A Touch of Orange

September 10, 2017

There's more than a hint of autumn in the air. Today, on this last day of my end-of-summer vacation, it was a mere 48F when I rolled out of bed this morning at six o'clock. As my coffee brewed, my thoughts were to the effect of it was going to be chilly at the last family reunion of the year, this being my maternal grandmother's family. And it was. 

Cool and breezy aside, I enjoyed the reunion. It's nothing like the reunions of the past when my great-grandmother and her brood were alive. It's sad in some respects but this is the way of world. The eleven siblings of that first generation have passed. The second generation has lost a few owing to the fact that there were so many of them and the age spread is vast. The cousin I grew up with, she and me being close in age, is part of the second generation with my mother yet she is only a year older than me, and twenty years younger than my mother. It's this age spread that makes the family genealogy great fun to work. 

I noticed something else this morning as I stood on my little private porch. The maple tree on the crest of the bank is displaying a touch of orange. Of all the trees on my property, this tree is the show stopper as this old photo attests. 

It's grown a bit over the years. We're preparing to cut down the tree behind it to give it some extra room. It's simply too beautiful in the fall to let the other trees crowd it. 

With autumn arriving early, I ponder the summer just past. It almost feels like summer bypassed the mountain. We're using to week after week of hazy, hot, and humid days - Triple H days. We had too few to even remember. 

Dry? Drought? Burning bans? No, not this past summer. The grass is greener than green, full and healthy. No browned out spots at all. The old Jackmanni clematis had blooms on it all summer long - still does for that matter. That has never, ever happened before. 

Going back to the day job tomorrow will be difficult. I hate to miss these glorious days and be cooped-up inside an old dusty building. Every day I'll drive up my lane and take note of the maple tree on the bank. When the orange leaves finally drop, I'll prepare myself for another winter, and try to remember the summer that never really arrived. 

KC Kendricks

A shout-out for Antietam Tree and Turf

November 11, 2013

The tree-trimmers arrived this morning before eight o'clock. You can tell by some of the photos the sun was barely over the mountain. I was ready, though. These guys were here in May of 2011 and I remembered they get an early start. They also hustle. These guys WORK. 

And no, this is certainly not a paid endorsement of the company. We paid them to take down two problem trees. I just happen to think a company who exceeds what they said they would do is worth a recommendation. 

It was fascinating to watch the crew work. One guy floated among the treetops and the other handled duties on the ground. Safety first was definitely the first order of every thing they did. The trees came down, limb by limb and branch by branch, until nothing remained but the trunk. That came down in pieces, too. Everything but the largest pieces went through the shredder and became mulch. We have nothing to clean up, either. They did it all, raking the entire work area. There are no sticks left to hit with the mower.  

If you live in Maryland, anywhere from Frederick to Cumberland, and probably beyond, and need a tree service, Antietam Tree deserves a call. We have three more trees that are too large for us to feel comfortable with taking down ourselves. I won't even call and price shop. Come spring, after I've saved my pennies, I'll simply call these guys. 

A good job the first time is a pleasant surprise. A good job the second time is proof of the way a company does business. Antietam Tree has my business. 

Now I have to write a story about tree-trimmers. After all, I have videos saved to show my characters how to do it. 

KC
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The Red-tailed Hawk

October 22, 2013

I'm thinking about birds today. I'm sure it has something to do with the Hitchcockian line-up of little brown sparrows perched on the telephone lines outside my office window. An old friend had a little green Quaker parrot named Calvin and he acted as if there was some sort of intelligence at work. I used to joke about this bird knowing he was descended from avian theropods. Perhaps the birds on the wire know it as well.

Seeing the birds outside led me to ponder the feathered situation at home. We have a Red-tailed hawk in the sky above our house, and for the first time in ten years my not-so-silly cat is very cautious when he ventures out to search for his own prey.

