Inside the Screen

Edward and I were just finishing up a board game this afternoon when I looked out the sliding glass door onto the porch.  Earlier in the game, I had looked out to see one of our squirrels climbing along the outside of the screen.  They do that every once and a while.  We usually chase them off with a spray bottle and they run to the nearest tree, then turn around and scold us.  

  The squirrel was still out there on the screen, but something was different.  "There a squirrel on the screen again", I started to say, then it dawned on me.  "He's on the inside!"  Edward turned and looked.  "Yeah, he is."  Luckily for the squirrel, the girls were inside enjoying a sleepy afternoon.  Edward and I went out and I propped the porch door open with a mat.  Then we proceeded to herd the squirrel toward the open door.  

  Needless to say, that was not a happy squirrel.  He had already knocked into some of the glass I have out there.  He scrambled along the top of the screen scolding as if we were a cat he needed to warn his friends about.  I chased him down the screen and toward the open door.  Great.  Until he decided that being as far away from the floor was the best thing and started to cross the screen over the door and move towards the house.  Edward moved to cut him off and then with one last squeal, scrambled down the door frame, jumped to the floor and dashed out the door.  He didn't look back until he was safely up the nearest pine tree.  

  A few years back we had noticed a large hole in one panel of our porch screen.  The screening is old and brittle we figure the lawn service had put a stick through it.   It measured about 3 x 4 inches.  We had patched the hole as best we could, we thought, mostly to keep lizards and mosquitoes out, and to keep overly curious cats in.  That patch had worked fine until today.

  After the squirrel was out, we looked at the patch.  It had been pushed in, and the hole torn even larger.  So this time I got out an upholstery needle, some black carpet thread and sat dow to repair the screen as best I could.  It took 20-30 minutes to cross stitch the hole and secondary tear closed then glue more screening over the seams to complete the patch, the whole time serenaded by the squirrel, who still felt it necessary to warn others of our presence.

  So once again I think we're covered for lizards, bugs and curious cats.  My only concern is that squirrel. They're smart little buggers. If he decides he wants onto the porch again, he might re-test the patch. That would not be a good thing.  Because if he gets in while the cats are out, that screen will not support one of them climbing up it after a squirrel, nor do I want to try to separate said squirrel from an excited cat if one of them were lucky enough to catch him, never mind the general destruction out there during the chase.    

$20 Dollars

  Edward and I had just a long discussion about whether or not to put any more minutes on the TracFone that we had gotten his father in May and then took when he passed away at the end of that month.  Edward doesn't use it, ever.  OK, except at DragonCon for texting me and our other friends. We decided to go ahead and put another $20 worth of minutes on it, and decide again in Jan (when the new set of minutes would/will) expire.

  We went out to Sweetbay and picked up a few other things we can only get there, plus the minutes, and headed home.  As I was pulling away from the stop sign on 119th, some movement caught my eye to the right and I saw the elderly woman who lives in the house next to the stop sign fall.  I stopped short.  Edward is like, what?  "She just fell" and I pointed.  I rolled down the window and Edward called out, are you OK. 

 "I don't think I can get up".  

  I put the car in reverse, backed up, then pull into her driveway.  We both got out and as we walked up. I asked if she was hurt?  "I don't think so, I don't know until I get up."  So we helped her up, and yes, she was OK.

  Her name is Ruth, and she's lived there for 40 yrs.  We used to see her husband, and remembered that he used an electric chair.  We hadn't seen him in 10 years, as that was when he passed away.   We do see her son, and I'd thought he lived there now.  I guess he just visits.

  Since her front door faced west, she would have been sitting there for a long time, or at least until the gentleman across the street noticed her.  She said he keeps an eye out for her, but today he was probably watching football.  Thing is, it's September, in Florida.  Did I say her porch faced west?  She could have been out there a while and it was pretty hot on that porch, even for just the few minutes we were standing there.  

  "God must be watching out for me" she said, "thank you."  I guess so.  I'm really glad I saw her fall and we were able to help.  Even more so she was OK.  

  I'm also glad we decided to get the phone minutes, because that was the driver for us going out to Sweetbay in the first place.  And that is going to turn out to be the best and most worthwhile $20 we've spent in a long time.

  Nothing beats being in the right place at right time.

End of the Ficus, Part III

  Looking back through all the pictures of the house that I've taken, I realized that I never got a picture of the ficus in all its full sized glory, except as a bare-branched shadow of its former self after the first freeze.  I have pictures of the back yard, where you can see the ficus, but none do it justice.  It just soared over the yard.  The canopy was so thick, we had trouble growing grass beneath it.  We even selected plants that required shade to plant against the porch because they received no direct sun.  

