I Hope Lightning Doesn't Strike the Same Place Twice

Okay, I do know lightning can, and often does, strike the same spot more than once. Years ago, when I lived in Iowa City, I worked with a girl whose house was struck by lightning every few years. And not just the house, it always seemed to target one bedroom in particular--even coming into the room through a window once. It was crazy, because it certainly wasn't the tallest house on the block. We used to tease her that it was the wrath of God or something. Needless to say, I never visited her on a rainy night.

Anyway, we just found out that The Box House had suffered a lightning strike sometime in the past.

Last week, UPS delivered a package to the house that wasn't for any of us, and we didn't recognize the name as belonging to anyone who lived in the house before us. We tucked it to the side, planning to follow up on it (or keep it, I'm not sure), but ended up getting sidetracked by a billion other things.

Turns out the package was for the son-in-law of the previous owner. We should have recognized his name from the closing papers, as there were four siblings who had inherited the house and they each received a check at close. Their agent represented them, so they weren't there in person and we'd never seen any of them face to face before.

So the son-in-law shows up at the door, and we talked for a few minutes. He told us how happy they were that this building that had been in the family for forty years now belonged to another family. So I asked him if he had any photos of what The Box House might have looked like before. (I didn't expect much of a difference--I was mostly curious about landscaping, etc.) The son-in-law didn't think he had any photos to share, but he did indicate that our parapet was now nearly two feet shorter than it was originally.

What? Really? That thing is already pretty high, and kinda looks like some fake facade as it is. I posted about it a while back. We were all a bit flabbergasted to hear it was actually higher at one point.

So why the change?

Well, the southeast corner, right above the kitchen (currently obscured by the lurching cedar), was hit by lightning sometime in the last forty years--son-in-law couldn't remember exactly when, but it was a long time ago. The lightning did quite a bit of damage, and knocked out a bunch of brick. (Although it's tall, The Box House is not the tallest house on the block, and there are elms on our street that are even taller.)

When they rebuilt the parapet, they lowered it all the way around. We're not entirely sure why, and the son-in-law wasn't really clear. It's possible that rather than buy new brick, they had dismantled the parapet, salvaged the brick they could, and rebuilt the section. (This might explain why I'm finding brick all over the yard; wherever I dig to reclaim garden space, I'm finding bricks and brick fragments that might have been used as edging at one time.)

But this does explain some oddities:

1. It does look like there should be more space between the top two decorative squares of limestone and the limestone caps at the top--like a couple of rows of brick are missing, maybe.
2. This limestone square on the front is not proportionally centered (making it the only unboxlike thing on The Box House). A few more layers of brick between this and the capstones would correct this perspective.
3. Okay, this bullet has nothing to do with the facade; I'm just so psyched this overgrown bush found a new home.

So wow. We learned a new bit of house history. But go back to the first picture a second:

All but one of those bushes along the front have moved to different homes (I'm taking out the last one myself), but we'd still like to remove the two-story tall cedar. It's planted about 18 inches from the foundation, and is leaning at a 22-degree (or so) angle. Aesthetically, it does not please any of us. Morally, we feel terrible about taking out such a large tree. So what do y'all think. Should it stay or should it go?

Dude, Where's My Glass?

Craig's List just saved us two days' work and hundreds of dollars. Earlier this week, I listed our evergreen yew bushes on Craig's List as "free" to whoever wanted to dig them up. The quote I had received from the tree removal service to take out the same shrubs and a cedar tree was $775. We'll still have to figure out what to do with the cedar, but as of tonight, a dozen or so bushes are gone and I fully expect the last few to find new homes over the weekend.

People do love their free stuff. I had, and I'm not kidding, 18 people e-mail me over the course of the week to say they'd take them. One guy even said, "Just leave them on the curb and I'll swing by to pick them up." Dude, there will be no "swinging by," don't you get the concept of "bring a shovel and dig them up"?

Of the 18 people who e-mailed to say they'd be right on over, guess how many showed up? Go on, guess. Exactly three. So that makes 15 people who simply flaked or realized I wasn't kidding when I said they'd have to dig the shrubs up themselves. In any case, by not even calling or e-mailing to let me know they were no longer interested, 15 people wasted my time. Humph. Good thing I work from home.