I'm not at all sure the hawk is big enough [yet] to take on a fifteen-pound cat, especially one which is all mountain-cat muscle. There's no city-cat flab on my kitty-precious. Nonetheless, the cat's instincts rule him in this and I'm fine with that.

As a girl, I helped my grandfather make bird feeders, and tossed sunflower seeds out the kitchen window with my grandmother for the Bob-whites on the ground. I'm sometimes surprised at what birds I remember and know by sight from their teachings. Cardinals, Baltimore Orioles, Indigo Buntings, Nuthatch, Chickadee, blackbirds, crows, common sparrows, finches, wrens, titmouse, Juncos, jays, mockingbirds, catbirds and the occasional Ring-necked pheasant all visited the area outside my grandparent's kitchen windows. If you saw a hawk show up, it was like magic. "poof!" The little birds vanished.

These days the quail have disappeared, by what mechanism I don't know. I don't even hear them call in the distance much less see one. Instead we have wild turkeys, something I never saw until they made a resurgence in the mid-1990s. Now, with the hawk, I suspect I won't have many small birds to feed this winter. They, like the cat, know when to keep out of sight.

I suppose I could find it in me to be annoyed at the hawk, but I'm not. The old and the frail will fall to him and I view it as a quicker death than starvation or freezing on the first really cold night of the season. Maybe it's because I grew up understanding there is a natural order to everything - Nature does not waste life.

The hawk will eventually move on, following the small birds. The little ones will return to refill the vacuum. But in the meantime I will watch this young Red-tailed and admire his seemingly wise gaze as he perches on the old cherry stump. After all, he is the ranking dinosaur in the neighborhood.

KC Kendricks



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The Visitor in the Backyard

August 10, 2013

We’ve had the wettest, coolest summer in many years. I blame myself since this was the year I finally got a little pool in which to relax at the end of the day. I’ve talked about getting one for years and this summer was the time.

It’s not very big at only ten feet in diameter, nor is it deep. Sitting down the water is only shoulder deep but that’s what we wanted. Something just big enough to cool off in with a glass of wine at the end of the day. We’ve invited the neighbors (my cousins) to join us, but so far we’ve not had many evenings without the threat of a thunderstorm in which to fully enjoy the water.

Living out on a mountain as we do, we see a lot of deer. We’ve watched this one particular buck for several years. He had a twin when he was a spike but now it’s only him and his little harem. This year, he’s an eight-point and quite the handsome fellow. Getting good photos of him has proven next to impossible. He didn’t get to be an eight-point by trusting us humans, and the best picture I've managed was through window glass.

He paid a visit one evening it was hot and dry enough to float in the pool. We were just about to get out of the water when a movement caught my eye. We stayed silent and watched him step out of the woods into the backyard and graze his way across and vanish into the trees on the other side. It was a rare gift to be able to observe this beautiful creature when he seemed to be unaware of us.

Of course, a few mornings later I called him everything except beautiful when I woke to discover he’d eaten all - as in every last, freakin’ one - of the August lilies on the terrace. One or two I’d forgiven him, but all of them? Get the gun, Pa.

Buck paid us another visit this morning. He was in the yard when I opened the door for the dog to go out and take care of his outdoor activities. Those two play a game. The old dog rushes from the house, barking, and Buck stands there and deer-laughs at him until the dog gets about ten feet from him then Buck makes a leap onto the stone fence and deer-laughs at my poor old dog a bit more. He knows the dog is now too old to climb the fence.

Come next year, if Buck makes it through hunting season again, he might get surprise. I just might have a younger, faster “wolf” on the premises. Who’ll be laughing then, big fella?

KC Kendricks

New Countertops in the Twilight Zone

February 19, 2012

Do you remember the old Golden Earring song, “Twilight Zone?” Yeah, yeah, I’m that old and twelve thousand other authors just scurried off to write a story based on the lyrics, but I digress. There’s one line in the song that certainly applies to my life at the moment.