  Teresa started the second day about the same time as the first.  Unlike the first day, the second day was clear and sunny.  And while there was the barest of hints that summer was thinking about ending, it was going to be brutally hot before they were finished.  The majority of the shade in the back yard used come from the ficus, and that was still lying on the ground waiting to be hauled away.  

 This time she brought help, muscle in the form of a 24-year old kid named Sean.  He was bright, intelligent and really hard working.  He went right to work without being told what to do, while Teresa went back to work trying to figure out how to bring down the last two limbs.  The problem was they were too weak to bear any weight.  She couldn't safely put up her ladder to cut the limb in half and bring it down in pieces.   So they decided to pull them down.

  Ficus wood, when dry, is not very heavy, or very strong.   They looped a line over the limb and picked a direction. The lightest of tugs on the line made the brach wobble and dance. Then they pulled, hard.  I think that was when my heart stopped.  Edward caught his breath. There was nothing to do but watch.

  The limb snapped and started toward the house... and missed by no more then six inches!  It clipped the bougainvillea under the back window, scraping the bark, but doing no real damage to the bush.  That's how I know it was that close.  I think the house gods were looking out for us, both Sunday and Wednesday.  I'm thankful.  Once again, the house escaped damage.  The limb that posed the most danger to the house was down.  

  One more to go.  This limb leaned over the chainlink fence.  They had to do the same thing, pull it down, but at least it was being pulled away from the house, this time.  They looped the rope over the last limb, tightened it up and pulled from the park side of the fence.  It snapped, sooner then expected.  And while I only saw it from the corner of my eye, there was an "oh, s**t" moment as Sean turned an ran from the oncoming branch.  It bounced off the fence and shattered into five or more pieces. 

  And that was it.  The threat to the house was over.  The last of the tall limbs were down.  The rest was clean up.

  Teresa took the stump down in pieces.  The first cut revealed the true nature of the ficus.  That it was, in fact, many trees all grown together.  When I planted it, it had been a house plant with many tiny saplings all in one pot.  Over the years they had grown into one massive trunk.  The freezes, it turned out, had killed 90% of those trunks, leaving only a thin sheath of live wood that wrapped just under half way around the base.  When it fell, that living wood flexed but didn't break.  In the wild, Edward and I figure it would have re-rooted, and started over, growing from where it had come to rest.   Before Teresa started cutting it up, the leaves had not even started to wilt.  It was still alive at that point, and that makes me sad.

    It took another hour to load the wood from the ficus onto the trailer they'd brought.  I saved a few logs, some long dead and dry, one from the living wood.  I'll give them time to fully cure.  Maybe one day I'll make something out of them, like the box I made from from Sandy's log.  I'd like to do that.  It will be something to remind me of that once glorious tree.  

    On that low, lonely stump in the back yard, the sap is still running from the live wood.  We're not going to get the stump ground, not yet anyway.  There is a small chance it will put out a shoot, and some part of it will survive.  A small chance that we'll get some part of our ficus back.  Maybe this time, we'll manage it better, and not let it get so big.

  End of the Ficus, Part I

End of the Ficus, Part II

  End of the Ficus, Part III

End of the Ficus, Part I

  When we bought the house, we planted a number of trees and, in one case, two house plants, in the yard.  Those houseplants were ficus trees.  A tropical plant better suited for indoors, even in central Florida, where occasional freezes can kill them.  So when we had a hard freeze in February a few years after we moved in, one of the ficus survived, the other didn't.

  The one that did survive grew into a monster.  It was more than 20 feet high, and more than 30 feet in spread of its canopy.  It hung over the porch as well as the ditch and provided a deep, cool shade for the back of the house.  It had a lovely green canopy and long stringers that hung below the trucks.  I loved that tree.

  Three winters ago we had another hard freeze.  There was nothing we could do but watch.  The ficus was simply too big to protect.  In the days following the freeze it dropped all it's leaves.  It wasn't until the next May that we saw signs of life, with green shoots poking out from the trunk.  We called a tree service and had it trimmed back, hopeful that it would survive.  Chances looked good at that point that it could recover.  

  Two winters ago, we had another hard freeze.  All the new growth from the previous summer was gone.  It proved to be too much.  Only a small portion of the tree survived this time.  As spring warmed to summer, new leaves appeared, but only on the side towards the house.  The rest of the tree was dead.

