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bindweed, taxes, & grackles

So I spent yesterday preparing a whole post on evil bleeping grackles. Not a re-post of my blog from a year ago.  Nope this was an entirely new rant, think Jaws II. This was about how flocks of little birds each taking one peck at your garden can turn you into the crazy old guy in the backyard rocking. muttering and waving his arms. After concluding the piece I had to put it aside because something was just wrong with it. I had wanted to share how grackles were like bindweed. Bindweed had the week before been pecking away at my time as I tried to control 'that' weed. I'd also wanted to drop over to politics and talk about how a small ($12 million) tax increase being proposed for our community when added to the various other State and district tax increases were like a flock of grackles pecking me to death. The metaphor was solid but there was something karmically off. Not just my writing, something else.
 God clearly is a comedian. Hand him a set-up about a thousand little things harassing you and he'll deliver a punchline. While I had my whine on hold for a proper re-writing, Deb learned that the area around our cabin was under mandatory evacuation due to a fire that had blown up. We were home in Lakewood but...
 Deb immediately started trying to reach our friends Sandy and Bob who live in the area year-round. Their house is beautiful, always reminded me of the one on the TV show Bonanza. Thankfully, she was able get through to them on their landline as Sandy had sent her cell phone with Deb to Denver to see if Deb could fix the camera. They were past the evacuation deadline preparing to leave but struggling with what to bring because the situation was serious and it might be a while till they were able to return. Sandy is the ultimate preparer having gone so far as to take EMS classes so she could be of help in an emergency. Living in the mountains she had stocked the house with an impressive supply of food but this wasn't a blizzard this was a wildfire bearing down on 'em. They had to get going.
 Deb also was able to reach our new neighbors up the hill a young couple Kyle and Amber. They were already out and ensconced in a hotel. The young just move faster and they never let their phones out of their sight!
 The cabin is more than the tin and wood for us. It's the spot in the aspens above the spring where we got married before friends, family, and God. It's the little nest of 3 trees in the field that reminded Deb of her 3 sisters. It's the little square stone that has the ashes of our old dogs Katie & Kita under it. It's the stress and sweat Deb put into designing the cabin. The visits down to watch the progress as Shannon slowly framed it out and the drywall he put up with his son. Which was one of those father son moments your proud to be able to watch. The pride we had after insulating it. The beautiful stairs Deb's step son Matt built with her. It was the quiet in the woods watching the birds. The foggy morning the bull elk brought his herd right up to the deck. The time as kids my nephews Joe and Chris spent a week clearing trees with me and all of us living in the little RV.  Chris returning a man with his wife and son to visit our cabin and sleep in the old RV again. Bringing my parents down and worrying that my blind father would step off the deck and worrying that the smoke (from some other long forgotten fire in Montana) and altitude was too much for my mother's lungs. I never cared for the damned place. I just put up with it for Deb and now it's gone and I can't see the keyboard 'cause something is in my eye. Must be smoke.
 I'll go down as soon as it's allowed to see if perhaps the fire map was wrong or something is still left but...
 But wait there's more. I got a call from my Mother. She told me my sister Donnell and her husband John were being evacuated from their cabin on the exact opposite side of the state. Again fire. Donnell called and let me know they are OK and planning to pull a couple of sleeping bags and sleep on their boat. So we'll hope they have no little karmic twists and they can come home to their garden knowing their cabin is safe.
 Thus I will attach the original 'piece' unedited while I go sit in that chair in the backyard and sip an ice tea and play human scarecrow. I would offer a thought. There are fundamentally two types of emergencies, hunker down and get out. The flight or fight instinct is wired in us because those who didn't have those instincts, well - they are simply no one's ancestor! Get a "Go Bag" and a plan and also grow a garden. I'm not going to go all prepper crazy but life is weird even with some planning it's hard to be ready for emergencies. Without any planning you're just a worse drag on police and fire who really need to be doing other things.

