That's Money You Smell!

It's summer again at Juniper Hill, and the neighbors are busy. It's quite common to turn out the driveway and land right behind a tractor making its way from field to field, which sure slows down those trips to the beach.

From time to time the wind shifts, and you get a whiff of what the locals are up to at this season. When I would remark on this as a child, my grandfather would nod wisely and intone "that's money you smell." (I am compelled to point out that Pop was not a canny old back-country farmer, but a banker in residence for the summers only, who purchased the right of way to our house from old Thurmon Maine, a quite authentic COBCF, MORE THAN ONCE.)

The other day, I found myself behind one of those ancient and mysterious pieces of equipment that move around at this season. It was soon clear to me that it must be a manure spreader, so I fell back a bit and continued my leisurely drive home. Once home, I settled back in to clearing out the squirrels' nests, hanging curtains and, still getting faint whiffs, musing about my grandfather and the glories of country life.

At least I did until I looked outside and discovered Pete shoving his head into the spitmobile's wheel wells and giving his ears a good annointing.

Another Year Older

And deeper in debt. Somehow 2009 got by me and I never got a handle on it. Then December was just packed with events, good and bad, bringing me to the conviction (or longing) that NEXT year will be different. I may not be wearing a silly hat, but, like my dogs, I am ever hopeful.

All Is Vanity

Ah, vanity! You might think if I didn't spend all my money on dog food and fancy license plates, I'd have a nicer car.

This was my dear Jeep Cherokee, 14 years old and 240,000 miles when it had its last explosion on the Cross Bronx Expressway one fine fall night last year . Fortunately it's not that hard to find a car service that will take you, two spinone, a semi-comatose pekingese and the cat the rest of the way home at 11:00 at night, as long as your credit card still functions.

This wonderful vehicle served me well, carrying dogs and vanity plates (with the help of a bit of baling wire) in style, AND making sure that nobody among my passengers was ever gunshy. I've been driving something newer, and while I can hear the radio over the rattles, I spend much more time worrying about it that I ever did about my Jeep.

Summer Houses

Our house was built by a poet, at the turn of the LAST century, out of scrap lumber from the sawmill where he worked and bits of old chicken coop. It is held up by metaphor, not engineering, and this weather is not doing it any favors, although thanks to a new rubber roof (it's like an enormous inner tube, but white) there are no leaks this year. It occupies a hill at the edge of Bell Cedar Swamp, and is more than just a little damp from the daily rain.

Today, I decided that bad lighting and worse eyesight would no longer suffice, and that I had to vacuum. This is always an interesting process, as you are just as likely to suck up bits of house that have mysteriously disintegrated as you are to suck up spider webs and spinone hair.

I squinted at the bathroom ceiling, which needs a bit of work, and put up my brush to see whether it was a knot hole, dry rot or just stuff, when PLOP, something landed on my head. I hoped for dry rot until it ran down across my shoulder and leapt onto the floor. Fortunately, it was just a snake.

Mice, while inevitable (the inside/outside dichotomy is poorly defined at best, and you can't blame nature for not knowing), are an embarrassment and spiders give me the howling horrors; but I have convinced myself that snakes are interesting and exotic. The ring-necked snakes that occasionally drop in (sometimes onto guests who are just reading quietly on the couch) are very small and pretty, so there's no end to the amusement. (As my favorite sister-in-law—and it's a brave person that marries into our family—once said, "oh NO, there could be an entire nest of writhing shoelaces up there!")

This is a house that some people find reason to never, ever visit again. But others recognize that it is imbued with a charming 1930s Nick and Nora appeal. My grandparents bought the house from the poet (his family had to move to town during the war, the first one, and inexplicably refused to move back) and tacked on a bathroom and hot water. Grandma would come down from NY with the maid and children and Pop would come for weekends then his vacation, and they would have friends visit and ply them with cocktails and dress for dinner and have a wonderful time. Long summer days at the beach and evenings of talk and laughter...

I learned to mix a martini here, aged maybe 8 or 9, and to play bridge, and that I could hear everything that the grownups were saying from any part of the house as I sat up under the blankets reading my book with a flashlight. And really, what else can you ask of a summer?

You are what you eat

Look at this happy, happy face. Come Spring, there's a lot of, ahem, activity over by the horses and my Pete sure knows how to make the most of it. Back when he was an unsophisticated puppy, he'd come home and regurgitate it wholesale, to my horror. He could, in a matter of only moments, liquefy and expand the original materials and get them EVERYWHERE, in a form oh-so-much-more-noxious than the original.

Now that he's older, he takes the time to consider and digest it all and, oddly enough, it seems to help in the formation of a perfect, or more perfect, output. In what some could dismiss as just a load of horse puckey, he finds an essential fiber that helps bind his own contributions; learning to take the roughage with the smooth, so to speak.

As ever, we can learn from our dogs. Happy Spring, and everybody, let's roll!

Nobody suffers like my dogs

Why, when I thwart this creature (as I so often do), does he stretch out his little neck and lay it out across tables, knees, chairs, whatever, like Ann Boleyn across the block? Just look at that expression. It's extortion.

Ominous, much?

I was wondering where the 21st Street pigeons were this gloomy afternoon, but then I looked up...

-