Cop Car's Beat

Catching up

It's been a while since I've posted and I know that enquiring minds really want to know up to what this really old woman has been. Well...if you don't really care, you may be excused to find better use of your time. This is not required reading!

The yard work has been keeping me busy for the spring and early summer, this year. Which is usually the case. What makes it more interesting/harder work this year are the confluence of two happenings: 1) unavailability of quality mulch, and 2) weather that teeters between rainy and hotter/sunnier than hell. I cannot work in the sun or in the heat as I am prone to sun/heat stroke - or - at the very least, heat exhaustion. As I've written at Paying for my sins gives me exercise, my big challenge this year has been to rid us of the sumac that I was foolish enough to plant. It had thrived and, as previously stated, it will be at least a couple of years before I can declare victory. Defeat is unthinkable! Each week, our trash barrel has been completely stuffed with sumac roots that I've dug/pulled up for the past several weeks. The photos, below, show how the largest sumac planted areas look, today. The photos show the same area, but from nearly opposite viewpoints. Note, too, that I have taken out a couple of the small redbud trees and trimmed up the remaining ones.

While working in that area for a few minutes, this morning, I took the opportunity to transplant a small crepe myrtle bush (photo, below). I don't know whether the bush came up from seed (I find hundreds of seedlings all over the place) or from the roots of nearby old crepe myrtle bushes. As was the case for the small crepe myrtle bush that I planted in the same planting bed earlier this year (thought I had posted it but can't find the photo or posting) in either case I don't know the parent bush. It could be a dwarf cerise-colored crepe myrtle, a white full-sized crepe myrtle, or a more reddish pink full-sized crepe myrtle. (For photos of possible parent bushes, please see The past week or so at Casa CC - 7/27/2019.)

Most of my yard-work time during the past week has been spent de-weeding/grassing the planting areas that are farther from the street, but in the same stretch of yard. The next photo shows about one-third of the area in which I've been working. At the left side of the photo, within the area delimited by the steel posts (installed to keep Fred's occasional fence-fall from further damaging my plantings), one can see a multitude of crab grass plants awaiting my attention. I was working in that area, this morning, when it started raining. (It is a hot, muggy day and it is now (5pm) thundering out there.

Did I fail to mention that I showed more agility, this morning, than I would have laid claim to? I heard something crashing down and ran into the middle of our back yard where I knew I would be safe from falling trees/limbs. It was an unnecessary exercise as the branch from a huge walnut tree stayed on Fred's property, this time. He doesn't trim his trees (or anything else in his part of the woods) which leads to such dead falls. It was not a small limb! (I took a photo, but the bright sun made it impossible for me to see the viewfinder and the offending tree isn't in the photo!)

My mini meadow is coming along nicely this year. The next photo shows it in all its glory. Note the milkweeds - the seed pods of which deserved their own photo. I'll post the pod photo on the neighborhood website to see if anyone wants a pod or three.

I bury our green garbage. It enriches the clay of which our soil is comprised and reduces the strain on our city's sewage system. Our city requires that no garbage be placed in the trash bins. That is what garbage disposers are supposed to make unnecessary. Many of the buried treasures send up shoots - mostly from potatoes and melons. They have a tendency to try to escape their confines. The photos, below, show a couple of examples. In the first photo, a melon plant of some sort has shriveled up in the past day or two - maybe from too much water????

 

 

 

 

To round out the posting, here is a closeup of the little things that have been hanging from our small trees over the past week or two. I'm thinking they are army worms like the ones that destroyed much of our fescue lawns last summer. Kevin is supposed to be sending his lawn specialist out to tell me what we need to have done.

Yesterday's visitor

I'm reading that as 21" from nose tip to tail tip.

