Author Archives: Mark P

101

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Today, Thursday, August 2, 2018, is the 101st anniversary of my father’s birth. He died 18 years ago.

It has seemed for some time, and more so today, that my life is divided into at least two parts: before my father’s death, and after my father’s death. All the things that happened to me in the before time seem to have happened to a different person in a different world. But it all seems as real and as recent as yesterday.

When Leah and I visited Henry’s wife a few weeks ago, she brought out a metal fishing tackle box filled with memorabilia. My brother had taken it to his home when we cleaned out our parents’ house after my mother died.

A lot of stuff in the box is military. There are shoulder patches for the Army divisions he served in, Army branch insignia (artillery and infantry), rank pins (first and second lieutenant, major, lieutenant colonel — there should be captain’s bars somewhere but I didn’t see it). His dog tags are in there, as well as his service ribbons. The paper on the right is my father’s 6th grade report card for the 1928-29 session. He made pretty good grades. The paper at the top is my mother’s application for a position with the federal government on September 23, 1943. She had already been working for the War Production Board in Washington DC prior to that.

There is also a statement from McCall Hospital dated May 22, 1950. It’s the bill for my birth, a total of $72.50 for the delivery and four days in the hospital ($40 at $10 a day for board and nursing, $10 for operating room expense). My father’s Post Office insurance paid all but $20.

There are a couple of pin-on badges that my parents wore back in the late 1950’s or early 1960’s when they square danced. The badges say “Circle 8”, but I remember their square dancing group as the Western Promenaders. They danced at Rome’s old civic center, built in the 1930’s. When Leah and I drive to our current vet’s office, we pass a building with a sign for the Western Promenaders, so they seem to still be in business.

A careful examination of the photograph will reveal a Nazi lapel pin, one of my father’s war souvenirs. I wonder who wore it.

The hand-drawn and colored map of South America was done by my father sometime in his school years.

Everything is an artifact. Going through them is an exercise in archeology, digging not only into the objects themselves, but also into my own memories, and even into times before I was born.

Snake fatalities

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Snakes of any sort don’t survive long around here if they venture onto a road. Some people make a special effort to run over them. That was the case for this relatively young copperhead the dogs and I found a few days ago right at the bottom of our driveway.

It was recently deceased.

A few days later the dogs started acting a little strange on our walk down Fouche Gap Road. Zeke had crossed the shallow ditch and was meandering along when he stopped. At first I couldn’t figure out why, but then I noticed this rattlesnake in the ditch.

The head is at the lower, central part of the image, next to a leaf. Immediately below the head you can see the rattles. I count around 12, which does not, however, indicate its age in years, only that it has shed its skin 12 times. As far as I can tell, this is a timber or canebrake rattler. I didn’t see any obvious wounds, but it was almost certainly hit by a car.

The dogs were curious about the copperhead, but they gave it a wide berth. They didn’t want to get anywhere near the rattler. I don’t know whether they have any instinctive fear of snakes. I do know that they are usually wary of anything out of the ordinary, so that alone might account for their apparent fear.

As we walked back up the driveway after seeing the copperhead, I passed right over a green snake about a foot and a half long. I must have assumed it was one of the many weed seed fronds I pull up and throw onto the driveway. I don’t think the dogs noticed it, either. Then Zeke nosed it and it began to twist and writhe its way off the driveway into the tall grass, where it promptly disappeared.

I have seen a fair number of snakes on the mountain, from nice, long black snakes to garter snakes, but never a live venomous snake. Our little community is isolated among miles of forest. Except for the immediate community up here on the mountain, our nearest neighbor is around a mile away on one side and two or three miles away on the other side. I am certain that there are many, many rattlers and copperheads in our woods, but they must be shy, because they do not show themselves.

On the other hand, I might simply have missed them in my rambles in the woods. I snagged the dead copperhead with a stick to toss it into the woods for a proper resting place. The first try put it at the side of the road, among the leaf litter, sparse grass, pinestraw, bare dirt and vines. It disappeared. I knew it had to be there, but I couldn’t see it. I eventually found it. It was not covered, it simply blended so well with the background that it was very difficult to see.

So maybe I have stepped right next to a rattlesnake or a copperhead and never knew it.

July sky

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This was sunset Friday evening on our way home from somewhere or other.

This sort of color usually doesn’t last long. We had to find a place to stop so I take a picture of the sky without getting run over. A few minutes later the pink was gone and the clouds were all gray.

This mackerel sky on Sunday was a little earlier in the evening.

I took this outside a Taco Bell, but I doubt that Taco Bell had anything to do with it. When we went across the street to get a loaf of bread, I took a panorama.

