On Plumbing, Snakes, & Hay

Warning: If you do not wish to see my septic tank, read no further!
A couple of weeks ago, our ancient septic system of unknown whereabouts began to act up. Quick as a whistle, Mr. Rooter was on the scene, and before long, earth-moving machines had arrived to dig about the lawn in search of said septic device.Using interesting high-tech methods, Mr. Rooter actually narrowed down the location fairly quickly. The cement, 1,000-gallon tank (which had not been excavated since who-knows-when) was revealed, pumped, and repaired where a broken pipe was creating technical difficulties resulting in ominous sound effects emanating from sundry plumbing fixtures, shaving years off my life with each and every resentful burble.
After the job was done, a large tract of dirt was left in its wake, a sort of surface-level, Turin-like effigy of the septic tank itself. At the stern instruction of my Lawn Guy, Jerry, who brooks no interference with the health of our lawn, Wren and I purchased a small sack of grass seed at the local Agway.

The other day, after much procrastinating, I finally got around to sprinkling the seed on the now hard-as-rock ground, raked it in (not really), and then covered it (sort of) with a light layer of hay, as per the Lawn Guy's directive.

I did this all half-heartedly because: (a) I don't really care about the lawn; (b) I don't think terribly well of lawns as an ecological proposition, but am too lazy to painstakingly rake leaves off a moss garden once a week or plant a million shrubs in its place; and (c) I have a trillion other outdoor projects to attend to. But the Lawn Guy told me to do it, and I never mess with the Lawn Guy.
Fortunately, I had plenty of hay on hand. I use it to build compost piles, mulch the asparagus, and put the various vegetable beds "to sleep," covered and safe from weeds, for the winter. Last winter, I made windbreaks for the beehives using "walls" of hay bales, which I subsequently recycled back into garden use. (This winter, in the spirit of experimentation, I'll try burlap windbreaks instead—an idea proposed by Beekeeper Andrew during his visit).

The truth is, I love playing with hay. For one thing, I adore the smell. It reminds me of being a kid at farm camp and jumping into mounds of soft, dry, sweetly aromatic hay in the Pennsylvania hayloft, as August light eked through the slatted barn beams and Richard Nixon resigned. Happy memories!

I also love playing with hay because it's full of fabulous life forms that, in hauling, disassembling, and redistributing the bales, I get to commune with. For example, after unloading my first bale from the wheelbarrow, I met these cool spiders.What kills me about this last arachnid (below) is how well it camouflages with the wheelbarrow! Talk about being ready for anything.
Spiders rock, but nothing floats my boat like a good snake. Again, youthful memories of pet snakes—green grass snakes, garter snakes—and of catching snakes. I was the best at that. Still am.

I didn't have to catch this one, though. S/he was found slithering around in the wheelbarrow after I removed one of the bales. A lovely garter snake. Haven't seen many this summer; too cool and damp. They're out there, of course, but they're keeping a low profile.
Between sections of the first bale (these segments being referred to, interestingly enough, as "books"), I found this exquisite young red-bellied snake. I'd never even heard of red-bellied snakes before coming here, but I now encounter them quite often. They are delicate, gentle, shy, and gem-like. I love everything about them.
Both snakes (along with all the spiders) were carefully returned to the hay bale pile, but before doing so, I couldn't resist snapping this glamorous closeup.
Check out that two-toned tongue. Snakes use their tongues not only to taste and touch, but also as a scenting device. It seems the forked tongue allows the snake to determine from which direction a given scent—whether prey, mate, predator, or anything else of interest—is coming from.

Having finished my reverie amongst the snakes and spiders, I found my attention grabbed anew by the subtle, intricate beauty of the cut, dried, and compacted grasses and other herbaceous material that populate a bale of hay. It's the ultimate still life: a segment of field pressed like a flower in a book—a book that tells the history of a meadow at summer's pinnacle—a book that looks, thinks, and smells like hay.

