42/365 Upcoming Block Party Notice

I could use help with a few things for the block party...

I have 1 table. Does anyone else have one that they could bring out for food?

I know Tara is bringing a sprinkler of sorts. Cicely is bringing out a water table. Does anyone else have water tables or small pools that we can fill for the kids? I have water balloons that we will have ready.

Bridgett, are you doing a craft with the older kids?

We'll bring out a big trash can for trash. Would anyone be willing to take care of recycling?

I need someone (perhaps 2 people) to use their car to block off the street at the top of the block @6pm. Tara, could you use you car to partially block off the street at Grand?

Any other suggestions or help are appreciated. And yes, the current forecast for Tuesday is 100.

Thanks!
Zelda

41/365 Tent Part The Last

The tent is gone. Zelda mentioned it to me in passing on, of course, my front porch. I went back into the kitchen later and looked out the back door. Yup, gone. Another small mystery solved.

40/365 Class

There's a situation on my block that I'm not going to blog about because it would be hard to disguise the characters and it's all based on rumor and supposition at this point anyway. But something was said in passing that sort of slapped me across the face. Essentially, something bad may or may not be coming to pass for one of the families on the block, and another neighbor, upon hearing this, said, "Good."

I know we're not one big happy family here between the sycamores. I know that. There have been conflicts, large and small, throughout the 12 years we've lived here. But most of the conflicts seem to have been either about crime (and therefore, heated) or differences of opinion, like about the parking situation or the condos or whatever. Some of those opinion-based conflicts got VERY heated, in fact there was a time when I contemplated planting a for sale sign in my front yard, I was so ticked off. But somehow, none of that lasts. Crime comes and goes, decisions get made, everyone gets mad at the alderman. We have a mah jongg night or a block party and things start to simmer down.

So this, I mean, it wasn't a big thing, but it was demonstrative of an attitude about living here and who should or shouldn't be allowed to live here. Who should be invited to the parties and who should have stars upon thars kind of thing. I mean, sure, if we had some absentee landlord properties with transient renters who threw dog poop on our cars or something, yeah, that would be one thing. Nuisance properties and nuisance neighbors should be dealt with and when they are, there should be a "whew, glad that's over." But the family in question, the only thing they really have going against them is that they aren't Our Kind of People. It's a class thing--they aren't from a different ethnic or racial group, they didn't move here from some puzzling foreign culture, they don't throw wild crazy parties, they don't throw dog poop on our cars. They're just, pretty obviously, from a lower socioeconomic group than most of the block--and when I say most of the block, I mean most of the block NOW. Many of us come from lowly origins. But we threw out the frosted hair, frosted jeans, frosted lipstick, we scrubbed off the motor oil and keep our fingernails clean. Like my dad said, life always look better out a classroom window than from behind a lathe. But this family doesn't hide it.

And I, for one, could give a rat's ass. They're good neighbors. I know if I needed something, I could knock on their door and they'd help without thinking about it. I've built up layers upon layers of conversations and helpful neighbor moments with them and, frankly, I can talk their language. I am not offended by them because there is nothing offensive about them.

Zelda told me to let it roll off my back. Don't take the neighbor who said that seriously. I'm not going to change her. I guess it just made me realize that when or if this family leaves, my family is the lowest (or very near the lowest) on that totem pole. I mean, come on, we've all seen my house and my tattooed siblings and my grandmother who steals plants from national forests and my laundry line and so forth. Yeah, we have adorably adorable kids, and that will keep us on some lists, but it made me realize I need to get to work on my protective coloration.

Or, do what Zelda said and just say WHATEVER. Move on.

39/365 Tent Meet

"Oh, I met the people with the tent," Travis mentions as we sit on his front stoop swatting at mosquitoes. It's silly--all the kids have retreated to my living room, but we're outside.

"Did you ask them about the tent?"

"No, didn't get that far. But seemed like nice people. They know Barb and Andrew, a few other people on their block. But what was weird was how we met."

He goes on to describe a sadly typical event. A car parked in the alley, as Travis approaches, the car speeds away down the alley and makes a U-turn on Grand. Look-out vehicle? Casing something to rob later?

