May 27 - June 2

May 27, 2005

Holy summertime temperatures! In two days it’s gone from being in the mid-40s to being very close to 100 degrees. I drove into Grants Pass on Wednesday to pick up Neil, and the heat was blistering. I couldn’t safely leave Gus in the car, so we spent most of our day at Bluestone Bakery at the outdoor tables, where I used the WiFi and Gus relaxed under the umbrella munching on a bran muffin. I did find a shady spot in the parking lot of Market of Choice and stocked up on lots of food for the week. Neil’s bus arrived late, around 6:30, and we made it back to the cabin by 8:15, well before dark. The cabin, which I’d closed up when I left in the morning (thinking it was going to be a cool day), was hotter than Hades. We had a late dinner—chicken wraps and chips—and then relaxed on the deck, looking at the stars. I don’t think the nighttime temp dropped below 65 degrees.

Thursday, yesterday, was another hot, sunny day, the temp climbing close to 100 degrees. I showed Neil around the garden and the upper cabin and the pond, and then we spent most of the day on the deck. We had a little target practice with the .22 rifle, much to Neil’s delight. He hadn’t shot a rifle since his service days in the late 50s. We hung a target about 100 yards away, and we each made two out of four shots. Good fun.

Here are Gus and Neil out at the barn:



Last night we played cribbage, and Neil won two out of three games. Before arriving, he’d made as though he didn’t really know the game that well, and I wonder if he’s hustling me. But I’m determined to redeem myself tonight when the tournament continues. Having beat Bradley, who counts faster than anyone I’ve ever played, I’m determined to beat Neil.

Here we are looking quite serious (and warm):


Before starting our cribbage games we heard a noise in a paper shopping bag someone had left out on the deck. I’d forgotten it was there beneath the clothespins. I looked inside and there was a mouse who had happily eaten a whole bunch of sunflower seeds. Here it is:


Today was cooler than the previous two days. It got up around 90, but there was a breeze. We had a lazy day hanging around the cabin, reading, doing crossword puzzles (we tackled three together), and chatting. At one point we ventured out without Gus to see if we could get a glimpse of Mr. Bear, who was once again knocking over trees in the woods behind the garden.

Every night we’ve taken a walk up to the pond to let Gus swim and fetch sticks.
Here he is in the grass, before the swim:

Here he is retrieving a stick in the pond:


Good action.


May 28, 2005

In the middle of our cribbage tournament last night clouds rolled in, wind blew the trees around, thunder boomed, and lightning lit up the night. A thunderstorm. It was far enough away that we weren’t all that concerned, and we welcomed the cooler temperatures and the breezes. Then it stopped. Around midnight, not long after we’d turned in, thunderclaps exploded again, this time just above the roof of the cabin, deafening booms that shook me awake. Heavy rain followed. The thunder, lightning and rain continued all through the night, and I couldn’t sleep. Around 3:00, I got up with a flashlight and went out to find my earplugs in the mud room.

In the morning Neil said he’d never encountered a storm so dramatic. Apparently he, too, was nearly knocked out of his bed up in the loft. Over coffee and tea we resumed our cribbage games, and the rain started again. I’d lit a fire in the stove, and I could hear drops hissing. Where the stovepipe leaves the roof, there was a small leak. As soon as the roof is dry again, I’ll get up there and patch it with some of the roofing cement. A similar leak happened at my own house in New York last year, and I think I can handle it. I’ll do it while Neil is here, just in case I fall.

I’m now losing the cribbage tournament, four games to five. Not happy about that.


May 31, 2005

Neil caught a fish! Saturday began cool and sort of cloudy, good hiking weather, so we packed a lunch and went down to the river. I brought along the spinning reel and rod just for the heck of it. Neil had never fished in his whole life. It’s a running joke among his pub quiz team members. So, Neil was hoping to catch one or to at least have me take a picture of him casting. On his very first cast, which he sort of flubbed, not knowing how to flip the bail, he was reeling the Rooster Tail dangerously close to some submerged shrubs, and suddenly a small fish broke the surface. “You’ve got one!” I shouted. Neil wasn’t quite sure what to do. He worked the reel as though the handle was stuck, the rod tip bouncing up and down. But then he was lifting up the fish, which was about four or five inches long and resembling a trout. I tried to take a picture of Neil holding the rod with the fish dangling off the end, but by the time I clicked the shutter, the fish had dropped off. Now the poor thing was flopping in the shallows and Gus was dancing around it. I really didn’t want to kill such a small and lovely fish, so I picked it up gently and revived it a bit in the water. I can’t be certain, but I wonder if it was one of the “half-pounders” Bradley had told me about, an immature steelhead. It had the mouth and face and body shape of a trout, but it was sort of silver-colored. I was afraid the fish was going to die, so I let it go before I thought to take a picture of it. But, for those pub quiz team members, here’s a photo of Neil just after the fish fell off the lure, and I can vouch for the fact that he actually caught a fish:


And here’s my bloke taking a cast:


Like the tiny fish, Neil was hooked. He must have made a thousand more casts, all from the same spot. I also made about half that many casts. Nothing. Still, it’s amazing that a guy who’d never fished in his whole life should, on his very first cast upon the Rogue River, land a “half-pounder.”