Recent Things

Pumpkin.

Glam caterpillar on fennel.
Honeybee on zinnia.


Bumblebee on sunflower.

A neighbor's strange enterprise.

Rat-hunting target practice?

Bumblebee & borage.

Harvest.
Grandpa Ott morning glory.

The Pesto Factory.

Sencha and Wren conducting a Field Study.

Daddy Longlegs & old Mason jar.

A really big shoe (and a really long worm).

Aster. A most September-iferous flower.

Honeybee Flower Fake-out!

A diligent honeybee checks out the tulip-like visage on a plastic watering can.

A Vacation

Wren and I had a great vacation last week, which accounts for my unannounced break from blogging. It was 10 days of pure real-world, off-line, away from desk—loving every minute of it.
We enjoyed sunny meadows.

We (belatedly) discovered the glorious delicacy that is purple-flowering raspberry—a divine wild plant that takes raspberries to a whole new level.

We were visited by our friends Eva and Deb. Eva and Gumdrop did some serious communing. Later in the day, we communed with the blueberry patch across the road.
We also enjoyed a visit from our friend Andrew of Andrew's Honey and Bees Without Borders, and his pal Kelly, shown here displaying a nice hunk of beeswax.
Andrew provided some wonderful mentorship during a visit to our hives. Along with teaching me a thing or three, he assured me that I'm not the world's worst beekeeper after all. Whew!


We walked the rails-to-trails near Roxbury. This old rail marker indicates the mileage to Kingston, New York. The old train line ran from Kingston to Oneonta, according to a local historian we ran into during our walk.

During another walk in a nearby forest, I was thrilled to find this old metal sign half-buried in the mud. Finders keepers.
The forest is now NYS land; these trees were, presumably, planted with the sawmill in mind. Fortunately, destiny has spared them: they are now part of what is called "a demonstration forest." It's a beautiful, rich woodland area just over yonder.

Each day, we spent quality time with Sencha and made sure to do plenty of trespassing. ("This land is your land, this land is my land, etc.")

We visited Mountaintop Arboretum in Tannersville. The aboretum is working to revive the glorious, blighted American Chestnut, which once dominated the Eastern forests.
The chestnut "nursery."

We nearly drove off the road when we saw this sign on our neighbor's farm. The skulls say it all.

We made a pilgrimage to John Burroughs' Woodchuck Lodge. The place, it seems, is always closed and lacks quality signage or walking trails (we think Burroughs deserves better). After briefly communing with the adorable exterior of the house, we bushwhacked down the hill to a beautiful pond/bog where—after inadvertently scaring the bejesus out of umpteen bullfrogs—we lay in the sun, interrupted in our mellow thoughts by a doe who appeared out of nowhere to drink at water's edge. Very Burroughsian.

We got the car washed (and bought brownies) at the local firehouse fund-raiser.
We checked out the cool trucks.

We met new bugs and continued the ongoing effort to Learn Our Trees (finally getting various oak, beech, fir, and maple species under my belt).

We got some serious altitude on the Windham High Peak. (Wren doesn't consider it a bona fide vacation unless she force-marches me up a steep mountain.)It was quite a beautiful hike, with diverse forest communities, fabulous mushrooms (like the comb tooth below) and many interesting wildflowers I'd never seen before (and am still trying to ID).Up top, we met a couple who'd just minutes before witnessed what sounded like a major bee swarm in a balsam tree. Sadly, we missed that excitement, though the honeybees kept us company all the way up the mountain, wherever there was sun enough to support goldenrod.

We also had a nice chat with a Search & Rescue guy who said that the best way to handle a bear encounter is to stand with your arms up, stretching out your shirt or coat over your head to look as large as possible, make a lot of noise and—if charged—bat the bear really hard on the nose with a big stick; woodland-survival tips we sincerely hope we'll never need.

All in all, a fun and informative vacation! Here's to the next forced-march up the mountain of rest & relaxation.