i pulled the different sections out of the ground with my fingers as they liked to hide amongst old wood and fallen leaves but i never found them above ground and i was pretty sure the thousands of wolf spiders cruising through the blades of grass, moving out of my way as i walked, had something to do with that. They were called wolf spiders because they didn’t use a web. They stalked and grabbed their prey just like a wolf running down a deer. One of our laundry hitch-hikers was a large wolf spider i called Henry. He had roomed with us in the spring. He hung out on the piece of plywood in the kitchen window under the light fixture. When moths were attracted to the light bulb in the kitchen he would appear, scurry quickly across the plywood, and pounce upon the moth, holding it until it stopped flapping before dragging it just as quickly behind the plywood in the window to dine on his prey. He was quite a skilled hunter and it was amazing to watch. But i digress again…where was i? Night laundry. Not the best. Winter wasn’t my favorite season. The only good thing about the coming of winter was a break from the scorpions. I could actually go barefoot in the tiny house when the heater was on and feel the warmth of the floor boards around the heater on the bottoms of my feet. It was just another season. All of them had their place and purpose. Next year spring would return and i would relish in the ideal weather, the ability to leave the windows open, and the lack of worry about frost on the fruit trees. Then summer would arrive bringing longer days, scorpions, and a/c unit dependence; a mixed basket of gifts that would have to be enjoyed together. Each season had something to offer and something to take. Winter took my daylight.
Originally i had planned to winterize the property by the last day of September. That did not happen. Procrastination was not usually my thing. I was the one who showed up 50 minutes early to every appointment and 15 minutes early to every social gathering. I was the one that began studying for the certification exam intensively every day 4 months before the scheduled exam date. I was not usually a fly by the seat of my pants, last-minute preparation type of person. However, this time i was. As i’ve mentioned before, i have a day job in health care that keeps me pretty busy throughout the week. I get two days off each week to work on the property and during september and the first half of october, i spent those days being beyond sick. Every week i would go to work, manage to stave off sickness until my two days off, and then collapse in grossness and agony, wasting my available days to winterize the property. I didn’t think it would be a good idea to operate a power drill while feverish and vomiting. I thought that might end in stupid mistakes and bloodshed. So i put it off. But winter was coming. Whether i was ready or not, October brought freezing weather in the hill country every year and i knew my luck was going to run out soon. I had to get the boxes built for the baby fruit trees so that i could clamp the heat lamps in their windows to keep them warm in freezing temperatures. Without boxes the young fruit trees would not survive the winter. I should stop and address something before moving forwards with this story. When i say “tree”…think “stick”. Many friends and coworkers had laughed hysterically and asked why on earth i thought trees needed heat lamps. Short answer; they weren’t trees, yet. There were 3 main reasons i had planted really young trees. #1. Cost. A mature tree cost 100s of dollars. A baby pomegranate tree cost 11 bucks, a fig 15, and a lemon 20. #2. Portability. Whatever i wanted to plant, i had to be able to lift, carry, and fit in the back of my suv. I couldn’t do any of that with a 20 ft tree. #3. Limestone. The hill country was full of it. In fact, that was pretty much what the hill country was; rolling mounds of limestone covered in short and scrubby trees. Any hole for a tree had to be dug through solid rock. The more tree there was to admire, the more roots there were to bury. I was good with a 6 inch pomegranate. But, 6 inch trees were fragile. They were not well established. They couldn’t recover from stresses as well as older trees and their roots were still pretty shallow. 6 inch trees could freeze. I had made my choice and now i needed to follow through. If i failed to get the boxes erected and the heat lamps up and running by the first freeze, the money i spent on the trees, the season caring for them, and the effort spent digging the holes would be wasted. I knew it would be cold on halloween. It always was. I just hoped the weather would wait until then.
Each box took me around 4 hours to make. I used wood scraps in the shed left over from various previous projects for the first box. When i figured out what the box was going to look like i went to the home depot in kerrville and bought some more of each kind of piece i had used. I hung pieces of wood off the open edge of the shed porch and anchored them with my boot to saw them into smaller pieces. I measured pieces of wood by holding them up to where i wanted to put them and marking them with a sharpie. Then i sawed them into the size and shape i needed to fit the space i was looking at. There was no blueprint or diagram. I had an idea in my head and i was going to carry it out.
