The shoes that tried to kill me

I recently got invited to a very swanky country club luncheon, which doesn't happen every day when you live in the middle on a 500-acre vineyard in Oregon with no close neighbors except wild turkeys and deer. Making friends has taken some time. So on this important occasion, I got all dressed up in my city clothes, including a darling pair of suede ankle boots I've had for several years (and haven't worn nearly enough to justify what I paid for them).

What I didn't anticipate was the effect of walking on the cobblestones in our carport in those lovely ankle boots. Did I mention the boots have an almost-stiletto heel on them -- not so much in terms of height but diameter of the heel point?

Before I could even get my car door open I found myself thrown to the ground as one of those tiny heel points was placed in between the uneven stones and turned my ankle sideways. And make no mistake about it, ankle boots are completely unforgiving in an incident like this. They do not allow your foot to come loose from the shoe as you twist, so you wrench your ankle the complete 45 degrees before you hit the ground.

I laid there for a minute, kind of stunned, and then did what any self-respecting luncheon lover would do....I got in my car and continued on to the country club. Which I realized was a mistake once my ankle started really swelling and pounding about halfway into the appetizers.

But I soldiered on, in the name of all things Country Club. Priorities! And then hit the Urgent Care Center on the way home (by that time I was in agony). They had to bring me in and out of the facility in a wheelchair, and after an exam, x-rays and ultrasound, they discovered that I'd completely torn a ligament on the top of my foot and it wasn't working anymore.

I came home and had Big Ag put the suede ankle boots into the Goodwill box.

To be honest, this is not the first time these shoes have tried to kill me. I attending a wedding a couple of years ago, with the reception held around a magnificent old oak tree at a winery. Somewhere into the reception, I tried to get back to my table from the dance floor, across a few of the massive roots that protruded around the oak, and twisted the same ankle and fell to the ground. Some old man at another table leaned over to his wife and said, "well, that one's been drinking." But I hadn't. I had tripped on an oak root, but it was the ankle boots that caused me to fall completely flat on the ground.

And so now I'm in an air cast and wrapped up like a mummy when I'm not wearing that, due for physical therapy next week. The pain is better and the bruising is subsiding. The good news is, as long as it's not hurting, I have permission to drive, walk, and do anything else I need to. And even better, it's not hurting all that much right now, so all my holiday preps are coming along just fine.

But the sad thing is that I've almost considered digging the ankle boots out of the Goodwill bag, because they are just so darn cute and look so good on. But I've realized it's a toxic relationship and that it's counterproductive to love something that's trying to kill you. And so it is in life as well.

And so I bid farewell to yet another fashion trend I've had to give up due to age. If anyone needs me, I'll be out in the vineyard, hangin' with the wild turkeys and deer. For many reasons, that is probably where I most belong. But occasionally I reserve the right to visit The Other Side -- the one with appetizers, gorgeous couture and bright conversation. You'll know you see me there when you see a slightly-out-of-place looking woman.... with an array of appetizers in her hand, wearing very sensible flats.

Spring in the forest

Last weekend Big Ag and I went to the Peavy Arboretum in Corvallis, which is not so much a flower arboretum as a forest arboretum for students majoring in Forestry Studies at OSU. But as with most forests, there is much plant and insect life under the pine canopy, and plenty of beautiful mini-meadows in the spaces between. One thing I love about Oregon is the abundant hiking trails, and this place was no different. We could have wandered for days through this preserve. Where we lived before you had to travel a good 40 minutes to get to the good hiking trails near the beach, here there is great hiking 10 minutes down the road. Hopefully this will be an incentive to stay in shape! 

Telephone pole pastoral.

The garter snakes in Oregon are orange and black. My Giants fan husband was thrilled.

Experimental forest

Sunbreak in the meadow

A land slug the size of my hand!

Edenized

When I sum up my philosophy of this life with acreage as well as having a garden, my invented and hybridized word for what we do is this one: "Edenized," meaning returning the earth to an ideal state of looking and behaving something like the biblical Garden of Eden.  

Whether you are an avowed atheist or a believer of any faith, I think everyone can probably get behind the general idea of being a good steward and making each place you touch the absolute best it can be. 

The idea of a Garden of Eden has become a symbolic representation of a place where nature was perfectly balanced with the needs of all who lived within it, and where everything coexisted in harmony. To me it means cultivating the land you need while also leaving some uncultivated land in its best but also most natural state, for the creatures who were here before you came and will continue to inhabit the land long after you're gone.

If there ever truly was a Garden of Eden, it happened long before mankind showed up en masse and took over. But I believe the story is important (whether you believe it in reality or not) because it puts forth as good the idea of letting nature just be nature and seeing that as a kind of perfection, in and of itself.

To that end, when this house was built 11 years before we moved here, the top of the hill was scraped off in order to build on level ground. But not all the land that was leveled was built on. There is a large area which our back yard overlooks where nothing happened except our leach field was run across it, but the scars left from scraping the hill are still apparent. 

If you walk around on it, the ground gradually gets more fertile as the slope of the hill increases, while there is an almost scorched quality to what's flat. That, of course, is because of topsoil. The place where the land literally had its skin scraped off is incapable of growing very much.

Until now.

I recently got the idea of using the yard waste plus waste shavings and poop from the chicken coop and distributing it along the hilltop -- along with some wildflower seeds. The fecal matter and shavings should provide a little nutrition and protection, and with just a bit more rain (which we are supposed to get next week) it might be possible to get a first generation of flowers started here.

From now on I intend to scatter the shavings and chicken poo, along with lawn clippings and anything else that will biodegrade nicely out there, in order to start building back topsoil that was lost 11 years ago and never replaced.

No reason The Garden of Eden shouldn't be here, too. Gonna Edenize this hilltop.

