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Composting in the Rain

Despite my occasional irritations with way the boys continue to remain so close by my side, there are upsides to their lingering dependence on me. I can still redirect muddles between them by simply leaving the room, a perfect curveball. This morning, I quelled an escalating feud between them in the living room, one I was almost ready to fuel with my own frustration, by halting mid-step, turning round and retreating to the mudroom, where I silently baffled them as I put on my socks and boots and headed out into the yard. They watched me from the stoop as I opened the shed door, near the garage, and began excavating hoes, cultivators and shovels from an ethereal matrix of dusty cobwebs, spreading them like battle artillery, single-file, to rest along a low-lying branch. And within minutes, both were eagerly digging into the understory of a giant oak tree in the front yard, heaving shovelsful of composted peat into random piles around me.

Chas soon began to look for earthworms. Crouching over the dugout, in the space I’d carved beneath the tree, he picked fat glossy creepers between his fingers and carried them around the yard, through the house for a little while, taking them on a helpless tour of distraction before returning to my side. As if he’d forgotten it was still in his hand, Chas would ask to take another bath (perhaps his third?), doe-eyed and head tilted, and I’d look down at his hand to find another gleaming, limp, pinched annelid. “I wanna put him in the bathtub,” he’d say, quite matter-of-factly. And I’d have to disagree, smiling apologetically, as I turned the compost in the drizzling rain.

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Order in the Pattern of Corrugated Cardboard

We’re still unpacking. The front entry to the house offers a mudroom, which we’ve cluttered with towers of broken-down boxes, and I have to climb over these in order to get in and out of my studio, which is also half-unpacked and, incidentally, chilly. In a former life, this room was a sunroom. Now, I have a pile of baskets in one corner, plastic binfuls of fabric, open boxes of different art mediums: an encaustics box, a box of kid’s art supplies (mostly kid-claimed art media made for grownups, since I insist they use the “real” stuff under my supervision), a box of stationery supplies, textile paints, watercolors, the list goes on and I wish it would never end, but it does. I’m short on space.

I’m finding a rhythm again with the kids, home-based, and feeling more stable. Last week I made a daily schedule, surprisingly fascist in its organization, and I started using it throughout the day as lifeline in this sea of chaos I sail with these two wildchildren. I noticed myself returning to the paper mostly during the early afternoon hours, reminding myself that it was quiet time, and following up with whatever needed to be done at the moment so that I’d stay on course. I found it oddly relaxing, comforting, knowing that this happens at such-and-such time and that happens at 2:30, so there was no guesswork or thinking on the fly about what to do next. For so long I’d been in transition-mode, hungry flotsam ready for anchor. It’s not enough to have the house, have the stuff, have the cars, and have the heat on. In my case, as with probably anyone, it’s not really home until you start to sink into the saddle and ride from the seat. Not quite autopilot, but operating more fluidly. Gracefully?

And I’m starting to feel like I’m home, as memory picks up and I am recognizing the seasonal shifts and nuances of the different habitat here. It has started raining periodically, like it’s supposed to. And the rain–it’s finally sinking into my head now–is not the torrential, melodramatic rain one is accustomed to in Texas, but instead a wispy, snivelling drawn-out weep, not unlike the vegetable misters in the grocery stores–that crisps the new fern fronds, standing attention over last summer’s spoils, and coaxes Spring out of the tips of each branch and stem and sleeping bulb. It smells like a florist’s shop, evergreen and eucalyptus, lily-of-the-valley, quince blossom perfection. We ate grapefruits off the tree in the yard, yesterday (delicious! like a sweet tart).

I’ve taken to a particular walking place that overlooks the bustling Silicon Valley. Today, a muddy trail where I did more skating than walking (and certainly not running). Rain has puddled in day-old hoofprints of horse and deer, a few lone large cat paws. Birds, everywhere; around a bend the quail
bolt in muffled exodus through the heather. It’s good to be connecting several times each week with the real natives of this paradise, hidden to the side of the sprawling concrete abandon of startups and box stores. We’re lucky enough to live close enough to it’s edge, in the agricultural transition zone, ripe with fruit trees and vineyards and borderline healthy air to breathe.

((sigh)) Back to unpacking…

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Our Third Child

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I read somewhere, ten years ago when we were puppy-surfing, that a Jack Russell Terrier is like having a perpetual three year-old in the house. Well, that’s pretty true. Seti, our dog, is all about the “now” and the “me” and balls and toys. He doesn’t always share; in fact, he’s always hoarded his own ball at the dog park, fending off dumbfounded pit bulls and retrievers five times his size, just by the obnoxious tang in his snarl. And, just like any preschooler, you can distract him off the nasty scent of a dead rat in the backyard just by saying the magic words “where’s your ball?” It’s so easy.

Ball. Ball is life. Well, ball is second to frisbee, but we’re out of frisbees right now. We have two chronically wet tennis balls (you can see why, above) and one racquetball (a far superior choice to all manufactured dog toys for the medium dog set). Seti will carry the ball around the house, right under your feet, hoping you will throw it. When you sit down to talk on the phone, he will drop it at your feet. When you try disapppearning into the bathroom for ten minutes, he’ll unlock the door with his razor sharp Jack Russell perserverence and drop the ball at your feet. And certainly, when you slip into a nice warm bath, ready to erase the day’s grime off your body and soul, Seti will come and drop the dirty ball into the bathwater. Then he’ll sit and stare at you imploringly, his brown eyes now big obsidian orbs, penetrating their voodoo into your weariness, and there’s no way to resist him: you find yourself throwing the ball this way and that, trying to outwit the bastard but damned if he doesn’t catch your every curveball! He’s a machine. He’ll do this all day. And here he is, twisting Chas’ arm in the new bath.