I used what i had. I used the scrap wood in the shed and i used the 3 inch screws. I didn’t want to pay for brand new materials when i had things i could make work in the shed. However, the 3 inch screws were way too long for the project at hand. I had to drive them through the wood and into the dirt beneath to get the screws tight enough to hold the wood in place. Originally i had thought it was a bad thing to have 3 inch screws sticking out of my boxes in various places but in the end, it proved an ingenious way to stick the blanket on the boxes when i had to go to work and could not leave the heat lamps on in the day time. The wind could not blow the blankets off once they were snagged on the nails. I finished the first box on October 21. The weather had been in the thirties but not yet under 32. One morning i did wake up to ice all over my windshield but the trees seemed unbothered so it must have only been freezing for a short time. I was pushing my luck by counting on october to be above freezing all throughout. I needed to build the other two boxes.
I started on the second box the very next day. I had intended to finish both of the remaining boxes to be built but after 4 hours of bending, sawing, and drilling i was not physically able to do it again just yet.
I made the second box bigger than the first. I had gone to home depot and had access to larger pieces of wood than had been lying in the scrap pile in the shed. The first one would have to sit on the pomegranate tree, the shortest of my fruit trees. I would build bigger boxes for the fig tree and the meyer lemon tree. I used the wheelbarrow in place of a second person to hold the pieces of wood against each other while i drove a screw into place attaching the pieces together. When all was said and done the top piece didn’t line up quite right so i opened the extra tube of tar left over from repairing the roof and put tar in the thin gaps around the edges of the top piece of wood. Then i stood back and looked at it. My 2nd box was better designed than the first.
I had an electric hand saw but i refused to use it unless absolutely necessary. This was why. At times, when working on projects, i tended to nick myself. When i did suffer a cut i wanted it to be at the hands of a manual, hand-powered tool rather than an electric one. For this cut i didn’t even need a band aid. If i had been using the electric saw i would have had one less finger.
I didn’t get around to building the third box until October 28. There was a freeze and i had to just cover the trees with blankets. Luckily, it was short lived and they survived unscathed. On the morning of October 28 i told myself that all 3 trees would be in boxes with heat lamps and fencing by sundown. No excuses. No unfinished pieces. The property would be winterized by sundown and that was that. It had to be. This was getting ridiculous. Winter was coming…should have been here already. If i didn’t get things in gear i was going to lose those trees. I wore my apron for the pockets but otherwise i was in boots and pajamas. There was no time for showers, or breakfast, or lunch. This had to get done. I didn’t even take very many pictures of the third one. I was busy, as usual, trying to damage control Cashew’s ever-present desire to “help”. Only, now it would be november in a matter of days. Time was running out, stress was high, and my patience more thin than ever. Every time i cut a piece of wood that dog ran off with it. Any time i dropped a screw that dog took it. If i laid down something sharp she had to go stand on it. Then i had to drop what i was doing and go rescue her before she got in over her head and really injured herself. I would lift her off the saw and carry her away from my tools, one arm underneath her pits, back legs swinging in the air as i hoisted her to safety. “How many times have i told you dog? Do not stand on the saw!” I tried to lay it up on the railing of the shed porch but the wind blew it down and it cut into the floor boards of the porch when it landed. Every time i turned around Cashew was behind me. She was always in my way. I knew she wanted to help but this was the kind of project that really required opposable thumbs. The dog seemingly had a death wish, or at least zero survival instinct. Whenever i ran the drill, she tried to bite the spinning part. I was trying to finish this box and she was trying ****** hard to make sure that never happened. As long as i worked on it she was never more than 8 feet from my project. The bees liked it too. Any time i ran the drill they would arrive in groups of 3 to 5 and buzz around my project until they were satisfied there was no flower to be pollinated. I wasn’t sure how i was calling them with the power drill but i was. Occasionally i had to chase Cashew around the yard and pry a bee out of her mouth before it stung her. Like i said; no survival instinct.
During the construction of all 3 boxes, Sili sat far away from the bees, the power tools, and the wrath of her mama, frustrated by time and weather. She had known me longer than our new puppy and she had no desire to be in between me and the mess i was working on. She stayed out of my sight, sun bathed in the yard, and helped herself to the water bowl on the porch when she was thirsty. When Cashew did something inadvisable like eat bees or try to bite a running power drill, Sili looked on from a distance with a certain expression on her face that seemed to say, “dumbass”.