"So anyway, they pulled up then behind you, in the truck, and we talked about the car. Didn't ask about the tent. But I told them about the block party. Maybe they'll come."

And maybe I'll ask them about the tent when I meet them...

38/365 The Tent

Hmmm. Still going strong....

37/365 Basil, King Billy, and Absolutely Not

I went out to the garden to pick basil after Billy fell asleep sitting next to me on the couch. Pesto is happening tonight. A little late for peak basil, but better than the last two years when we had....no pesto.

So I picked a stuffed to the gills paper grocery bag full, a small but nice looking cucumber (I've pickled 11 quarts of cucumbers this weekend, so we're starting over with teeny ones), some chard and some parsley--definitely not enough to balance the basil in pesto, but we'll go with what we have. I don't miss the parsley when it's not there, but Jake does.

I came in and there were girls in my house: Fiona, Daisy, Eliza, Bree, and Iris. Can they play at the house? Sure, I told them, but don't wake Billy.

"Well, when he gets up we're going to play with King Billy!" Iris announced. Daisy started jumping up and down.

"That's great," I tell them honestly. Anytime I get them to play with the 18 month old is fine with me.

I get the mail and put my shoes away in the front hall baskets. I'm heading back to the kitchen to start work on de-leafing the basil when Fiona approaches me with my knitting. "Where should I put this?"

It had been on the coffee table. "It's fine where it is, or the bag behind the couch," I say, not really caring.

"We're going to build a castle for King Billy in the living room!" she says gleefully. I glance into the living room then and see Bree and Iris moving the coffee table around. The ottoman to the big chair is already in the dining room.

"No," I shake my head at all of them--they know me as Fiona's mom, but also as a girl scout leader. "You're not making a huge old mess."

Fiona puts on her sad puppy dog face.

"Absolutely not."

Bree looks around awkwardly like she does when I say things with finality. I don't like to make her uncomfortable, so I back off a bit. "I'm just, the living room is clean. You're welcome to play, but don't make a big old mess for me."

They decide to watch Batman (the cartoon from the 90s, the good one) and play smaller games on the living room floor. I come back up here to take my afternoon thyroid medication and there he goes. King Billy awakes.

Deep breath.

He nurses back down and my afternoon goes as planned.

36/365 Spend the Night

The thunderstorm came up fast and drenched the yards. The sweetgum out front lost a branch. We were home from the movie, Daisy having a bedtime treat before heading in to the guest room for the night--Fiona was spending the night at Bree's house.

I thought about Fiona, about how she's a bit timid. She'd had a long day already with an Irish dance competition and the sheer heat of summer. So I called.

Zelda answered the phone. It was a girls' night with a friend from girl scouts as well--Travis and Noah were camping with some other neighbor guys. I asked her how it was going, if Fiona was ok.

"Oh! Sure, we're playing Uno and talking."

I got off the phone before my contact created trouble. Jealous of girls' night. But Jake was home after a full week of business travel and it was good to be home.

35/365 Laundry

Sheets drying in the hot hot breeze. As long as I get them in before the thunderstorm, everything works fine. It's been raining a lot here, and everywhere. But I sneak out and hang things when I can.

I put a line up the first summer we lived here, running from the back porch to the back gate. But it was under a tree and didn't work very well. It came down the third summer and went across the yard, in the sunshine, about 4 feet from the back fence. Two parallel lines, actually, because I had so many diapers to dry.

But it was so far away. About two years ago I took it down and zig-zagged a line from the deck to the Navarros' fence next door. That worked perfectly until the euonymous bush got so tall and wide that it took up too much of the line. Plus I'd need a ladder to affix it to the fence this year. So this year it wanders around the yard, behind the pool, the swingset, across to the porch and fence, looping around trees that weren't even there when I put up the first line.

Living here long enough, and having a fair certainty that I will continue to live here, does a lot of good for my psyche. I know it's silly to relate how I put wash out to dry to how I live, but this trial and error and not just doing it the same way all the time even if that way sucks is a minor note on a page of examples of how stability has made me smarter and more relaxed and better at being who I am.

But now I'm turning this into a post that belongs on another blog. So I'll leave it at that.