Paying for my sins gives me exercise

For the past several weeks I've made a concerted effort to get rid of the four sumac plants that I was foolish enough to have planted in Fall 2018. There are three segments of planting bed beside our driveway into which I had planted one sumac each. The fourth sumac was planted just outside our dining room windows, in the foundation planting area. I had had a sumac plant at our previous house, and we had one for the first few years that we lived here - neither of which had been a problem. In fact, each of them eventually died without sending out descendants. Little did I realize how different the experience would be with the four new plants. I soon learned that sumac plants send out a myriad of roots in all directions, interweaving as they go.  It will take a couple of years (at least) for me to totally eradicate the plants/roots since I don't believe in using poisons, but I'm working on it

Fortunately for me, most of the roots are not all that deep but they are so tangled and widespread that they are hard to dig/pull up. The weather that we've been having lately has made conditions nearly ideal for me to work on those roots. As I pull up the roots, by hand, I also turn over the soil. (A great tillage scheme were that what I was going for!) I'll show you the progress that I've made.

The first photo is from last Fall, showing all three of the plants/descendants along the driveway - numbered 1 through 3 (not readable unless enlarged), starting with the sumac closest to the street.

Today, the area that is nearest the street looks like this (below). Until I took the photo, I had thought that there were no above-ground indications of sumac ever having resided there. As the photo clearly shows, a sumac is coming up from a root that remains. (I'll get it out, tomorrow - I'm through working in the mud for the day.) As you might guess, the sumac loves to come up within a bunch of daylily (or the burning bush plants that are to the right, unseen in the photo) where it cannot easily be seen. It took me a long time to root out all of the little plants and the roots that had sent them up.

This morning, I finished up (for the moment) working on Area 2 (below). There are no above-ground indications of sumac presence. I can guarantee that such absence of indications won't last long. It took me but one week to reach this point. I've learned how to pull up plants and roots more efficiently - plus, the mud is soupier.

Having made such great progress in Area 2, I started on Area 3 this morning. Well...technically, I had cut a bunch of the above-ground stuff away, yesterday. I didn't work at it long, today, but worked the above-ground branches back-and-forth to loosen the main plant/roots up for better progress tomorrow.

I've not yet really worked on total removal of the sumac in front of the dining room - only trimmed off a branch that encroached on the sidewalk and a branch that brushed the windows and removed a couple of large roots that shot out from the plant's trunk and turned vertically downward along the foundation - which I found in pulling up multiple smaller sumac plants that were hiding among the non-sumac plants. The photo, below, shows the sumac last fall. I didn't bother to take a photo of it this morning.

BTW: See the bush that I had trimmed back to renew last fall - between the sumac and the small green bush at the bottom right corner of the photo? It gave me my comeuppance the other day when I was pulling up one of the large sumac roots that shot downward along the foundation at the house corner shown to the right in the photo. Over-winter, the trimmed bush died, so a bunch of dead, stubby branches remained. The root suddenly gave way as I was pulling it upward and outward - sitting me down, hard, on those dead, stubby branches. Ouch! I now have a hideous bruise on my left, upper thigh - too large to be covered by one of my hands. Fortunately for me, the dead, stubby branches mostly broke off at ground level rather than skewering me. You can bet that I removed the rest of those branches to prevent future such happenings!

ADDITION OF 6/11/2022 8:30AM

This (photo, below) is what I dug/pulled up this morning to remove that little green sprig that was showing above-ground yesterday. One can tell that I did not get it all. There are three reasons for that: 1) It is too hot for me to be working out there (and it is now in the sun), 2) I am dizzy this morning (blood pressure medication), and 3) It is a never-ending task. I could be removing roots to the end of the earth!

The cart (photo, below) is full of much of the roots/pieces that I had dug/pulled up yesterday. The rest were in the (larger) trash cart that had been emptied by the trash pickup people yesterday. (The green cart is not "one of theirs", so they won't pick it up. I'll transfer from our 50-year-old green cart into their blue cart once the muddy root clumps have had a chance to dry out. Right now, the cart is too heavy for me to lift to make the transfer - even after cutting up and transferring the lighter stuff that is on top.)

