Comma Dot Comma

The other night Dr. G and I noticed a pall hanging over the dark road as we returned from the grocery store. I thought fog, he thought smoke. We were both wrong– it was dust. We had just missed some giant truck revving its engine and peeling out in our front yard. It had made black tire marks on the curb (both entry and exit), scattered buckets of gravel into the street, and gouged through the gravel and the plastic lining of the yard down to the dirt. It had run over a fairly big, pointy rock (maybe 14 inches tall?) in the process but apparently escaped unscathed. ARGH!

We have a corner lot in a neighborhood where most of the roads don’t go anywhere in particular. Our street is right about the point where people realize they are going the wrong way, so we witness a lot of frustrated turn-arounds. Most people have the decency to turn around in the street instead of on our property. But every couple of months, we’ll find tire tracks through the yard. This incident was the worst.

Okay, so it is a big yard without much in it. A few palm trees, a few big rocks, and a big expanse of white gravel. But you do have to go over a sharp curb and avoid a fire hydrant to get onto it! Awhile back Dr. G pushed some of the bigger rocks into the most common path of drive-through-the-yarders, but apparently it is not deterrent enough. And our across the street neighbor also has a fairly empty, inviting corner lot but I never see evidence of people driving through his. There is something special about ours.

My theory is that it is too empty. If we add a few more vegetation-type items so it looks sort of planned, people will think, “landscaped yard” and not “off-roading opportunity.” I would test my theory except it costs a lot of money and time. I wish I could set up a controlled experiment. Actually, I wish people would refrain from driving through my yard. Or, barring that, let them do it at a time when I can catch them at it and fully lecture them on human decency or at least take down a license plate! Dr. G was kind enough to sweep the street in the dark, late at night, after the last time, but I don’t want him to make a habit of it.

Most of my thoughts are related to dirt. The backyard and a few unsightly portions of the front yard are full of pits, trenches, and heaps of dirt, evidence of our belabored attempts to install a sprinkler system and plant a patch of grass in the backyard. Landscaping an older home (ours is vintage 1975, which I know is not old to east coasters but in Phoenix people hardly ever buy houses more than a few yrs old) involves a lot of destruction. So far we have removed:

1 rusty pool fence
3 tree stumps
1 tree
2 clumps of decorative grass
1 4×10 patch of bamboo
4 bushes
2 planters
1 yardful of knee-high weeds

We rototilled the back yard at the end of March and since then dirt has been blowing into the pool and the house at every opportunity. Mmm! Grit! Gotta love it. With all our tilling and digging and uprooting, though, we’ve uncovered a number of suprises.

1 plastic easter egg containing a mini candybar
1 carefully folded piece of magenta cloth
1 cats-eye marble (the big kind that we used to call boulders)
1 patch of asphalt
1 patch of concrete
1 coil of disconnected TV cable, which apparently connected our house and the neighbor’s at one time.
2 pre-existing non-functional drip systems
1 underground tree stump
Several bricks and paving stones
1 cockroach nest
1 bees nest
Countless nails and bolts
Countless big rocks.

Dirt, dirt, dirt. It is hard to imagine a time a time when it will be settled down and doing its job beneath a layer of grass and gravel.

I can’t for the life of me figure out why I’m suddenly so efficient. Dr. G has been gone most of the week, gallivanting around the country presenting his research and whatnot, and I’ve been fending for myself on the homefront. This consists, in part, of sleeping poorly and having dreams of the pool overflowing in the backyard while a row of evil Harley Davidsons charges the front. I also start to say things and then sheepishly stop, suddenly realizing that no one is there. I miss my Dr. G and will be glad to have him back. And yet, with him gone, I get so much more done. The annoying pile of tangled necklaces has even been sorted through, each one dusted and hung on a peg board; the leather sofa has been treated with a protective salve and the cushions rotated; I hung a picture and deep-cleaned the kitchen, dug up a bunch of bamboo in the backyard and treated my tomato plants for whiteflies. This in addition to the usual routines.

The question is, why? There is nothing in particular that he and I do together that would prevent me from doing things that otherwise languish undone for weeks. Granted, he did not grow up, as I did, in a home where Saturday Chores held a spot of honor just below loving Jesus and honoring your parents. So, these days, when I occasionally “get my chore on” Dr. G. opts for the Duck and Cover response. He does not believe in the Implacable Force of Chore Doing that was practically a member of my family. Perhaps my knowing that he is not a chore-mania believer subconsciously dampens my task-based enthusiasm when he’s around. Or maybe it takes plenty of homemaking effort to simply live life together, to pay the proper attention to the one I love. Most of the time, I will happily neglect any number of chores to sit out on the back patio or watch 1950’s TV shows together.

It was iron deficient. It was brittle. Its aged branches hung over the roof and creaked ominiously during storms. Its roots pressed up against the house and snaked under it. The trunk was about five feet from the front wall. It was only a matter of time until Something Bad Happened, so we signed its death warrant. The executioner came, muscles bulging just like they do on the billboard photo. He had his big truck and his posse and his ladders and his saws.

It was also one of the reasons we bought the house. It towered over the neighborhood, about three stories high with a trunk so wide we couldn’t reach our arms around it. It was a good thirty years older than the house itself, a tree that had seen the neighborhood creep up the hill in the 70’s and absorbed the sight with stoicism and aplomb. It kept one whole side of the house cool on hot days. And, being a eucalyptus, its leaves smelled great. This is Phoenix and a real tree is a treasure, except when it is a menace. A menacing treasure was our tree.

When I got home from work yesterday, all that was left was the edge of a root butting against the house and a pile of fragrant red sawdust. Alas! It was as if Dr. G smiled at me and his four front teeth were suddenly missing. It is sad to be the Destroyer of a tree.

See it here: http://commadotcomma.net/blog/2007/08/26/joining-the-landed-gentry

That’s me amid the flying sparks, grinding down rusty bolts on the pool deck. Dr. G did most of it, but it looked like fun and I wanted to get in on the action. We were on a tight deadline– a dispute with the decking contractor resulted in my saying, “Fine, we’ll just do it ourselves!” on the phone at 3 pm. But we had to get it finished before they showed up to re-deck at seven am the next day. Throw in work schedules and extra trips to Home Depot to get the right tool, and voila, you end up working in the dark with a bedside lamp on an extension cord. By the end we were working in relays to get it done before it got past the “don’t disturb the neighbors” hour.