When i built the boxes i constructed them next to the power outlet on the side of the house. Then i stored them in the shed until i had all 3. The second and third box were built with thicker wood. They were taller, wider, and heavier. I couldn’t lift them. I turned them on their sides and dragged the boxes out of the shed, down the stairs, and onto the ground. Then i tipped them up until they were standing. I lifted one corner of the 2nd box, leaving the box standing on the adjacent corner. I advanced one side of the box towards the fruit trees. Then i swung it around and landed on the opposite corner, and then back to the first corner. In this way i “walked” the box from the shed to the fruit trees. It took all my strength and i was sore for days after. When i finally got the box up to the fruit tree i wanted to cover i took a hair tie out of my pocket. I gathered the tree’s branches and secured them loosely in the hair tie. Then i laid the box on its side and got it as close to the base of the tree as possible. I tipped the box up, bringing it down over the little tree and suddenly it was in the center of the box. I removed the hair tie and wrapped the fencing back around the new wooden box to keep the deer out. I repeated this ritual 2 additional times. An hour later i would add the lamps. I clamped each one to the window in each box. I found a large rock to sit the extension cord union onto to get it up out of the dry grass. I threaded the heat lamp cord through the fencing for each tree and attached it to an outdoor extension cord. I then ran 100s of feet of extension cord back to the house where i had a piece that if plugged into an outlet would support 3 different devices. Ultimately the 3 lengths of extension cord would be plugged into this piece which was then plugged into the outlet on the side of the house. The bulbs would turn on and i would collapse in relief in the rocking chair. The property was officially winterized. During the months of november and december i put the heat lamps on at night any time the forecast called for 40 as the low. If the weatherman said 40 you could count on it being 31 or 32 when you awoke and the car would be covered in ice. At 4:30 in the morning i would pull on my coat and scarf and head out to switch the heat lamps out for blankets before i went to work. The dogs would always accompany me. Sili for moral support and Cashew so that she could attempt to shred and sometimes sit on the blanket you were trying to cover each plant with.
Three days after i finished the last of the tree boxes the hill country experienced the first hard freeze of the year. Just in time.
It started with a piece of cabbage. There was a piece of cabbage in the yard. I went over to stand near the vegetable scrap. I scratched my head as i examined it. What was a piece of cabbage doing in the yard? 30 feet away i could see an orange peel….and now that i was looking, there were vegetables spread out in every direction as far as the eye could see. I went around gathering them in my apron, trying to make sense of how they got there. Squirrels? Was Max pulling things through the square holes in the fence… the fence. Cashew! I dropped my bounty in the grass and ran to where the fencing around the compost pile had been. There was a mangled, folded, sideways origami of fencing that had once been a neat and tidy circle with a compost pile in the center. Cashew stood a safe 25 feet from me looking on with interest. “You!” I pointed a finger at her accusingly. She turned and ran. The sun was setting and i had no time to lose fixing the compost pile. I couldn’t go after her just yet. I pried the fencing apart and shaped it into the best circle i could manage with the wreckage she had left me. I gathered as many scraps as i could find and put them back on the pile. I needed rebar to hammer the fencing into the dirt but i didn’t have any. There was no hardware store in my town. I had to improvise. I grabbed my hammer and the box of 3 inch screws from the shed. I hammered the 3 inch screws into the dirt at an angle, catching the bottom edge of the wire fencing beneath the widened head of the screw. Each time i hammered a screw into the ground i hammered one at an opposite angle on the other side, trapping the fencing between the two. In this way i secured the fencing to the ground all the way around the circle. It was a short-term fix but it would have to do. Exhausted and angry i put my tools up, locked the shed, and returned to the house. Sili came in for the night. Cashew was nowhere to be found. I thought maybe i’d been too hard on her. Maybe she was feeling remorseful for all the extra work she’d made me. Then i remembered who i was dealing with. She was an incredibly useful dog but “remorse” was not in her vocabulary. I took the lantern through the dark, back to the compost pile and sure enough, there she was. On her face, she had the look of a child on a road trip with her finger 2 centimeters from her sibling’s face singing, “i’m not touching you. I’m not touching you…” This child of mine. As i’d told her many times before, i said, “You’re going to be the death of me.”