Receding waters - mostly for Bogie

After the flood waters had receded, most of the water returning to within the creek's banks, I went out to take some photos - mostly to show Bogie since she had been here so recently. The scene in the first photo is mostly in Adam's (next door upstream) area. (The clearly visible lines in the grass are in our lot.) Adam's lot is at the confluence of a tributary, coming in from the near left of this scene, and the main creek that comes in from the far left. Taking the photo into the sun gave a wierdly-colored cast to the light in this photo.

On the opposite side of our yard are the steps that take one from the upper level of our back yard down to the floor of the woods. You can see the flotsam that has been left - clearly the least flotsam I've ever seen from flooding in our yard. I was amazed that the stack of stored concrete blocks was not visibly budged by the water flow. Possibly, this is due to Fred's immense pile of flotsam, hidden by the greenery to the left of the steps, that is still left from 2016. It may account for a slower flow of water in that immediate area.

The next photo shows the hostas, volunteer walnut trees (foreground), and "markers" in the area in which cats Cop Car and Jellicle are buried. Fortunately, as part of the mowing, I had cleaned out the tall grass from around this cluster just before the rain came.

Likewise, I had taken the wire caging and pulled the tall grass from around the struggling hostas that are a couple of feet away from the above cluster. These are the oldest hostas in our yard. (History: I had never found hostas particularly appealing until Bogie started posting photos of her hostas in her yard. I planted several in an area just downhill from the cluster of ash and cottonwood trees. Over the years, they got lost in the weeds and were mowed over several times. These two stalwart plants survived and, with the cluster of ash and cottonwood trees now having been removed, have a chance at long-term survival - if they have the lifespan.)

Bogie, the following photo shows what remains of the brush pile. Since the brush pile had been (mostly) cleared out by "my" tree guys last fall, what had accumulated since then hadn't had a real chance to settle in. I think that all of the pile on which you piled the windfalls while here was washed away and that what remained was an older part of the pile that the guys hadn't had time to haul away. In my next posting, you'll see the beginnings of my new pile - cherry tree limbs. It took a few more hours for the trapped water in this photo to completely drain away.

 

The North Star dwarf cherry tree & other assorted photos

The first photo shows our little North Star dwarf cherry tree as it appeared on 4/21/2022 - sickly. It had been a bountiful producer through the 2021 season but had been showing signs of distress for two or three years. It clearly needed to be removed.

Last year, I had ordered (and paid for) a new cherry tree (no North Stars available) and planting. However, the rainy season vetoed that project and we have no replacement tree.

Yesterday, as a fillip to my yard work, I sawed the branches off of the tree. Having the branches removed will give me more room to conveniently work around the tree trunk. There are saplings growing around its base and I intend to see if they are viable. If I can't buy another tree, perhaps I can grow one. I don't know if the saplings are actually suckers off of the roots of the old tree or sprouts from the numerous mummified cherries that have dropped in the area over the years. As I see it, even if I don't harvest cherries from the new trees, it will be an interesting experiment. (One of the sapplings is just to the left of the de-branched trunk.)

Within the next several months, I'll have the tree guys remove the cherry tree trunk when I have them out to remove the rather large gingko tree from in front of the house. The gingko has grown to be too large (and I had had it planted too near the house, thinking it would be a slow-growing tree) for my possible wildfire abatement plan.

Below, see the total 2022 harvest. Well...I had eaten the cherry that looked the best.

Just after our family's get-together, a couple of hummingbird feeders were delivered from Duncraft. It had caught my attention because its capacity was a mere 3.5 ounces. This seemed thrifty since, in general, our old hummingbird feeders require a fill of about 6 or 8 ounces (capacity is more like 12 ounces), most of which is never consumed. I tried out one of the new feeders on our local hummingbirds. Immediately upon my returning to the house from hanging the feeder, a male ruby-throated hummingbird gave it a try. For the next week, as far as I could tell, that was the only visit that the new feeder inspired. I went back to one of our old feeders, one of which is the green glass feeder at the right in the photo, below.