34/365 Here kitty kitty kitty

The stray we fed once, sometimes twice a day through the winter has disappeared. He's visited twice since the last frost. Last time he was here, he was beautiful. Sleek. He looked like someone had been grooming him. Which convinced me that he was not a domestic longhair after all, but had similar genetics to Bleys--Norwegian Forest Cat. Like a different cat each season.

The only way we knew for sure it was Wooly Bear, in fact, was the stumpy tail.

He hissed at us. I fed him, Blackjack went crazy inside trying to get at him. And then he went away.

His bowl is waiting.

33/365 Liquidambar styraciflua

From Wikipedia:
American Sweetgum is a popular ornamental tree, grown for its intense fall colors, but it also has some drawbacks:

* The wood is brittle and the tree drops branches easily in storms.
* The spiked "gumballs" can be unpleasant to walk on (in fact in California they are known as "ankle biters" or "ankle twisters"), and their profusion can leave a lawn lumpy, since the fruit do not decay well, unless removed.
* Branches may have ridges or "wings" that cause more surface area, increasing weight of snow and ice accumulation on the tree.Our sweetgum tree on the tree lawn is a great shade tree, and the spiky balls have never bothered me like they bother some neighbors. In the fall, it does turn bright yellow, orange, red, and purple. It makes me happy.

But it does drop branches, and worse, it produces babies all over my front yard. I will forever be plucking these out of the ground.

32/365 More Mysteries

Another neighbor--Bruce and Elaine Friedman live across the street with their kids and their big dumb dog (ahem, it's a lab. All labs, I've decided, are big dumb dogs--I have yet to meet an exception). They have three kids: Casey, Adam, and Kenna. Reform Jews, she's a--rabbi? is that what women are referred to in Judaism when they hold that position?--at a local congregation. I've never had a lot to say to Elaine, but I see Bruce all the time. I'm the block captain and so he's often at my door to give me a "heads up" about something or another. Usually a crime that happened nearby. We have similar opinions of the dunderhead who rehabbed the condo building on the corner. And there's always something going on with his big dumb dog. Other neighbors do not like the dog. It barks, and city living is tightly packed. I never hear it bark, but I'm pretty good at ignoring noises (I have three children). But other folks are highly irritated by this woofing and have called in the Powers That Be to rein it in. Bruce comes over to me and complains about the complainers. But we get along. He is a good neighbor, and while his wife hasn't meshed as well, I know he'd be there if I needed him.

But in his front yard is this statue. It didn't have a head when they put it there. I think it probably did at one time. I don't get it. But, like the tent in the yard behind me (yes, it's still there), I'm not asking questions.

31/365 Butterfly bush

30/365 Two stones

It was my last act of defiance at my last teaching job. Not really much defiance. But a bit. I'd been working on two large projects for over a year--the first was rebuilding a library, and the second was creating an art project for a retaining wall in our garden. Actually, the wall that supported (retained) our garden. A mosaic done in concrete squares. The first project was never finished; the school closed two years after I left and they never got their act together. And the second project wasn't completed for a long time--by a boy scout who has since died, his eagle scout project. I remember being really stunned and impressed when he got it all together. And now I think about him every time I go down that street.

But anyway.

My act of defiance? I called my friend Mary and we drove to the school the night before my last day. I was shaking, so angry at everything that had transpired. We pulled my van up right to the back door and went in to the little room right inside. There on shelves and tables were all those concrete squares, like thin stepping stones, waiting to be cemented to the wall. Student-made for the most part, with glass, ceramic, metal, all sorts of things to create the images. We had an amazing number completed, but we needed about 100 more. I had planned to get them together over the summer. Yeah right. I was 8 months pregnant the last week of school. I didn't have a plan.

But I stepped into that little room with a two word thought that started with the letter F and ended with the letter M and included the letters uck the. I put on a pair of garden gloves, looked at Mary, and she knew what I was going to do.

I took about 25 squares/stepping stones. Thick ones, almost all of them ones she and I had made to intersperse with the student-made ones. We loaded them up in the back of my van with the remainder of my supplies and a few scant classroom materials I owned that, again, that two word phrase I was not going to leave behind. And we drove away.

Now they live in my yard. A few in back, a few lost under mulch around this or that tree. A few under the porch. And the rest are a half-hidden path across my front yard where the mailman walks.