The first guy was pretty cool. He's a Chicago police officer and he showed up with his sister to help him dig out four of the bushes. He just bought a house, and was pretty psyched to be able to get some well-established shrubs. His sister is a pretty experienced gardener, and she helped me identify many of the plants that were emerging under the shrubs: peonies, grape hyacinth, assorted lilies, daffodils, tulips, etc.

It looks like at one time there was quite a nice garden here; the woman who owned the house before was in her nineties when she passed and I guess it got to be too much to maintain the garden. The bushes were overgrown and choking everything else out. I dug up and transplanted many of these perennials to the backyard.

Oooo, look! Fresh mint. Guess who's having a julep tonight!

I lent the police officer guy my shears so he was able to trim the bushes to manageable size, and he cleaned up the mess he made, too. He said he hoped someone would come to take the rest of the shrubs, because he was worried about them blocking windows in case of an emergency. How very sweet!

The second guy who was here was just as courteous, taking four shrubs with him and even taking time to bag the extra clippings and tidy up, though it was pouring rain by the end. I had gone inside--I certainly wasn't going to hang out in a thunderstorm--and left him on his own. When he left, he had put the tools away in a dry corner.

Nice guys like these lull me into a false sense of security. I feel like I can just let them in my yard with my tools and trust that they'll respect things. Not all people are so nice. Some of them are Dons.

Don came over, excited to be getting free bushes. Don had e-mailed me twice, and then decided to come over midweek instead of the weekend as planned because he was afraid someone else would beat him to the bushes. After so many people flaked, I had stopped scheduling times and told everyone "first come, first served." Don and I chitchatted for a few minutes, I gave him the shears, pointed out the bushes that were available, and told him I'd be inside if he needed anything. A little while later, Mom went out with a glass of ice water for him because it was hot, his face was red, and we didn't want him passing out in the yard.

Don worked at those bushes for quite a while, taking occasional breaks on the front step, sipping delicious icy cold water.

Ted and I were looking out the dining room window when we saw Don dump out the remaining ice from his drink, walk over to his car, and put the glass in his cup holder.

"He's not taking that, is he?" Ted asked.

"Nah, I don't think so," I said, stepping up to get a better look. "He can't be. I think he's getting something off the seat."

We watched as Don got out of the car with a camera in hand and walked over to the bigger bushes, where he proceeded to snap pictures of them from every angle.

"I'll go see what he's up to," I said, heading towards the back porch stairs.

As I'm walking down them towards the back door, Don is already shouting into the house--not knocking politely on the door, mind you, but bellowing through the screen. "Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello? Hel-lo?"

"Hi. You finished?"

"Yeah, just taking some pictures of the rest for my wife. I don't know how those Hispanic guys do it."

"Huh?"

"The lawn care guys. You know. I don't know how they do this all day. They're strong."

Freak.

He nodded at us, said goodbye, and got back into his car. The whole time he was blathering on I was barely listening to him, wondering if he really was going to drive off with the water glass.

"Dude, I think he's stealing our glass," I said. (By the way, we have an uncontrollable habit of saying "dude," it's rather a term of affection these days.)

"Do you think we should say something?"

"He can't really be stealing it, can he? Surely he'll hand it back to us."

"I don't know, he's starting his car."

"Dude, that's so wrong."

So we watched him drive off with nary a backward glance, giving him every opportunity to "discover" that he had "accidentally" taken the glass into the car with him. We didn't want to embarrass him needlessly if it was a mistake, after all. Hey, man, we saw you put the glass in the car. Ya gonna give that back?

I'm not sure why we didn't stop him. Maybe part of us just wanted to see if he'd really do it. Really drive off with our glass. I mean, it had to be deliberate, dumping out the ice and going straight to the car to put it in the cup holder. He planned it.

The thing is, it's not a particularly great-looking glass. It's your standard plastic restaurant-style-fill-it-up-with-Coke-or-maybe-Dr-Pepper-if-they-have-it kind of glass. Nothing fancy.