But, I reasoned, the new feeder might draw orioles if I removed the top and filled the cup with fruit or jelly. I cut up some grapes for it. I didn't see any "takers" the first day, and we had rain overnight. I've kept the feeder out there, despite more rain's having visited us. So far, the only "taker" has been the butterfly shown in the photo, below. It stayed all day.

We have a lot of Stella d'Oro plants, and they are just starting their annual show. The metal posts on the ground had just been removed from marking a small redbud tree and staking two small mulberry trees at the edge of the woods. I placed them there to allow rain to clean them off for me. (Am I lazy or what?!) It is now raining and I have great hopes that those metal posts (and the tools that I leaned against the house when I finished my struggle to remove one of the sumac root balls yesterday morning) will be clean. It's been so muddy for my work at removing my ill-considered sumacs that I am pooped by the time I come in. I don't need the extra work of cleaning up my tools, as I should do.

Last photo for the posting: My red-twigged dogwood bush. Bogie and I discussed it while she was here. Like me, she would not have identified it as a dogwood bush had she not been informed. The bush had experienced significant die-back during the winter. It looks good, though, since I removed the dead branches a few weeks ago.

An aside on gardening tools

In order to make the photo of our dogwood bush, indeed, the last photo in my previous posting (above), I'm adding an "unintended" post with an aside on gardening tools. I wrote that I had placed gardening tools leaning against the house in order to allow the expected rain to clean them overnight. I just went out to take photos. The first photo shows those two tools: 1) a small spade of some sort that I cannot identify (having a really small blade, it belonged to Hunky Husband's mother, a tiny woman, who gave me a lot of her gardening tools when she and HH's dad moved into an apartment) and 2) my edger tool (intended for edging along walkways, drives, curbing, but which found use yesterday in prying the root clump out of the mud.)

While I was out taking the above photo, I thought that I should photograph a tool that I had been unable to find while Bogie was here trying to fluff up the old mulch before applying new mulch at the side of the house. I couldn't find it because it was hanging on the same hanger and hidden by the edging tool in the above photo. I don't recall what this tool is called, but the forked side of it is great for fluffing up old mulch.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All I had been able to find for her use was the potato hook that we had purchased in Seattle (1965) to hook rocks out of the lawn bed. (Oh! Now I must go photograph the potato hook!) Potato Hook (AKA weird rake) is shown, below.

We've yet to see the end....

By 3am, yesterday, the creek was up at the edge of the "good grass" lawn area of our back yard. Since the water can rise faster than I can cope, I immediately threw a bunch of stuff into my car's trunk, doffed my nightgown in favor of pants and shirt, and awoke Hunky Husband so that he could do the same. Pleasantly surprising me, HH grasped my message immediately and started throwing his stuff together. I no longer recall the blog friend or family member who came up with the reminder a few weeks ago, but they should be credited with my thinking to include HH's and my prescription medications. By 3:30am, we were ready for hasty departure should the water reach the house.

We each tried to grab a nap, but I knew that HH would neither hear if we had another spate of heavy rain nor hear a struggling sump pump, so I never did drop off. It wasn't until about 9am that it became obvious that the water had stopped advancing and had started to recede. At that point, I took a few photos. It was a struggle for me since I hadn't used the camera in my iPhone, before, and my camera was packed in the trunk of my car. Below are a few of the iPhone photos that I've been able to transfer as JPEG files. The biggest problem I had was that I had taken only a couple of still photos. Most of my output was video, which I then had to transform into stills. (I'm not good at this!)

The first photo shows the section of our yard (on the near side of the fence and its extension) that is actually the closest to a creek bank. The creek rather wraps around our back lot's boundary, our lot extending 300 feet from the street on the left (southeast) side and 200 feet from the street on the right (southwest) side.

The next photo is just to the left of the above photo. The water had come just a bit further inland - surrounding the right-most small tree in the foreground.

