14. The Writing on the Wall

July 26, 2012June 5, 2017 / Apple Hill Cottage / 2 Comments

The best thing about living in a space where walls are crumbling and severely in need of repair is Writing On Them! For instance, at our advanced ages we seem to have memory short-outs quite frequently. This wall writing is very handy!

Just so we won’t forget to make it a 3-way switch…

The other day Mr. H.C. asked me if we had a chalkboard (I actually did find an old one of Clara’s) but I don’t know why I didn’t just tell him to write it on the wall. It isn’t like we haven’t already made mistakes. The stove was originally going to go in the far corner of the kitchen where the pantry wall was taken out. We measured, drew lines, and very carefully marked where the stove would be (in heavy carpenter pencil). Then we changed our minds. So now the writing on that wall is wrong. What do you do with that?

Erase? No, it won’t erase.

X-out? What, and draw attention to the fact that we can’t decide?

This just proves that reading the writing on the wall isn’t always accurate…

So the wrong writing is still there; I hope we don’t forget and put the stove there anyway…

It’s also very handy for keeping measurements–just so we don’t have to measure the same doorway or window more than 4 times:

But the best writing on the wall so far is actually on the ceiling — red chalk lines that will help us lay out the new bead-board ceiling,

This means we are actually getting close! (Mr. H.C. is installing an attic fan and the light brackets in the attic as I’m writing this.)

I have a history of wall-writing. One of my first memories is happily writing on the wall with crayons while I was supposedly taking a nap. I have blocked out what happened when I was found out, but the fact that I remember it at all makes me think it was traumatic. Maybe the first time I got in trouble and remembered about it?

Much later, middle sister and I were getting ready to put wallpaper in our bedroom. It was bright orange and yellow and red flowers — must have been around 1966 or 67– and it looked eerily like the wallpaper on our bedroom now, here at the cottage.
We were painting the wall before we wallpapered it; I surely don’t remember why. Mom gave us permission to do graffiti on the wall before she papered over it. I painted several Nazi swastikas on it. I was just a kid and had no idea of the import of this symbol. When Mom came in and saw what I had done, she was horrified — her only brother had been killed in France during the war. She made us paint over them. “But we’re wallpapering over it,” I pointed out. She was shouting now. “I will not have someone finding these symbols fifty years from now on my house!” Of course, now I understand her rage perfectly. (Diane, am I remembering this right? I’m claiming full responsibility here because I can’t remember the extent of your involvement…)

A few years later, my boyfriend — he was called Mike back then — and I wrote our initials on the inside of a covered bridge on the Lippencott Road not far from where the cottage is now. We went back after we were married –30 or so years later — to see if they were still there.

The inside of the bridge had been painted and we couldn’t find any initials, but then, we weren’t even sure if it was the right bridge…(There are 7 covered bridges in Greene County–you can find information about them here.) And from reading this website, I’ve discovered its real name–The Lippencott-Cox Farm bridge.
So there must be a place on these three acres where we can paint or carve our initials inside a heart on our 10th anniversary (coming up in August). I’m thinking maybe The Gazebo, or one of our very tall trees. Might have to go get some spray paint…

13. A Lotta Big Trees

July 22, 2012June 12, 2017 / Apple Hill Cottage / 1 Comment

We have five very tall trees around the cottage. By very tall I mean 50 feet or more. One of them, a sycamore, is about 5 feet from the front porch. WAY too close! If it fell, that tree would do serious damage.

When the house insurance guy came to survey the house, his first comment was, “Uh, you’ve got a lotta big trees here.”

The sycamore is a lovely tree, don’t misunderstand me, but it is a litterbug extraordinaire. Little twigs, pieces of bark, big dried leaves, and stickery sycamore pods all litter the front yard and porch in all seasons. I think cleaning up after it will get old fast.

The prettiest (and furthest away from the house) is the catalpa. The bees were thick around it when it bloomed in mid-June. (Has anyone heard of catalpa honey?) Now in mid-July its long green bean-like seed pods are just starting to grow. The catalpa’s circumference is eleven feet around. When the furnace guy was here last fall, he spent some time admiring it. “You just usually don’t see catalpas that are that big,” he told us. It turns out he is a chain saw wood carver and catalpa wood is his favorite wood to use for his hobby. Near the catalpa is the original well for the house. There used to be a tall hand pump on the well and I remember Aunt Mary showing me how to get water from it. It’s well down on the priority list, but we’d both like to find another old hand pump for it.

The large maple on the other side of the house is at the top of the slope going to the back yard. Its limbs stretch out over the roof of the garage bedroom. We’ve contemplated taking it down to put a real garage there. Of all the trees, it is most likely to fall down the hill and spare the house. But it still has some mighty big limbs over the roof.

The oak tree next to it could have been the stateliest tree in the yard, but it had the bad fate to be too close to the electric wires. The electric company has done their pruning on it, and it will never be the beautiful oak it should be. (That is, the entire middle of the tree is gone!) It does have one lovely horizontal limb though, which is perfect for a swing… Olivia and Olivier love it, and so do we!

