Tag: firewood

The Madness of Mowing

~ johnbrandall

Yes, it is all going to be cut. But it doesn't all need to be, it shouldn't all be cut at once.

Divide a plot of grass, whether it be a yard, a lawn, a property, a park, a field into three pieces. Cut one-third of it every week such that every blade of grass is cut every three weeks. In the meantime, two parts rest, regenerate, fill in, save the pollinators, waft gently in the breeze, retain rain or dew that might otherwise more easily run or burn away.

Make lanes. Use these paths as ways to get into, alongside what might have gotten too long. Shoot the clippings onto the parts that were cut a week or two before; there's room for them there, the mower will always be able to breathe...


An account of two trips to Farm, late summer 2023...

Babler State Park, April 2018

~ johnbrandall

But Meg said, but Greg said.  Camp host reading Stephen King.  Spooky.  The Cardinals lost, the Nationals lost.  Padres at Rockies now, from Coors.  There was a brawl in this game.  Rox lead 5-0.

I turn down the sound of a commercial.  It felt especially out of place here.  In Denver you go to Applejack Wine & Spirits.  In Chicago it’s Binny’s Beverage Depot.  Heck, these days you don’t even have to go to the Binny’s store, they’ll bring it right to your door.  Joe Maddon told me that.

I went to Binny’s a couple of times when I lived a summer in Chicago.  That was back when beer was blowing up, craft beer—or microbrews, as they were then known.  I heard the Tampa Rays announcer yesterday talking about how he used to live in Chicago.  He was doing a Rays game against the White Sox.  It struck me that a lot of people have once lived in Chicago, midwesterners at least.  My brother and sister both live there now.  

I’ve only ever once been to New York City.  The Big Apple was the setting for a book I just read.  It made me want to visit again; or, it made me wish I’d been born there, had a chance to spend more than a few days of my life there.  I don’t think I could move to NYC now.  Not as a dog owner.  Not even as a married man.  I would’ve had to have lived there young.  If I were living in NYC I’d have to be able to float around.  I could have a job but no attachments outside of that.  Otherwise I think the City would crush me, wring me out, drive me mad.


Camping a night in Babler Park five years ago...

Goes Away

~ johnbrandall

Where one leak seemed fixed, another springs up.  Well, isn’t that the way it goes?  Stained wood, stained mattress.  Damp kitchen, scary room.

Stove going.  I was in the dirty attic.  Three-legged chairs, canceled checks, dauber nests by the hundred.  I go up there because the attic is my place to intercept the rain that finds its way through the farmhouse’s old, fallible roof.  Like me, the rain keeps returning, keeps coming back to this remote piece of cattle country in the middle of the state.  

A mist rises from the pasture, hangs there like a cloud.  Above, the sky is clear.  There is, thank God, no wind.  It is still.  I can hear nothing but the nothing that is, the nothing that once will be everything.  If you would be so kind as to scatter my ashes here.  If you would allow me to play the part of the sandstone, to let the water through.

The mice are back.  Two traps, old cheese, picked clean.  Leave the droppings where they lay.  Wise rodents.  Re-bait, try again...


A short missive from Farm, from late last year...

To the Dogs

~ johnbrandall ~ 1 Comment

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A couple of dogs were here yesterday when I arrived, and they have stuck around.  

I have been giving them food, so I can’t be too surprised that they have stayed.  I had an old can of soft food stashed away on the upper shelf of the corner kitchen cabinet.  It didn’t look too bad; they ate it.  They’ve also gotten a few of the heart-shaped Newman’s-brand treats, which are basically doggie biscuits.  And I’ve given them some kibble I had tucked away in a mouse-proof bucket back in the main bedroom here at Farm, dateline Traderight, MO.

I’ll give them what food I have, for as long as they are here, and then I’ll restock with some fresh food when I return.  Whether the new inventory will be for these two on some later visit or for my own dog Hugo or for some other rando dogs that might appear somewhere down the road, who knows?

They slept out front last night.  They growled and barked a few times.  Somewhere around one or two in the morning they woke me with barking and I had to pee anyway so I went outside.  Even before I stepped out the front door I could smell something dank and rich and garlicky, a very deep and funky body odor let loose into the wild.  Skunk.  There was no doubt about it.  Like a bomb had been released...


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Returning A Star

~ johnbrandall

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The next morning the coals were there, buried but lurid, glowing like rare orange gems.  Across the distance of a cold night they were still hot despite being abandoned, despite being covered by a heap of fine grey ash as the prior day's fire faded in upon itself.  I walked around looking for pieces to add to the fire, to bring it back. I was out at Farm again, waking up chilled from a night in the unheated farmhouse. I was in search of fresh fuel, the arms and legs of trees, fodder for the next go-round.  Honey locust, sycamore, cedar. Walnut, hickory, oak. Just-fallen twigs, young limbs, old broken trunks half-rotted away, wet with the promptly melted snow of a Missouri winter.  On top of coals prevailing through the wind and dark of night any wood will do...


Click here to continue with fire, bluebirds, osage orange, and the sun...

June in the Vespiary with the Push Mower

~ johnbrandall

I.

I'm out at Farm. Yeah, I know, surprise, surprise. Small green bugs—gnats, aphids—swarm the lightbulb overhead. They cling, somehow, upside down to the ceiling, making a marina out of faux-wood paneling.

It's finally dark out. June bugs fling themselves against the front door. Something dots the back of my neck, I try to chase it away. Today, June 14th, Flag Day. I'm here to mow, an insane endeavor depending so much on a car, a push mower, gasoline, and this forty-year-old body. Wall sounds, probably the pack rat. My approach to this old farm house, earlier today, descending the gravel road, sent two groundhogs scurrying across the front yard I would soon get to clipping. They disappeared to somewhere, probably into that hole slipping under the front of the house, just west of the stoop...


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Get Your Fix at Heman Park

~ johnbrandall

If, like me, you’re starting to climb the walls during this coronavirus lockdown, you’re also asking yourself: what can I do, within these newly instituted, claustrophobic confines that doesn’t run afoul of the Stay-at-Home order?  How can I look after my own mental health, the quality of which has for years depended on being able to locate myself as needed in wide, open spaces?

Under the Order, residents of the county are still allowed to go for a walk in public parks.  Indeed, the County Executive has urged operators of public parks—presumably he is speaking to municipalities such as my own, University City—to keep their parks open.  To console myself, I think about all of the county’s various parks remaining open. Whether it has been for the purpose of playing disc golf, going for a run, or taking my dog Hugo for a walk, I have spent a lot of time in the parks of University City and St. Louis County over the past decade.  One of the parks nearest to me, which I have come to appreciate despite its faults, is University City’s Heman Park.


Continue with this essay about Heman Park...