But Ted's somewhat sentimental about it. It's part of a set he nicked from Valentino's in Lawrence, Kansas, during his college days as a pizza delivery driver. Okay, technically, he didn't steal them. Whenever he'd go out on delivery runs, he'd fill a glass with Diet Coke and take it with him. But when the restaurant closed unexpectedly and they phoned him to say don't bother coming in, he had a half dozen or so left in the back of his car. So he kept them.

But now we're short one because Don felt that free bushes just weren't a good enough deal. Don had to sweeten his score with a free cup as well. And Don wasn't courteous and respectful of our yard. Oh no. Don left a huge mess, with dirt piled on our windows and branches everywhere.

Don even hacked limbs off other bushes to get to the bushes he wanted. Don even hacked off canes from our climbing roses that were in his way. (It doesn't matter that I was going to trim the roses back anyway; he didn't even ask if it was okay.)

This is Mom cleaning up the mess Don left. I don't know what's up with this photo--it looks like Kirk and crew are beaming down to the left. Or is it our ghosts? Seriously, what is that?

So Don has left me all suspicious-like and wary of letting people wander the yard unattended. I darn near tackled the Comcast guy when I found him walking around the yard with a shovel this afternoon. Poor guy was only here to bury the cable for our recently installed internet service package. But how was I to know he wasn't here to help himself to our glasses?

Groovy, Man

In another two or three years, after the market improves and we sell the condo in Chicago, Ted and I would like to get another multi-unit building as an investment property. So I'm always looking at the house-for-sale adverts for in town and our old neighborhood, Uptown. Ideally, we'd like a two-flat in Uptown with a semi-finished basement that we can create office space in for ourselves or use as a mini owner's apartment. That way, we'd have our "city" place and our "country" place. We really do miss Uptown, sometimes. We lived within a few blocks of two major concert venues, the Riv and the Aragon Ballroom, as well as The Green Mill, the oldest continually operated jazz club in the United States. No kidding. Al Capone hung out there, and everything.

But I did spot a listing for a bungalow a few blocks up the street from The Box House. It's going for half of what all the other single family houses on the street are listed or appraised at. So what gives? Could it be this:

Well dy-no-mite, how cool is that? Funky basement murals! It would feel so hip and urban living in there!

Actually, the house is very much a fixer-upper, way more than I'd probably want to tackle. So I say we'll have to take a pass on this one. *Sigh* If only...

It's Cherry Time!

The orchard is off to a humble start. We have quite a bit of sun in the yard, particularly on the west and south sides, and lots of open space, so we thought we'd give dwarf fruit trees a try. In time, they'll provide the added bonus of partially blocking off our "back" yard from the street. Because it's a corner lot, anyone walking or driving by can glance at what we're doing out back. Not that there's anything nefarious going on...

So I picked up two different kinds of cherry trees from Home Depot, and planted them in the ground. They're a good size, about four feet tall. I've never actually grown fruit before, but I have my pruning book and a pair of shears, so I'm set.

Man, that's a terrible picture. It started to pour while I was working outside, so I quickly snapped the photo and ran in. I didn't realize I cut the trunk off in the photo! Eventually, I want to cram in a dwarf apple, plum, and peach tree into the yard as well.

Hey, does anyone else out there like Robert Graves? Here's a poem he wrote, published in Fairies and Fusiliers, 1918:

Cherry-Time

CHERRIES of the night are riper
Than the cherries pluckt at noon
Gather to your fairy piper
When he pipes his magic tune:
Merry, merry,
Take a cherry;
Mine are sounder,
Mine are rounder,
Mine are sweeter
For the eater
Under the moon.
And you’ll be fairies soon.

In the cherry pluckt at night,
With the dew of summer swelling,
There’s a juice of pure delight,
Cool, dark, sweet, divinely smelling.
Merry, merry,
Take a cherry;
Mine are sounder,
Mine are rounder,
Mine are sweeter
For the eater
In the moonlight.
And you’ll be fairies quite.

When I sound the fairy call,
Gather here in silent meeting,
Chin to knee on the orchard wall,
Cooled with dew and cherries eating.
Merry, merry,
Take a cherry;
Mine are sounder,
Mine are rounder,
Mine are sweeter.
For the eater
When the dews fall.
And you’ll be fairies all.