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I guess that I learned to swear at the normal age. My parents were normal for their time with an occasional "hell" or "damn" slipping out but I don't remember anything worse than that. So I guess I have to attribute my higher education in the 'art' to the summer I worked in the wool sorting house. The wool sorter I was assigned to was as nice a guy as you could ever work with, but there was this other old timer who would eat lunch with us. He could swear. I realized in thinking about it years later that is was his use of adjectives and adverbs. I mean there are only so many cuss words and they can only reach a certain level of offense but add a few descriptive 'normal words' and now you got something. Try it - take "bleeping bleep" and change it to "dizzy bleeping ugly bleep" - see I'm telling you.
 This was brought to mind this week as the bleeping grackles are back. About, - well almost exactly a year ago I wrote about the "Bleeping Grackles".  This year after playing human scarecrow to chase them out of my onions. I started sic'ing Cooper to "Get the birds!" He's enthusiastic and they scatter in a bashing of wings and noise, but he wants to come right back in and get his cookie. My brother says it's the millennial in him - could be. I just know I need him to stay in the yard so the grackles don't come back. Nope, if I'm not intimately involve in this game he has no interest. I even tried just forcing him to stay out. Nope, he whined at the door while the grackles returned and pecked the onions. I was loosing sleep worrying about it. I mean it was really bugging me.Their persistence had me just short of the crazy old guy in the rocking chair muttering. Then I caught myself, home from my attempt at a calming walk with the dogs - that I'd shortened worrying the birds would return. At the garden gate the grackles saw us and scattered. I really, really wanted to scream a primal scream but I thought of the neighbors and kept it to a muffled one."You evil bleeping nasty little bleeps" just came out. I was broken.
  The music is a mix kinda with a Cajun twist in honor of the weather which is Tabasco hot. Years back my bartending buddy Marty taught me when the weather's hot take the hottest shower you can stand. Put hot sauce on your breakfast till you sweat and ask the prettiest girl to dance to fiddle music. Have to see what Deb's up to! 
 The music starts with Mary Chapin Carpenter who's Down at the Twist and Shout https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuapCENFM2U actually made me go looking for BeauSoleil CDs (and pay full price) many years ago. The rest of the stack is The Creole Zydeco Farmers, The Best of BeauSoleil (of course), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ol9J8H-M1fA&list=PLNUQMbJOU1-MfBNoIA6NPwszWacdxe-fe  Some Alison Krauss (bluegrass but will still have some fiddle in it) and a leap to The Chieftains - Bonaparte's Retreat (Who I'm assuming will also fill the need for fiddle. But it's a library find I've never played so we'll see!) I'll suggest you jump to BeauSoleil after the Twist and Shout song as Ms. Carpenter can drag a bit.
  I garden, I'm not a farmer and the fruits of my labors really only need to feed Deb and I. Any extra I'm actually quite proud to share with neighbors and any shortfall or missing ingredients Safeway can sell me. As I mentioned in my last post on "Bleeping Grackles" I don't mind in the least birds in the garden. In gardening there are a lot of symbiotic relationship you come to count on. I'm happy to feed the worms as I know the effort will come back to me in biblical proportions. So too the bees I try to keep some flowers blooming to entice them to the garden. Part of the logic in trying to grow mushrooms is to encourage the magic of these underground wizards to help other plants. It's not just the peas holding hands and singing kumbaya in the garden if we try we can all make each others life better. Yeah well that's the thought anyway.
 Before the grackles showed up I was cussing the bindweed. Bindweed if you garden you know is a pernicious weed . It can not only sent a root across your yard to start claiming new territory and entangling your plants but this time of year it starts flowering and preparing to set a million seeds. The little flowers are actually kinda pretty till you realize the amount of your time each one you see will cost you in future years of pulling bindweed. Thus if this ain't your first rodeo when you see the flowers you stop whatever you're doing and start pulling. Doesn't matter if it's a 100° and a tornado is bearing down on you, this is money in the bank. Stop and pull the bindweed if it's flowering.
 Well I was a little behind on the bindweed and I knew it. But it's a plant it ain't going anywhere you can schedule your life and still keep up with bindweed. You just can't ignore it. You can't schedule grackles or more exactly when your onions are getting ready to pick you better not schedule anything else 'cause you'll be in the yard playing human scarecrow.
 Now I know someone out there is getting ready to tell me to hang bird netting or tin pans but again I'm not a farmer. My garden is a refuge it may not be art but it shouldn't look like a prison.  If the zombie apocalypse comes to pass and I'm truly relying on the garden for food sure - sonic cannons and four and twenty blackbird pie https://www.fieldandstream.com/best-fishing-cartoons.
  So there I was standing at the back garden fence with two dogs that had been dragged too quickly around the block, behind on the bindweed and looking at a week of 90° - 100°. As I said  broken. I had to decide give up on the onions and move on or just plan to hang out in the garden no matter what else needed doing in life.
 Oh yeah did I mention the City is planning a tax increase and that's another choice between my time I don't have now and money I won't have later if I don't spend the time to stop it.


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