29/365 Garlic!

Mmm....garlic. Enough garlic to dehydrate and use all year and never buy garlic. Mmm. Enough that I gave some away and sauteed a bunch today just to spread on toast and eat with a bit of butter. More than enough.

It's wild in my yard. I don't tend it. I don't plant it. There is enough that I can't cut all the scapes (top flower thing) off before they go to seed and replant themselves. Enough that I can't find all those bulbs in late July and early August. Enough that I have a basket full but I could go out tomorrow and harvest another basket full. I won't, though, and I guess in that way I tend. I just leave some be for next year. Garlic forever. Osage heirloom and here to stay. Mmm.

28/365 I built this

Before:

After:

We have this porch off our bedroom we never use. It is too close to the neighbor's kitchen window and the cats used to jump over there and sit (and refuse to come back). So I've been thinking about screening the place in for years now. Today Mike put up the center supports and I put up the screen. We worked on the finishing stuff together. It was hot but now it is done--well, almost done. I still have to put in the finishing strips on the sides, wash the place up, repaint the floor with a high quality boat deck paint, and put a nice cozy wicker chaise lounge out there. Then it can be the cat paradise this autumn. Can't wait.

27/365 Porch Shot

26/365 Last of the Stargazers

25/365 See what I mean?

Jan thought I should contest the ticket. Maybe if I were new here I'd get away with it, because as you can see, you can't tell when the no parking is supposed to happen. But I've been here a long time. A long long time, in fact, a third of my life. So I don't think it would fly...but they really should spend some unnecessary permit funds (the permits are the unnecessary part) on new signs.

24/365 No Ticket

I got my mind all befuddled. It's street cleaning week. There on Monday, at 12:45, I heard the street sweeper and cursed under my breath. Ran downstairs to move the car before the parking violations gnome showed up to give me the $10 fine. And I was too late.

I looked around for other cars to blame. It couldn't be my fault alone. Who forgot to warn me? But other cars were ticketed as well. And the trustiest neighbors' cars weren't even on the street at all. Dang it. Zelda or Bruce or Valerie would have warned me. But their cars were gone. Gone fishin or whatever they were up to on this hot hot day.

I moved the car out of habit--it was too late to get the street swept in front (it's a brand new street, for Pete's sake, without any leaves or crap on it), and the ticket would keep me from getting ticketed...but I moved it and brought the ticket in.

Today I pulled up and was wrangling Billy out of his carseat when I noticed one of my elusive neighbors across the street getting out of his car. He's moved in but we haven't been introduced.

"It's street cleaning day on your side," I warned him. He looked up and down, confused, looking I suppose for the sign.

GOOD LUCK BECAUSE THE SIGNS SUCK. They used to say "No parking even dated Tuesdays" on the south side, and "No parking odd dated Mondays" on the north side. Then the city got cheap and decided once a month was fine. So they came by and slapped a SECOND sticker on top of the words even and odd. And the signs, like they had some sort of spell cast upon them with these stickers, instantly faded. Now they have the big P with the line through it at the top, and the bright and shiny SECOND sticker. Nothing else is legible any longer. No parking second. You must park first or third? It makes no sense.

I think it's a ploy to raise funds for the city. Perhaps to replace faded signs.

I explained, with a little less temporal lobe issues than I did here, the issue with the signs and the street cleaning. And he smiled at me nervously and waved. "Thanks!"

I'm that neighbor. Again and always and for the first time. Ah well.

23/365 Garden Update

I've lived here 12 years. This is the 13th summer. Maybe that's the charm. I've planted gardens probably 9 of those 13 summers. Every year it's tomatoes and peppers, basil and parsley. Garlic starting about 6 years ago, and now it's wild in my yard (awesome) and I pick it when I think to.

I've grown a total of two pumpkins and one watermelon. And six cucumbers. No squash at all. Those vines just don't like me. Some years I'll have hundreds of jalapenos, or dozens of tomatoes left over to can and freeze. But those squash-family vines die in my yard. Squash borers, Barb tells me. Use floating row covers. Eh, I can't be bothered. I'll stick to nightshade family plants and the easy herbs.

