Chicken Nostalgia

I dashed into the hardware store the other day, looking for niger seeds for my finches, and, this being Vermont and almost spring, I walked by a display of sugaring supplies. Next to them was a forty-pound bag of chicken feed, and the sight of that bag pierced me like a sword. 

It’s been six years now since I took my little flock to be killed, in preparation for our move to the retirement community where we now live. My hens were big, affable, butter-colored Buff Orpingtons, the golden retrievers of the chicken world. They were, as hens go, unflappable, and they made it through Vermont winters in their unheated chicken coop. They were not egg-laying machines, like those sad, nervous Leghorns favored by factory farmers. My hens’ egg production waxed and waned with the seasons, as God intended it to. 

On the other hand, they were composting machines, and my garden depended on them for its fertility. All year round, hunting for seeds, they scratched and shredded the layers of old hay that lined their coop, and deposited nitrogen-rich droppings into the mixture, which I periodically hauled to the garden to work its miracles. 

As thrifty as Depression-era housewives, my hens consumed every wormy apple and rotten tomato I threw into their yard. They even ate their own eggshells (after we’d eaten the eggs), thus recycling the calcium. I admired them for their usefulness, but I loved them for the eagerness with which they rushed out of the coop in the morning, for their cozy go-to-roost purrings in the evening, and because they knew and trusted me, and would let me sit with them in the sun while they pecked at the grass, and sometimes at my shoelaces. 

I have a long history with chickens, from the ones that my grandmother used let me feed when I was barely old enough to walk, to the live capons that she sent by train to Barcelona for our Christmas dinner, and the little lame chick that she sent to keep me company as I lay in bed recovering from measles. 

Now, as my autumn declines into winter, I would like nothing better than a couple of hens (you can’t have only one, because they get lonely) to comfort me. But as Vermontish and progressive as the community where I live is, chickens are not allowed. And so, whenever I run across a bag of feed in the hardware store, or drive past the “Chicks Are Here!” sign in front of the Tractor Supply every spring, I practice the art of letting go. I’ve read that this is important preparation for the ultimate divestiture, and makes it easier. 

I practice letting go of the idea of keeping hens, and of raising my own food, and of being who I was all those years ago. And in my mind I also practice letting go of Bisou, who is fine right now but who will be my last dog, and whom I’ll inevitably have to let go in another three or four years. 

On the other hand, carpe diem! we are told. Live in the moment! But how to do this while simultaneously practicing letting go is the emotional equivalent of rubbing one’s stomach while patting one’s head. The two things keep leaching into each other. No sooner do I enter fully into the joy of taking Bisou for a walk than I’m overwhelmed by the thought that someday we’ll be taking the last one. And I can only recapture the enjoyment of the walk if I firmly put out of my mind the inevitability of loss. 

It’s at moments like these that a couple of pasturing hens would come in handy, to turn my mind to dirt baths, grass, earthworms, compost, and the cycle of life.

My grandmother and I, feeding chickens

 

The Mule, the Plow, and the Pen

In the menagerie that usually crowds my dreams—lions and tigers starving in the basement, neglected goats and chickens multiplying in filthy outbuildings, a German Shepherd whom no one’s remembered to feed—mules had never appeared. But the other night, as the first serious snow of the year fell outside my window, there she was, my first dream mule. 

I spent my childhood summers around mules. In the Catalan countryside, before the arrival of tractors, people worked the land with horses, mules, and plows that were almost identical to the ones introduced by the Romans two millennia ago. Since my grandfather was a vet, mules were often brought to him for injections and minor surgeries, which I was allowed to watch from the safety of the dining room window. Mules were popular with the local peasants, who found them to be sturdier than horses, less flighty, and better able to navigate difficult terrain. According to my grandmother, in past centuries the pope himself rode around Vatican City on a white mule—the first pope-mobile.

But I didn’t much like mules. I preferred the little gray donkeys, with their velvety faces and enormous eyes, that trotted daintily on the dusty roads, carrying a load of grass for the rabbits and, often, a black-clad peasant grandmother as well. And even the humblest cart horse was more elegantly proportioned than a mule, whose skinny tail and long ears seemed all wrong for its big, sleek body. 

Not having thought about mules for years, I was surprised when one showed up in my dream. She was brought to me by an old Vermonter who announced that he was going to plow the lawn in front of my cottage so I could make a vegetable garden. The plow to which he had hitched the mule was like the ones I remembered from my childhood. It had wooden handles, and the share—the part that digs into the earth—had a sharp metal point and flaring sides. 

I could barely contain my glee. Not only was I going to have a garden again, but one made by a mule! I didn’t care that she was a dull brown, run-of-the-mill mule. I found her charming, and the archaic plow she dragged connected me to the generations of peasants lurking in my DNA. I was going to grow kale and chard and garlic and those slender Japanese eggplants, and cook and eat them the way God intended. And who knew--once I had a garden, could chickens and goats be far behind? 

