For the Bird$

I bought some birdfeed.  Just some peanuts and a packet of suet.  This cost me $12.50.  A lot of money considering my current budget.

But while gardening yesterday I noticed a male cardinal hopping around my empty feeders.  And then it perched on the edge of the roof for several minutes, tilting it’s head around as if to say, “Seriously?  There’s nothing?  C’mon, seriously?”   It had been weeks since I had any feed to put out.  There’s been news about people not being able to afford to feed their pets since the economic downturn, but nothing about whether people can afford to fill their birdfeeders.

At least the hummingbirds won’t go hungry.  Nector can be made cheaply.  I saw my first one this evening.

“There’s bricks in dem dar piles!”

In total, I ended up making five trips to the demolition site for bricks this weekend.  I delivered a second carload to the Garden Station.  I wish I had a pickup truck.  There was a couple filling raised beds who had a SUV.  For a moment I thought about mentioning it to them.

I dunno.  I thought more people would be crawling all over the site salvaging brick.  There were a couple people scavenging for whatever metal they could find and pile onto their old pickup trucks.  Aluminum gutters, drain pipes, amd iron tubs—including the one I had been offered days ago.

It wasn’t until late in the afternoon someone from the McPherson Town district came over.  There had been an article in the paper about the neighborhood garden the residents had started this year.  Those are the people I thought would be hauling loads of brick away for pathways.

“Here for the free paving material?” I said to the woman getting out of her shiny, red compact car.”  I held two bricks up over my head. 

But she just said no.  And then a couple in a shiny, black SUV came by and they all three went off together to inspect the other properties on site.  I thought it seemed very standoffish.  But then I thought about how I was dressed: sweats, torn t-shirt, painter’s hat and badly in need of a haircut.  Not to mention dirty from crawling around piles of rubble and carrying bricks.
 
I imagine them thinking I was some sort of panhandler or homeless person, more than an environmentally conscientious gardener.  (“Don’t make eye contact, Margaret.  He’ll start asking for change.  Make sure you locked the car!”)

Or maybe I looked like some crazy old prospector type from the movies, loading up my Elantra like a burro.  (“Git away from my bricks.  I claimed ‘em!  This here brick lode’s all mine!  Now git!”)

Oh well.  I also ended up finding a couple good-as-brand-new downspouts, a three foot segment of limestone that I’ll use as a mini-pillar to mark the beginning of my garden path and a portion of rusted wire fencing that I’ll use as a trellis for my clematis.

Don’t Ignore the Free Stuff

I stayed up longer than I thought I would and woke up after eleven, which seems to be where my body’s alarm clock is stuck nowadays.  And because I fell asleep on the floor my body was stiff, and for awhile I walked around the house like an arthritic zombie.
Later, I drove to the demolition site and loaded up three carloads of brick.  The demo crew had made quick work of leveling two houses.  All the debris and brick should be cleared and gone by next weekend.

A few cars passed by.  No one stopped to get anything though.  I took one carload to the Garden Station public garden nearby.  I hope someone from there comes by with a truck and salvages some of the available materials.  My little Elantra alone isn’t going to do it. 

Some guys were rehabbing a nearby apartment across from the site, and I nabbed an old iron sink they had left at the curb.   Don’t know if I’ll make a birdbath or a sedum container out of it.  I’ve thought about repaving some of my stone paths with the salvaged bricks.  I can’t rescue everything though.  Or expect everyone to share my interest and concerns about recycling.

I think of the thousand or so buildings that will be demolished around town in the next eighteen months.  Some are supposed to be deconstructed and the materials salvaged.  But how many, and what about the rest?  I’d like to think there are industrious people in town that will find creative uses for all this free, useable stuff that will be otherwise be shoved into a landfill.

Demolish and Salvage

Demolition has started on the site of the new elementary school across the river from downtown Dayton.

Can you see all the free garden path paving materials that I see?  I was offered an old cast iron bathtub that could’ve been used for a bog garden, but I didn’t have a way to haul it back home.  Darn it.

Don’t think that I’m not thinking of a way though.  Maybe I can put wagon wheels under it and push it all the way back to my house.

Porch Loitering

I was on the computer when I heard voices.  It sounded like arguing, but I thought it was the television in the next room.  But then I heard “n-word this” and “n-word that”, and I thought that can’t be MSNBC.

So I go to the front door and sitting on the porch ledge are these two guys.  As soon as I opened my door to ask why they were on my porch immediately they’re all, “Oh, sorry man.  I didn’t know anybody lived here.”

“Who do you think takes care of all these plants?” I said, gesturing towards the front yard.  Specifically, the 30 feet of yard that seperates the sidewalk from my porch.

It was raining, but they had umbrellas.  Why they chose to hang out on my porch, I don’t understand.  I thought I smelled pot.  Maybe they were high and showed up at the wrong address.  Or I just live in a crummy neighborhood.

A Poem: Where Am I?

How I got here I don’t know

I was over there awhile ago

I’m going over there

But there is where?

And when I’ve got to where I’m going

No sign of there is showing

I have no other place I fear

All I’ve gotten now is here.

Snow shoveling and alpha male-ing.

The house was freezing and once again I hibernated, this time until two in the afternoon. (Actually one o’clock, but it’s DST now.)  Yeah, I’m going to be soooo ready for class tomorrow morning.  The surface temperature of the house must be drawing heat from the air because it felt like an icebox inside, but it felt warmer when I went outside to shovel the driveway.

While I was shoveling a car cut through the parking lot across the street, but she misjudged the slight snowbank in front of the exit and got stuck.  I came to her aid and shoveled out the passenger side and then started on the driver side, pushed from the back, but with no luck.

I started to shovel out more of the driver side again, but when I paused a guy came up and said, “Here, let me see the shovel.”  He dug farther underneath the car and made quick work of it too.  It turned out that the front driver side wheel was elevated and he began instructing the woman which way she should turn the steering wheel and asked the kid he was with to help him push the car.

Uh, hello, I’m standing here!  Me, the first guy on the scene with the shovel! 

The kid didn’t want to push.  He was only nine or ten.  He was content just to stand by and hold my shovel; but the guy told him to help push.  I told the kid he could just drop my shovel off to the side.  For some reason it felt good to give someone some instruction, even if it was just a casual suggestion. 

It took a few pushes but soon the car was over the hump and back on the street.  The guy and the kid immediately ran across the street in her direction.  Maybe thinking she might possibly stop and tip them, but she didn’t.  I went back to shoveling my driveway.

I don’t know why the situation irked me, but it did.  And also I’m a little irked that I can get so irked.  I wasn’t trying to impress the woman or planned to ask her for her phone number.  I was just being a good samaritan, but then again maybe I was expecting to be the sole samaritan, the alpha samaritan.

Yeah, he dug the car out sooner.  But it was my shovel.   And he needed my help pushing the car. 

So nyahh!