This year it was time to do some crop rotation. Tomatoes have worn out the east side of the raised bed garden. So I planted them on the west side, where they don't get quite as much sun. Not wanting the east side to just lay fallow, I planted some cucumbers, not really expecting anything. And a yellow squash.

Haven't gotten anything on the yellow squash but blossoms. But the cucumbers are running rampant all over the place. They LOVE my garden. We've had 6 picked just this week. They're a little on the short and fat side compared to stuff in the store, and it's a mystery whey they're yellow-green instead of, well, more of a cucumber green, but they are crisp and delicious.

No squash borers. It's past their time of the year. There are some cucumber beetles, I counted (and killed) 4 last night. I'm debating what to do beyond picking them off and squishing them. I have 10 cucumber plants, all vigorous and producing. I'd like them to stay that way...I read about neem oil. Perhaps that's the way to go....it's always a mystery out there.

22/365 My mystery neighbors

I back up onto an alley, as most south siders do, and directly behind me is a two-family. It's on the smaller side--my parents' two-family, now converted, has two giant floors and a smaller third floor. This one is two floors, each only slightly bigger than mine, if at all. It used to be owned by Minnie, who lived there with her two overgrown teenaged boys and their chained dogs. It got to be too much for her once they left for college, and so she sold it.

A person didn't buy it. A real estate company did. Quick and dirty rehab (if anything at all, come to think of it) and slapped it on the rental market. Renters came and went pretty fast the first two years or so. Nobody's sticking around. This is depressing for many reasons--I know the people next door to them very well, and on the other side is a 4-family that has been converted to the tiniest condos on earth. But at least the building was well done ("high-end" as the buzz word around here goes). This one in between the good owners and the condos is a mess.

So there's some sort of group of people living on the first floor, and nobody on the second. At night, I'll come down to the kitchen and see the guy with his beard and long hair (yes, I know my husband has a beard and long hair, but having been raised in a family of hoosiers with beards and long hair, I'm always hesitant) standing on the back porch smoking. Staring straight at my house. He can see me move around in the kitchen as well as I can see him standing there with his beard and long hair, smoking. This makes me want to sneak around the kitchen at night.

Sometimes a woman stands out there in the morning. No beard, but smoking.

They have a big black truck with friendly bumper stickers--the independent radio station on the corner; politics I may or may not agree with more or less. And they've never introduced themselves or made themselves a nuisance.

So that is fine. But now there's a tent. Have you ever put a tent up in your backyard, say, to air it out after camping? Or to let your kids "camp" in your backyard? How long do you leave it up? A day? A weekend?

It's been up for almost a month now. They've moved it at least once to change where the door to the tent faced. They're paying attention to the tent, at least somewhat. I can't fathom what's going on.

So I'm ignoring it for now.

21/365 Stargazer

I am in love with bulbs and rhizomes. Anything that comes back without having to try. 10 days ago, this was my biggest stargazer lily. Now it is in full bloom, and in a few days it will be spent and we'll be on to butterfly bushes and whatever comes late in the summer. Coneflowers? Perhaps.

20/365 Paved

19/365 In the space between

In the space between mah jongg games and block parties,
Between counting drug transaction and arguing over street usage,
In the space between births and deaths and the meals that follow,
Between carpooling, vacationing, camping, gossiping, sewing, crying,
In the space between sharp words and apologies,
Between advice and silence,
In the space between these street trees and our private lives,
Between feeling like we can handle it and realizing that we can't,
Somewhere in there is the heart of all this.

I would be a lesser person if I didn't live here.

18/365 While I was gone this weekend...

17/365 Babysitting

"I hear from Jake you are watching my kids tonight," I say to Zelda on the phone. "We'll have to pay you back for that, at least double, since you'll have Billy with the girls."

"Oh!" she laughs. "No, don't worry about it. Your husband has been driving Travis to and from work for, what, 8 weeks now? I think I can watch your kids for an evening."

16/365 It was a hot, hot day

When Sophia was just emerging verbally, she would start stories not with "Once upon a time" but with "It was a hot, hot day..."

It was a hot, hot day.

It is, in fact, a hot, hot summer. Kids wilt outside in the heat of the day. So all the girls pile into one house or another and play as best they can in third floor bedrooms until it just gets too hot.