The maple tree in the middle of the gazebo has its own special history. It was a big tree when I was a little girl. The tree is close to the road and provided the perfect shade for bushels of apples for sale. Pa built a hexagonal set of bleachers for the apples around the tree, then roof joists were nailed to the tree about twelve feet up. People just pulled into the yard to buy apples, and Aunt Mary would hurry out of her country kitchen in her full apron to take their money and help pour the apples into sacks. The biggest and best apples were on the top bleachers. We would run up and down the levels and around through the baskets. Pa hardly ever yelled at us. He was the only one who had nicknames for us — we were Cee, Dee, and Fancy. The most he ever said to correct me was, “Now Cee…”

Joe and Clara enclosed it in the seventies and called it the Gazebo. I think it must have stunted the tree’s growth, because what was a big tree fifty years ago, is still just a big tree. It is locally famous though. When we tell people where we live, they say, “Oh, is that the place with the tree growing out of the garage?” Makes it difficult to park cars inside…

The roof and joists need repairing; if anyone has any great ideas for a building with a giant tree in the middle, don’t keep it to yourself!

I love these tall trees — they give us shade, keep us cool, bring the birds and their songs — but I gotta say that the winds on this ridge make me nervous…

12. On Kitties and Raccoons

July 18, 2012October 20, 2014 / Apple Hill Cottage / 2 Comments

After I spent 9 days here over the two weeks around the 4th of July, the kitty and I had settled right in. So before leaving last weekend, we went to one of those big box pet stores and got a timed cat feeder. The battery operated electronic model with bells and whistles is $100. We didn’t get that one. We bought a perfectly serviceable gravity model for $19.95. We filled it (almost a whole bag of food) and the kitty was happily trying it out on the back porch as we left.

We anxiously wondered if he had eaten all the food when we arrived next Saturday morning. A quick look at the scene left us wondering some more. The feeder was broken apart, on its side in two pieces, and licked clean.

We waited for the kitty to return and explain. Somehow it didn’t seem like our sweetheart of a kitty would do violence to his food bowl.

He never showed up, so we had to make do with our neighbor, Betty, who has joint custody of the kitty. She knew right away. “Raccoons,” she said ominously. “They’re mean! Clara always had trouble with them. She had one in the house once.” We nodded; we’d heard that story. They would come right in her kitty door. Betty’s husband, Chuck, once brought a ball bat over to rid the house of a raccoon. “Don’t kill it,” Clara told him, “It will get blood all over the carpet.” He got it safely out with no blood spilled.

So that evening we baited the feeder and put it right outside the sliding glass door that goes out to the back deck — just feet from our bed. Around 4 AM we were awakened by a raccoon rolling the feeder all around the porch. I’m sorry to say it was too dark for pictures; however, we did get this picture as evidence the next day.

Mr. Kitty, George, Elmo, Phineas, or whatever his name is, didn’t show up until late Monday morning as we were packing up to leave. His face was swollen on the left side, as if he had been in a cat fight and lost. Change of plans… We found a vet who could see him later that day.

It’s always an adventure to take a kitty in the car. The last two times we’ve tried taking him it has been a smelly Disaster (notice the capital D!). Both times we were good, responsible parents and put him in the kitty carrier. Both times he thought it was his litter box. THIS time we were wary. Michael insisted we not use the carrier and just hold him. It was tough getting a volunteer for this job; memories of the last two times were still fresh. It was pretty quiet while we waited for someone to raise their hand. Michael finally volunteered for the dirty job — he always does!

Michael was armed and prepared though. He covered the seats in blankets and tarps; he had a roll of paper towels, wet wipes, a pillow, three towels, Spray’n’Wash, 409, Windex, latex gloves, and air freshener. All unnecessary — Mr. Kitty was Mr. Perfectly Behaved in Michael’s arms. He was so well-behaved we left him overnight for his neuter job. We’re hoping this will keep him from carousing around and fighting. And prevent any more needless trips to the vet…
Note: Michael objects to the previous paragraph on the grounds that I exaggerated and made him look like a nerd. I confess to stretching the truth for a good story — he didn’t have any 409. (He says he didn’t use any tarps either…)

When we picked the kitty up this afternoon, his face looked like raw hamburger. Everyone there agreed that it was another cat who had won, and they had probably been fighting over a girl. Hah! No more of that; he is now a catstrato! But we wonder if he tangled with a raccoon over food…

We brought him home catastrophe-free, gave him some food, petted him, and we all took a nap.

It was the hood of shame that did him in. The vet told us not to let him lick his wounds, and, of course, he did. So Michael put the hoodie around his neck (I told you he always does the dirty jobs.) Mr. Kitty was appalled. He escaped with it still on his neck and streaked across the road faster than white lightning, a speeding bullet, or a bat out of you know where… with Michael running after. It wasn’t funny.

Michael came home soon with the hoodie and no kitty. We sat glumly around outside in the heat thinking of a lost, sick kitty in the woods and $300 down the tubes.

We alerted Betty to keep a watchful eye out. She was upbeat. “Oh, he’ll come here when he gets hungry,” she said confidently. A few hours later we heard her shouting and waving. Sure enough, he was lying on her top step. She fed him and loved him up, and I brought him back over here to cottage confinement. We promised to throw away the hood of shame, and he has been sleeping comfortably for the last few hours.

Michael looked at him a few minutes ago and said, “Poor little fella. He’s had a rough couple of days.” Yes. So have we.

Addendum — Next day : Kitty woke me up at 4 am staring out the sliding glass doors and growling like a dog! There were two raccoons on the porch, a mama and a young’un. Now we’re even more convinced that is who he tangled with. Glad he was on the inside looking out.