Holes and greens

Down in the pasture I've been noticing a a carpet of green and a lot of holes in the ground which have both taken over the uncultivated space at the bottom of our hill.

The greens, of course, are natural grasses and shrubs, a.k.a. weeds, which grow enthusiastically on our property with a tenacity and success that I have yet to match with the trees and vines I plant down there. They're not much of a worry to me, except where they are growing around my berry and grape vines and trees. 

Not willing to apply chemical sprays, I've spent the better part of two days hand weeding around the bases of the trees and shrubs, and have the bleeding arms to prove it. Berries are thorny and very well-defended plants, even when you are trying to help them by removing competitive plants around their bases.

The holes are a bit of a mystery to me, except for the largest ones which are from ground squirrels. There are small ones and medium ones, which could host anything from tarantulas to snakes to field mice.

While the greenery is a simple fix -- pull what's competing with the plants for nutrients and leave the rest -- the holes are a dilemma, because if we are going to have livestock, the holes will have to go.  They are just too much of a hazard to sheep, who could injure or even break a leg by stepping into one.

But one of the basic cornerstones of permaculture is leaving a certain amount of your property to nature and her critters, to do with what they please (within reason). And so I'd prefer to leave the bottom of the pasture to the hole-dwellers, if possible.

This will take some creative fence design, but I think having a balance of cultivated property and wild property is worth it.  As for how to do it, I'm not sure yet...but in the hours I will be spending down in the pasture weeding, perhaps that will give me more than enough time to think about it.

Of course with enough holes and enough greens, I guess I could always open a permacultural golf course, and with the general pathetic-ness of my golf game, the hole-dwellers are probably safe.

Scream of the Red Fox

I was reminded, for about 40 minutes last night, that we do indeed live in an area of true ecological diversity.  At night I hear hooting and screeching owls, coyotes, and now this strange noise:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zk1mAd77Hr4

Whomever our fox is (the one above is just a clip from YouTube I found) I assume he or she is lookin' for love, as it's spring. Plus it went on far too long to be a cry of alarm, and it was a fairly regular call, happening about once every 5 seconds or so.  

But on the downside, by the time it stopped it had brought me into full, wakeful consciousness, unable to go back to sleep. But I still consider it a treat to have been able to hear this in real life. I've seen red foxes around the neighborhood, but this is the first time I've heard their call.

Our visitor, part one

The other night, I went outside to cover up our lettuce crop, as it was expected to freeze.  About the time I'd just stepped outside I saw what looked like a gerbil, walking along the top of the raised bed.  He was sauntering, actually.  When he saw me, he casually hopped off the bed and disappeared into the darkness.

My only questions were 1) what in the hell was a gerbil doing in our back yard, and 2) how much sparkling blackberry wine HAD I actually enjoyed that evening -- enough to see imaginary gerbils? Were my adventures in winemaking finally catching up to me?  Or was the gerbil an escapee from some child's cage in the neighborhood?  Did someone release him after they figured out, hey, these creatures smell and need their cages cleaned often?  It happens.  I once ended a friendship with someone when she told me she'd taken her son's pet gerbil down to the slough and released him because he ran on his wheel at night and it made noise.  Crazy, huh?  A nocturnal creature exercising on the wheel that had been provided to him by his owners.  When I protested that there was NO way a tiny, tame creature could survive in the slough on his own, she told me I was wrong because she had taken great pains to bring his little see-through plastic gerbil igloo down to the slough as well -- see, his house was there, so he'd be fine.  I got the check, left, and never spoke to her again lest I throttle her.


But back to our current, 2012 gerbil tale. I saw him again last night.  And this time I got a better look.  Last night I went outside cover the raised lettuce beds again, and I saw him coming across the yard.  He ran AT me this time, completely unafraid.  But again, I lost sight of him in one of the darker corners of our yard, where our lights don't shine.


But I know more than I did before. First, I know he's not afraid of me.  Not one little bit.  Second, I now know he has a tail, because I saw it.  Whether he's a huge mouse, a small rat or even a young possum, I don't know.  But they've been doing some brush removal from a nearby field, so I'm guessing he's a fugitive rodent from over there.  

I saw another fugitive from the same removal project yesterday. It was an old raccoon, laying by the side of the road after being killed by a car.  It was, and I kid you not, the size of a border collie.  It was so large, people were stopping their cars to get out and have a look. I didn't stop, because this kind of thing distresses me.  This big old raccoon had been living peaceably in the trees and brush, probably for years, until the developers decided they needed to clear the trees, which have probably been there for 50 years themselves. And so the lovely trees died, Mr. Raccoon lost his habitat and, soon after, his life.  I grieve for any creature who loses his habitat -- even raccoons.  Or gerbils-rats-possums.  


And I wonder if the people who took out all those trees had any idea he was living around there.  If they did, they missed an opportunity many of us don't take when we are presented with a problem like stray possums or raccoons.  They missed an opportunity for trapping and relocation.


So here's the plan.  I bought a lovely live animal trap on Amazon today, which should be here in a few days.  I will bait it, and I will wait patiently.  And when we catch our rogue rodent friend, Big Ag and I will take him away, find a nice spot at the ranch where there's a good supply of water, trees, food, and lots of places to hide from predators, and we will release him there.


He does not belong in my yard, that much is certain.  But every one of God's creatures belongs somewhere.  If The Lord cares for the sparrows, why wouldn't he also care for the field rats and the raccoons?  My only regret is that the raccoon found himself under the wheels of a car before he found his way into my yard and into a live animal trap, which would have been his ticket to a new, wild home.  Because creatures like raccoons and rats are only "nuisance pests" when their paths intersect with ours.  Left to their own devices in the wild, they are no problem for anyone.