As can be gathered from the lines in the mowed grass of the photo, below, this photo is looking nearly straight out from the back sliding glass door.

The next photo shows the part of our lot that is farthest out, approached by the normal bounds of the creek. At its maximum encroachment, the water came nearly to the post that supports the bluebird nesting box (just to the right of the far end of the fence).

Did we immediately unpack my car and go to bed? No. We did not. We are forecasted to have rain during five of the next six days and during 8 of the next 10 days. We haven't experienced as much flooding (so far) as in the past, but the ground is absolutely soaked and there is much rain for us yet to get through. We did get a good night's sleep last night, my having achieved at least eight hours' worth.

Note: HH just came in from his first walk in several weeks. He had made three or four false starts (I believe that each time, he had forgotten how to operate his "running watch with GPS" and had to return to refresh his memory by reading his notes on its operation.) When he finally succeeded, he walked his "usual" two miles (excluding the 1/3 mile warmup and 1/3 mile cooldown) and averaged just over 11 minutes per mile for the two miles. He says that his heart is alright. Good for him. I would be happy to see him get back into his walking/running exercise groove.

Oh, what fun

Average annual precipitation for the Wichita area is 34.31", according to the National Weather Service.  We fell far below that average during the last several months of 2021 and the first few months of 2022. We are making up for it. So far, this month (May), we have received 7.6" of rain, according to our rain gage - although, one night the wind blew the gage over, so we may be missing a bit. Tonight (May 31), we've hit the jackpot. We have received two spates of heavy rain. I don't know how much rain has accumulated in our rain gage, but I do know that when I was preparing to retire for the night - just before toddling off to our bedroom - I realized that the sump pump had been activated for a long while, perhaps a minute or two. That is not good!

Anytime we receive more than 0.5" of rain, I expect our sump pump system (a main pump powered by house wiring and an auxiliary pump powered by a battery) to activate. Our sump hole, in our mechanical systems "room", has three 3- or 4-inch inlets from the tiling that is laid along our foundation (at the bottom?) It is always the same inlet that supplies the majority, if not all, of the water that is routed to the sump. From observation and experimentation, I know that that particular inlet services the foundation to one side of our front porch - a run of about 35'. Tonight, when I went downstairs to check out the sump pump, I found that one inlet to be releasing a torrent of water into the sump, much like a firehose. It was obvious that the input rate was higher than the output rate of the pump. The poor pump was losing ground. I gathered a couple of small saucepans from the kitchen and a couple of 3-gallon plastic buckets from the laundry room that is next door to the mechanical systems room and set to work baling. Almost immediately, the depth of water in the sump reached the level at which the auxiliary pump activated. Even with both pumps working, they would have lost ground without intervention.

Our Working Space at the Sump Pump Installation

Anyone familiar with sump pump systems knows that an alarm starts screeching when the auxiliary pump kicks in. It is shrill! Hunky Husband and I donned the earmuffs that we wear to protect our hearing when using noisy equipment in the yard (mowers/string trimmers/hedge trimmers/blowers) and set to work.

Sump Pump System Installation Layout

For the first 30 minutes, I baled (mostly with the 1-quart saucepan, its being difficult to dodge all of the inlet ducts, control lines, and such) while HH carried the filled buckets to the laundry sink for disposal of the water. I found it more convenient to catch the water as it spewed from the inlet duct than to try to dip water. At the 30-minute point, we traded off. Since HH found it best (for him) to kneel on his knees instead of doing as I had done (sit on my butt on a thick folding of drop cloth), that didn't last long - especially since most of his height is from his waist up. It was really hard on him. Worse, when he tried to stand, he had difficulty. He tried grabbing onto an exposed stud with one hand and onto the main vertical sewer line with his other - to no avail. I was able to get him to scoot over to the carpeted hallway outside the mechanical systems room which allowed us room for me to brace my feet and help pull him up to his feet - wobbly, but upright. We went back to his toting and my baling. Within another 15 or 20 minutes, the water inflow had slowed just enough to allow me and the auxiliary pump to turn the tide. Eventually, the main pump shut off. I was amazed that it hadn't overheated with its having been continuously activated for so long. Since then, the main pump has done its usual thing of activating for several seconds and shutting off for a minute or two, depending upon rain conditions. This experience makes me happy that we installed a new sump pump system in January 2020, as posted.