Right now they are downstairs as I write, Bree, Iris, Fiona, Daisy, Billy. "Can we watch something?" comes the plea. They haven't had the TV on all day.

"Sure," I call back. I have dresses to make for the wedding this weekend and entertained children are always preferable to bored clingy ones. Especially when it's a hot, hot day.

15/365 July 4th

From years past on the block or with the block.
2006: The Stricklands, Paxtons, and our family went to the SLU hospital parking garage and watched the fireworks downtown.
2007: out front in the heat, the stargazers in bloom.
2008: From on top of the parking garage again with block families.
2009: In Rocky Mountain National Park with the Paxtons. Fourth of July with aspen trees and snow that hadn't melted yet. Fireworks over Lake Estes that night.

14/365 Hide and Seek

13/365 Porch Sitting

I take all my important phone calls on the front porch. I sit on the top step usually and listen to (now ex) friends complain about their lives, or to my sister or mother or mother-in-law give me important information. Quick calls I stand in the front hall and handle. But if I have something I need to say I go out on the front porch.

Not the back porch, and I had to reflect on that to consider why.

Nothing important happens on my back porch, I realized. We chat and eat supper and watch kids swim. But the front porch is a different story.

The front porch is I hear news and pass it on. It's where I meet neighbors and sometimes have to deal with them and their problems (as block captain). The front porch is where Zelda stood just a few days ago and talked about something I'd written on my blog--and delivered the package that had been delivered to her when I wasn't home. It's where kids are said goodnight to before they go spend the night. It's where Gilbert's son-in-law stood in the rain and told me he was going to cause some trouble with the neighbors.

The front porch is our contact to this bigger living room of the street. We stoop sit and watch kids play, sure, and shoot the breeze, but sometimes it turns into important topics. Sometimes it's politics but often it's relationships.

Zelda, Travis, Gretchen, and I--but especially those first two--did expert level drug dealer surveillance from the front porch. We counted cabs and noted illegal activity. The secret service agent showed me his badge on the porch. AT the 2006 block party when the teenagers attacked, we ran up onto the front porch. Vic came out onto his front porch with a baseball bat. Gilbert's son-in-law, again, came out onto his with a gun. Henry sat on his porch swing for years watching the corner with a gun on his lap.

And last night after my bike ride I walked over to where I knew Zelda and Travis were hiding on their porch--they turn the light off and sit after kids go to bed on nice nights. I had something that needed saying and I stood there at their steps and we talked a minute. I didn't call her on the phone and I didn't pull my car up alongside theirs. I stood on their porch.

Sure we spend time in the kitchen, and around the table, but that porch is where we encounter the world, where the public meets the private.

12/365 Quiet Week

It's been a quiet week between the sycamores. Daisy had a friend over; I made Fiona come out to play with them and she dragged Eliza and Bree out with her. How long do we have to play with them? one of the big girls sighed.

But then they played hide and seek until Daisy and her friend lost interest and went to the backyard to play. I dismissed the older girls, who really are becoming older girls, like the Jean and Chris and Cammy's of my experience (I was the oldest growing up, but friends had older sisters and they were always kind of daunting to be around--but we wanted to). Fiona is reaching an age I remember from my own life pretty well. I know where I lived and who my friends were and what I wanted and needed and did and liked. Before boys but after the concept of Best Friend really gelled. Fiona has best friends--the three girls here on the block probably are pretty solidly that category, along with a few girls from school.

None of the girls go to school together, which all the parents really like. It allows for a new face when you come home. Nobody knows what happened today at school and if you don't want to share it, but instead set up some elaborate Polly Pocket drama, go for it. I had a similar arrangement at the same point in my life as Fiona's, although the two or three girls I was friends with were not as nice as these girls. We're really lucky.

Back to the week, well, the house is a mess due to in and out camp carpool nonsense. We got the rails we needed for the roof rack to make it a functional bike rack. That was a small moment, as Judd stood there watching and talking about the details. "Just redneck enough," he said about himself watching the process. I remember this from childhood too--neighbor men coming by to look at my dad's cars or he would head over to look at a new porch or addition on the back of another man's house. They'd talk specs and cost and whatnot and there you go.

And there we are.