Like me, Neil’s fallen in love with the homestead. “It’s paradise,” he told his daughter Natasha when he called her on the radio phone for the Liverpool football scores. And yesterday he said rather sadly, “I have to leave in two days.” Here he is looking off the south side of the deck (the pulley behind him is for my clothesline):


Neil took this photo of Gussie and me on the famous orange couch:


I think I fixed the leak around the stove pipe. There was some roofing cement in the upper house tool shed, and so I climbed up and filled in all the possible places where the rain may have been coming through. “No leaky!”

Yesterday our major chore was the badly needed pruning of the apple trees closest to the cabin. These trees, which aren’t behind a fence and so are really just food for Mr. Bear, hadn’t been properly pruned in years and had many vertical branches. I climbed up in one of them with loppers and the bow saw while Neil used the long-handled loppers and saw on the other tree. I left some growth at the base of the vertical branches and saved all the horizontal branches. The tree will be much happier for our labor. There won’t be as many apples for Mr. Bear this fall, but in future years the tree will bear well.

Late yesterday afternoon we went up to the pond to check out the dragonflies. On a trip there the other day I noticed many dragonflies emerging from nymphs as adults, a process that looks like something out of Alien—head being birthed out of head, half-formed wings unfolding. The nymphs hatch from eggs in the pond and then crawl up the banks into the grass. Dragonflies don’t have a pupal stage. Everywhere in the grass were the dried brown shells of the nymphs and beside them the newly formed adults. In one or two of the nymph shells the dragonflies were still in the process of emerging. Here are some photos of the ones we found yesterday:


The dried shell of the nymph is just to the right under the lower right wing.

We helped this one take its first flight.

This one hadn’t yet unfolded its wings completely and couldn’t fly.

I wrote this poem after seeing the dragonflies emerging from nymphs:

Emergence


All around the pond I find
them clinging to the shells

of their nymph-selves,
their eyes puzzles of facets,

like pear-cut diamonds,
and their double sets of wings

filigrees of the thinnest glass.
It’s hard to believe

they could have climbed
out of these hard little bodies,

which delivered them
from water to air, but here

is one now, head pushing
out of head, like a lily opening,

and here am I, alive to see it,
eighteen years sober to the day.


On the walk back, we discovered this wildflower, called Pretty Face:


And here’s a nice collection of daisies growing just west of the garden:



June 1, 2005

June began with a daring rescue! Neil, Gus and I hiked down to the river this morning in the hope of landing another one of the little “half-pounders.” Neil was off on his rock casting a rooster tail while I was upriver a bit casting a fly. Gus, as usual, had been fetching sticks. Whether he was going after a stick or my fly, I don’t know, but suddenly he was out in the swift-moving current, and he was paddling to get to a rock. Only he was making no progress. He was caught in an eddy. As hard as he paddled forward, the current pulled him back, and he was tiring. “Come on, boy!” I yelled. “Come on!” To no avail. Then I thought to run toward Neil, figuring that if he swam behind one of the rocks there would be no current, and he’d be safe. I called him from there. But he just kept trying for that one gap between the rocks. Now I was getting scared. I had visions of him tiring out completely, going under, and being swept away. No more Gus. I threw down the rod, pulled off my shoes, stripped down to my underwear, and dove in. The river was cold, but I love my pooch. I swam out and grabbed hold of him and pushed him up on one of the rocks. Neil concluded that if dogs are anything like cats, then Gus has eight more lives. We caught no fish, but added two new birds to the bird list: American Pipit and a Great Blue Heron. Then the weather turned cloudy, cold and drizzly, so we folded up the blanket and decided to have our lunch back at the cabin, where we’d be warm and dry and Gus would be safe.

Today is Neil’s last day at the homestead, and we’re both sad about that. We get along well together, and have enjoyed many fine meals, stories, crosswords, games of cribbage, walks, bird sightings, shooting competitions, stars, breezes and the peace of the homestead. It’ll be strange to return to the cabin tomorrow without him, after I drop him off in Grants Pass.

He wrote me this poem yesterday:

No News

On the lunchtime news bulletin
Bush made a statement about judges,
And two rival Palestinian groups
had fallen out about something or other;

While here at Dutch Henry’s place
In Josephine county, Oregon,
We’ve walked the dog, pruned
An old apple tree, caught a neat

Little half-pounder in the Rogue River,
Played two hands of cribbage,
Had cold chicken salad with a little wine,
And are thinking of taking a nap.


Here are a few photos from today:


An alligator lizard spotted along the Dutch Henry trail.


Closer.


Neil’s cocoon up in the loft. He was afraid of mosquitoes, so brought along mosquito netting.


Looks like a British poet to me.


June 2, 2005

Early day today. We woke at 4:30 to make Neil's bus in Grants Pass. Had a nice ride out, with mists lifting over the mountains.

The final tally on the cribbage tournament: 19 to 12, Gary winning. It's official: I'm the Dutch Henry Homestead Cribbage Champion of 2005.