  Two woodpeckers took up residence in the dead trunks.  One, a red-bellied woodpecker, never did find a mate to share his work.  A second, a downy, carved a hole and raised at least one chick.  

  This summer has been the wettest ever recorded in Florida.  Two tropical storms dumped 9 inches of rain more then the average. When Tropical Storm Debby hung out for three days, one of the dead limbs came down, water logged and heavy.  It fell towards the park, causing no damage.  Tropical Storm, soon to become Hurricane, Isaac also dumped a large amount of rain on the area.  All that dry and rotting wood no doubt soaked it all in.

 That must have finally been too much for the ficus.  As we were starting dinner on Sunday, we both heard and saw it land.  All of the living wood from the tree crashed into the back yard leaving only the dead wood standing.  Incredibly, it fell in the only place if could have fallen in the yard and not done any damage.  It missed the porch by three feet, missed the birdbath by two.  It missed the guy-wires for the power pole in the back yard.  It even missed Jasmine's statue.  It did land on the juniper bush, but I think that will survive.

  We had a tree company out the next day and she gave us a reasonable estimate.  She'll take the whole thing down, but not grind the stump.  Most of the dead roots are already rotted and soft.  It won't take Mother Nature long to claim back the spot.  We'll have to decide if we want to put anything in it's place.   We're going to get a lot more sun on the porch and through the sliding glass.  It would be nice to have a little shade back there.  We'll see.

  And in the mean time, we can watch the sky and the thunderstorm and the rain again.  That's something we haven't been able to do since the ficus grew large enough to shade the house.  And who knows, if there is still some life left in the stump perhaps it will send out new shoots.  Perhaps, like a phoenix it will grow from its own "ashes", consume it's old stump and rise again.  Perhaps we'll see shade from it again.  And if not, it was meant to be.  Mother Nature takes care of her own.  She gave us a magnificent tree, and in the end brought her down safely.  For that, I will be forever thankful.  

End of the Ficus, Part II

Storm Watch...

Thunderheads after Hurricane Ike, 

September 15, 2008

  Tropical Storm Isaac.  He won't be so for long.  If the models are right, he'll leave his tour of the northern Cuban coastline, head out into the Gulf and put on a little "weight", in the form of higher winds.  

  By the time he reaches a level latitude with Tampa, he'll be a strong Category 1, heading north.  I am glad he will be offshore.  But it brings back memories of another storm we watched approach along a similar track.  

  Hurricane Charlie.  

  In 2004, we watched Hurricane Charlie approach the bay area.  He crossed Cuba as a category 1 storm and was predicted to run straight north into Tampa Bay.  While a Category 1 storm is nothing to take lightly, it was not too concerning for us.  In the day before he crossed into the Gulf, we made our preparations.  He was not predicted to get much stronger.  We made ice, put away the outside items and covered the windows in a hurricane film that was supposed to keep the windows from breaking completely out if something struck them.  

  We got up on the morning of Aug 13th confident we were ready.  Little did we know what mother nature had in store for us and Charlie that day.

  Charlie turned out to be an unpredictable storm.  What's more, he exhibited a behavior that scientists at the National Hurricane Center still struggle to explain.  Explosive intensification.  In 48 hours Charlie, a weak Category 1, became a monstrous Category 4 headed straight for Tampa.  We were anything but prepared for what was headed our way.  In the end it was only that same unpredictable nature of Charlie that save our skins when he took a turn to the right and made landfall well south of us.  He made landfall within the predicted zone of impact, the infamous cone of uncertainty.  He is the poster child for why you should not focus on the center line and prepare no matter where you are in the cone.   I would expand that to areas near the cone as well.  Models aren't perfect. 

  So now as we sit, watching Isaac work his way though the Caribbean, and across Cuba, my mind wanders back to Charlie.  In hindsight, we were woefully unprepared for what Charlie would have brought to our area.  Our paltry preparations would have not stood much of a chance again the winds Charlie brought ashore.  We got lucky.  

  All the models predict Isaac will continue on his path north.  We are barely out of the track's cone.  But that doesn't mean I'll let my guard down.  I won't relax until he's at least even with Tampa on his trip north.  And even then the story is not over.  Isaac is taking aim on Atlanta, and DragonCon, where we'll spend Labor Day weekend. 

 It seems that we are destined to be under Isaac's influence, not once but twice.    

Happiness is...

  A warm friend to sleep on.