That was obviously the wish-fulfillment aspect of the dream, in which I got to have my old close-to-the-earth life back. But if, according to Jung, both the old Vermonter and the mule represent parts of me, the meaning becomes less clear. I can easily see myself as an old Vermonter wanting to make a garden, but as a mule? Mules are neither dashing nor adorable. They are strong, hard-working, reliable and mostly boring. 

The dream mule, however, had come not only on a delightful mission, but a subversive one: tearing up the sterile expanse of grass in front of my cottage and replacing it with something nourishing and meaningful. In real life, of course, this would not be allowed in the retirement community in which I live, even if it is a Vermont retirement community. But the dream mule and the old Vermonter clearly believed that it’s easier to get forgiveness than permission. (That is totally not the waking me, who tends to get permission and then ask forgiveness just in case.) 

If I am both the old Vermonter and the mule, though, am I also the lawn? I ask because the mule’s job is to plow under all that boring conventional grass and make possible the growth of vitamin-rich, life-enhancing veggies. Did I mention that the Roman plow has a sharp point and flaring sides, not unlike the nib of a pen? Not that I actually write with a pen….

 

Little Murders

 This is the season in Vermont when the wildlife assaults the barricades. The wolf spiders scuttle in from the garage and drink out of the dog water dish. The field mice squeeze through the tiny crack where the heating pipe enters the wall, hoping for a spot by the fire and a regular supply of crumbs. And it’s the season when, every evening, the gray cat Telemann goes on the hunt. 

In the morning I find the shrunken remains of a spider or two, its legs curled inward like fingers in a fist. I shudder as I walk by, thinking, if it’s the size of a penny in its contracted state, how appallingly huge it must have been while it was alive. And I am grateful to my hunter for keeping us spider free. 

But the field mice are a different story. If spiders rank at the bottom of the adorableness scale, field mice are at the top, with their furry little bodies, tiny paws, big ears, and shiny black eyes. Beatrix Potter used to keep them as pets, and so would I if I could litter train them. And if I didn’t have Telemann. 

Telemann doesn’t care about the adorableness of field mice. He views them not only as food, but as superior entertainment. If watching squirrels through the window is tantamount to watching tennis on TV, catching a live mouse must feel like playing an actual match. 

I don’t begrudge Telemann his mice. We really cannot have them in the house, and he saves us the distressing job of trapping them. It’s what happens between the catching and the eating that I cannot bear--the seemingly frivolous, sadistic batting and stalking and pawing for what looks like the sheer pleasure of prolonging the little creature’s agony. 

Or at least that’s what I thought until two minutes ago, when I googled “why do cats play with their prey.” And it turns out that they’re not playing at all! They are trying to exhaust their prey, before delivering the killing bite to the back of the neck, in order to protect themselves from being bitten or, if the victim is a bird, pecked. Cats have a short muzzle, and big vulnerable eyes, and a rodent in desperate straits can inflict serious damage. So the batting and pawing have a purpose, and Telemann, after all, is not a sadist. Whew! 

Not only that, he is a thrifty, respectful hunter. He eats every speck of his mice, leaving not so much as a tuft of velvety fur for me to find. For all I know, he bows and gives thanks to the Mouse God before settling down to his meal. 

When he’s done, he licks his perfect white teeth with his perfect pink tongue and, tail high, strides victorious and immaculate to where I’m reclining with my book. He jumps on my chest, right between the book and my face, butts my nose with his forehead (why?), turns around three times, and settles purring and blinking on my sternum to digest his mouse.

 

Rara Avis

A male cardinal came to the yard yesterday, and I gasped. That plumage! That crest! That bossy look! Yet I didn’t always find cardinals gasp-worthy. At our feeder in Maryland, as many as a dozen would show up together. Here in Vermont, aside from the occasional bluebird, our birds excel more by their song than by their plumage. Thrushes and warblers dress in drab brown and beige, so as not to distract from their music. 

But now that our winters are warmer, a cardinal will sometimes decide to stick around, and the locals take photos of the flatlander bird, and post them on Facebook. If things keep going as they are, we’ll soon wake up in the mornings to the cacophony of visiting macaws. And no doubt, the first glimpse of that outrageous blue-and-gold, or red-blue-and-yellow plumage will stop us in our tracks, and cause us to reach frantically for our phones. But if the macaws choose to stay, soon their level on the exoticism scale will plunge to that of the blue jay (which you must admit is a pretty sensational-looking bird, when you see it for the first time).

I was squirrel-deprived as a child, and couldn’t get over, when I first met a gray squirrel, its twitching treble-clef tail, the bold look in its eyes, and the almost human way it used its hands. Now of course I hardly give squirrels a glance--unless there is a black one, in which case my sense of wonder returns unabated. 