P.S. I just went out to check our rain gage: 3.92", for a total of 15.32" in May. While out, I could hear that the creek is out of its near bank, just downstream of us. I'm just wondering if this will be the rain that puts us to the point where water reaches our house. We are in uncharted territory.

Having to do with Irises

In It's Iris time! I posted a few photos of irises in their early stages of bloom, including the first photo of that series which shows the flower bed to be addressed, below. In order to more clearly show the "before" condition I include a "before" photo from May of 2020, the first photo below. Please note the iris blossom stalks that are prostrate across the grass. This is a particular problem when Hunky Husband does the mowing because he is not comfortable mowing over the flowers, but goes around them. Because this is an annual happening and because the irises have been multiplying over the several years since I transplanted starts from the planting bed next to the driveway, I decided to take out at least the majority of the plants. This presented a problem because all sorts of utility wires/cables/lines run through that area. I cannot dig there.

Since Bogie and Elder Brother left town the other day, we have received over three inches of rain. Yay! I did nothing while it was rainy, cold, and windy but got out in the yard to work this morning - in the 50s, sunny, with a light breeze. I pulled up all of the subject iris plants (see photo, below), which was easy work due to the soggy condition of the soil. In the photo, the pulled plants are stacked at the far end of the basement escape window, awaiting my deciding what to do with them. The irises that are left standing at the near end are the short, root beer-colored, early bloomers which I plan to leave. They, BTW, are marginally outside the area through which the wires/cables/lines run.

Please note the tidy placement of mulch in the area from the near end of the basement escape window to the camera. That is some of the work that Bogie did for me while she was here. She prepared the bed and spread at least six 3-cubic-foot bags of mulch. I loved it! Thank you, Bogie. (Now I know how my own mother felt when I visited her and volunteered labor!)

The only flowers that were in full bloom while family were gathered were the roses that I planted for Hunky Husband. They were beautiful and, as Bogie can attest, odiferous. Did I think to take a photo? Of course not! While photographing the iris bed, this morning, I took a photo of the rose bed. The poor things had been whipped by the wind and rain, but most of the colors are showing. Only the beautiful red Mr Lincoln is not showing color. It had produced but one blossom and it was torn to pieces by the elements.

At the right edge of the photo can be seen one of the two bags of mulch that we stowed there. It should be just enough to cover the area from which the irises have been removed - once I rake the tree and iris leaves from the area. I'm hoping that our landscape friends have been able to replenish their supply of mulch. Lowe's hasn't had the right kind of mulch, at all, this spring and TenderCare has had a hard time getting their supplies delivered. Cross your fingers for me, Bogie.

Mystery visitor - pretty

This little moth caught my attention as I was putting my tools away following my nearly-two-hour session at weeding, this morning. The moth is resting on sedum plants. I note that I didn't bother placing the measuring stick right-side-up, but trust one may read the numbers enough to deduce that the moth is, indeed, small.

The moth reminds me of a Mother's Day card from Bogie that is a bouquet of butterflies. The card involved a lot of intricate cutting and planning ahead (something I frequently fail to do!) since it folds flat for shipment through the mailes. 

In addition, we were honored with a visit from Dudette and WichiDude, yesterday, who hand-delivered a couple of sweet Mother's Day cards (one from daughter, the other from granddaughter). They brought barbeque beef brisket for our dining pleasure and took away a small (but heavy) box of books that I had culled from our collection. All-in-all, a great day for Hunky Husband and me!