If you have sharp eyes, you can probably tell what parking lot this was.

It rained

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Saturday morning around 6 it started raining. There was lightning, thunder, strong wind, and heavy rain. I’m not sure how long it lasted, but by the time it ended we had about two-thirds of an inch of rain. When I checked our front yard, I did not admire what I saw. Where I had just finished seeding and trying to repair the erosion from earlier rain, I found more damage. It wasn’t terrible, but it was enough to convince me that I’m not going to make the yard perfect. This year, at least, there will be some washed out ruts with no grass. Plenty of time next spring and summer to try to fix that.

Along about sunset on Saturday we got another tenth of an inch or so. The strongest part of the storm missed us and continued south towards Atlanta. Leah looked out the window and pointed out the storm clouds.

These were towering thunderstorms. The entire storm stretched from Cartersville, around 25 miles away, nearly to the I-285 perimeter road around Atlanta, about 40 miles as the crow flies. It had to be a strong storm to push the tops of the clouds up into the sunlight when it was nearly dark here at home.

Yesterday we got no rain, but others not too far away did. Late in the afternoon it was raining over town, but not here. This is all we got.

The secondary bow is barely visible above the main rainbow.

Monday afternoon as we munched on “Mexican” food 10 miles or so from home, it poured for around 20 minutes, plenty of time to wash lots of topsoil and grass seed away, if it had been raining at home. But it only drizzled, at least by the time I sat down to write this post. There are still showers around, moving slowly to the south-southeast. We may get more.

Tuesday the forecast is for a 40-percent chance of rain. Again, we may get some. If not, I’ll have to sprinkle the grass seed and hope it survives. I will also need to water a bunch of juniper bushes neighbor John pulled up from his yard and gave to us. They were severely root bound, so they face more problems than just water. John also gave us three plants of unknown species, but maybe what’s called butterfly bushes. They were fairly mature, probably 12 feet tall, but they left most of their roots in the ground when they were pulled out. They were very wilted by evening Monday. I assess their chances as very poor, but I’ll put them out, water them, and hope for the best. Their blooms were attracting butterflies even as they lay in the back of the truck. It would be nice to have them somewhere in the yard.

To rain, or not to rain

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I have written about my efforts to get grass planted in the larger, further reaches of our front yard here and here. I have finally reached the point that I am watering a seeded area, although at a rate far less than recommended. Last year I prepared and seeded an area about a third the size I’m working on this year. I watered far less than recommended then, too, but we were fortunate enough to have nice, light rain showers at just the right time. The result was a good growth of grass.

Last year I divided the seeded area into thirds, and lightly watered each third several hours apart every day for several weeks. This year, with so much more area, I can’t water the entire area in one day. This is not good. Walter Reeves, a University of Georgia plant specialist and popular gardening expert in Georgia, says that Zoysia seed must be kept moist or it will die. When I water (carefully preserving our precious underground fluids), I get a small part of the planted area wet, but not wet enough to stay wet very long in our hot Georgia sun. So far during the process, we have had either not enough or too much rain.

On Thursday, it looked like we would get rain. Possibly too much, possibly just enough. Here’s what the weather radar looked like at 3:45 Thursday afternoon. The rain was south of us and moving fairly quickly towards us.

Here’s a later radar image.

The pushpin is our house. The rain is almost upon us. It’s 4:10, and it cannot possibly miss us. Here’s our front yard as the rain approaches.

The rain is visible, just on the other side of the ridge. The low clouds appear to just clear the ridge on the left, and the rain is coming down hard, hiding the sky and the land behind it. I put a row of straw bales at the bottom of the grassy part of the yard to try to slow the runoff that erodes our prepared area. It does almost nothing. The darker earth in the middle is where I sprinkled earlier.

And then, Like the Red Sea parted by Moses, the rain divides itself.
But maybe we can get a little, just the edge of the hard rain. That might be even better than having the heaviest part of the storm pass directly over us.

And then, at 4:45, Moses decides even a shallow sea is too deep.

Here is the radar at  4:50.

We got no rain at all. The green over our pushpin is rain so light it didn’t reach the ground.

It’s Friday night. The Atlanta weather forecasters are predicting two bands of rain for tonight and early Saturday morning. They show rain passing directly over us. Today I spread some straw lightly over most of the seeded area, as Walter Reeves recommends, hoping it will prevent the hoped-for rain from washing all our work away. By the time I get up Saturday morning, I’ll know whether I have to sprinkle the yard again, get another load of topsoil to replace everything that washed away, or (one hopes) sit back and admire the well-watered front yard.