“Help, I’m stepping into the twilight zone…”

Tomorrow, if all goes well, new countertops will be installed in my kitchen. I’ve looked at the old ones for thirty years and I’m due. No, no, I’m not THAT old. I got a head start on home ownership while in my early twenties when my grandparents gifted me with three acres of ground, but I digress again.

Once I’d allowed myself to be convinced I deserved to spend that kind of money on a whim, the project moved forward rather quickly. My partner knows I’m frugal to a fault and that if he really wanted to pry several thousand dollars out of my accounts, he’d have to bleed, too. He handed me a check (that I know had to give him a bit of a twinge) and off we went to look at options. Formica, quartz, marble, soapstone, concrete, granite, the stuff with the ground glass in it, real butcher block, stainless steel. We settled on granite.

“Help, I’m stepping into the twilight zone…”

If you ever decide to get new countertops there are a few words you should avoid - “We’ll do the demo ourselves.”

To save about five hundred dollars, we decided to rip out and dispose of the old countertops ourselves. And so the work did commence. The first to go was small space of counter my beloved uses as his desk space. It wasn’t too difficult but wait…. His computer is on the floor in a corner of the living room. He’s using my computer to check his email. He’s touching MY computer. He’s picking up things on MY desk and asking me what the hell they are. Such is the magnitude of my mistake - we’ll do the demo ourselves.

So here we are on Sunday morning and the cooktop is on the potting bench - outside. The oven is on a piece of ply board on the dining room table. There is no kitchen sink. The dishwasher is sitting on plastic in the dining room. Who set the bomb off in my house?

And the coffee brewer? The Cuisinart is in the bathroom. And if you think about that for just a moment, you’ll understand the real twilight zone moment.

I’ll leave you with a little commentary from my cat. Yesterday, he decided to check out the action for himself and found his favorite observation spot had gone missing. He’s a famous cover model, you know, having posed for the cover of A Cat Named Hercules.

This morning he’s in the bathroom, glaring at the coffee maker. I understand. I want my home back in order, too.

“The sun’ll come up…tomorrow….”

KC Kendricks
website at: http://www.kckendricks.com

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Mother Nature's Trick

October 31, 2011

You may have heard about this..... It snowed on October 29th! Seriously.

Very serious. Thank God for the person who invented the Honda generator and made it possible to create this blog entry.

Seriously. We've been without power since 2:30 PM on Saturday, October 29, 2011, and Allegheny Power says it will be midnight, Wednesday, November 2, 2011 - at the earliest - until our service is restored. Say...what? I've not seen any evidence at all Allegheny Power even has a crew working in the entire county. People all around us have power, but we're orphaned. How do you say IMPENDNG SOLAR INSTALLATION?

I've lived in the woods my entire life, so I know the drill. We're luckier than most. We have a woodstove and we keep a healthy supply of firewood at the ready. A clear spring-fed mountain stream provides fresh water. Sure, we have to drop a bucket on a rope into the dip hole, but at least I've got water. Wish I had water for a HOT SHOWER but since Mr. Home Improvement installed a whole-house surge protector, the generator doesn't power the water heater - a fuck-up an oversight my honey will fix at the first opportunity if he wants to keep his happy home.

All my bitching aside, we were lucky. No trees or brances fell on our house or our vehicles. The shed took a hit, but the roof held firm. We have a massive cleanup ahead of us, but it will help supply our woodpile for next year. I'm grateful everything in the refrigator is fine and we're warm and dry.

It's time to close this entry with a few pictures. Even with generator power and a battery backup on my computer, I prefer to be cautious. I want to shut down the computer for safety's sake. And I need to dress like a lumberjack and get to work cleaning up the mess in the backyard.

Happy Halloween!

KC Kendricks
http://www.kckendricks.com

Are we having fun yet?

April 17, 2010



So it rained yesterday.

And rained. And rained some more.

I don't think I'm leaving home anytime soon.

Thank God the Internet connection has been restored.