But back to birds. Woodpeckers—downy, hairy, and red-bellied—love my feeders, but other than buying them suet cakes by the case, I barely notice them. Yet despite my tendency to wilt in the heat, I would trudge through the wilds of Arkansas if I had a real hope of seeing that holy grail of birders, the ivory-billed woodpecker.

Instead, why can’t I marvel each morning when the downies and the hairies and especially the red-bellieds (whose belly is barely pink, but whose head is a spectacular orangey-red) come to demolish the suet, flinging off bits of it that adhere greasily to my window? Why can’t I rejoice in their dailiness, their reliability, their familiarity? Like the rest of my species I harbor an unfortunate  prejudice in favor of the rare and extraordinary—the black swan, the white stag, and Elizabeth Taylor’s violet eyes. 

This preference for the exceptional is so ingrained in us that it must have survival value. The sight of a ruby-red strawberry in a field of boring green, and the subsequent burst of sweetness in the mouth of some Australopithecus grandmother must have cemented in her this taste for the unusual, which she then passed on to her descendants. 

So maybe there is survival value in preferring what is rare—physical survival at least. But what about the survival of sanity? We have evolved to be like magpies, disdaining the pebble in favor of the diamond. We have lost the ability to honor the everyday, and require ever sharper stimuli in order to attend—more color, more sound, more apps. Wouldn’t we be more at peace if, in this season of enforced seclusion, we put aside our binoculars and collector’s nets, and learned to truly see the acorn, the sparrow, and the moth? 

Hermits

The hermit thrush alone is a good reason to live in Vermont.  All by himself, this little brown bird with the speckled breast makes up for the cold, dark winters, the messy mud seasons, and the spotty wi-fi coverage.

He comes by his name honestly. He declines to visit feeders, but stays hidden in the woods where, during the nesting season, he decants a pure, cool, silvery rill of sound. I live too much in my head to notice a lot of what Nature, like a street vendor setting out her wares, puts out for my delight. I can pass a lilac in full splendor with barely a glance, but the song of the hermit thrush stops me in my tracks. When he sings, I have to stand and hear him to the end, or I would feel like I was walking out in the middle of a recital.

Although he shies from applause, there is nothing timid or self deprecating about his performance: he sings with the aplomb of a seasoned performer. I wonder what a young hermit’s first song is like--is the timing off, are there false notes, or does it emerge from him as faultless and elegant as that of his father in his prime? As I have never heard a thrush miss a note, I suspect that they are all born musical prodigies.

This has been a good summer for hermits. The thrushes sing late into the morning, take a short break, and resume well before the sun goes down. The virus-imposed stillness in my life has made it easier for me to pay attention. At sunrise and sunset I come out of my own hermitage and listen to the invisible singer pour out his melody from the shelter of the woods.

Whenever I hear the thrush, my grasping, non-Zen self immediately pleads “don’t stop. Keep going. Encore!” And I waste the last clear perfect notes thinking that  the solstice is already behind us, and all too soon he will head south, and the woods will return to silence. But isn’t the very fact that he’s not around all year, that he shuns my feeders, that he stays hidden in his woodland cloister what makes him so precious? If I heard him in all seasons, would I still listen?

From all indications, the coming winter will be an especially dark one. Like the chipmunks, I will retreat from porch and yard and go to earth in my cottage, to sleep and snack and endure as best I can. I will be grateful for every cheeping titmouse and chickadee that visits my feeder while I await the little brown singer’s return. I will think of him scratching for insects in the leaf litter of some southern wood, but saving his song for the love season in Vermont, and for his fellow hermit, me.

New Gloves, Etc.

My old black leather gloves were falling apart, so when the sun came out for a couple of hours the other day I drove to T.J. Maxx, which is not too far from where I now live.

Lined with car dealerships and fast-food restaurants, the road between my house and TJM is not what I think of as the real Vermont, but I reminded myself that in the decade I spent in my beloved, store-free village, I had to shop for most of my clothes at the church rummage sale.

None of the leather gloves at TJM fit me. When had women evolved five-inch-long fingers?  Might this be a sign from the universe that I should forego leather in favor of artificial fabric? After all, if I refuse to eat a dead cow, it makes no sense to clothe my fingers with the skin of one.

Luckily, the non-leather gloves on the rack weren’t all fuzzy and bulky. I found a sleek pair that fit perfectly. It even had a frivolous little strip of black faux fur (no rabbits harmed) around the wrist.

At home, I got scissors and went to separate the gloves, which were tightly bound together with those annoying bits of plastic filament. (One end is always easy to grasp, cut, and throw in the trash--you can’t recycle the things--but the shorter end invariably springs out of my hands and disappears into the carpet.)

Attached to the gloves by more plastic ties were four labels of various thicknesses. One announced, in gold-embossed letters on stiff black cardboard, that the gloves were weatherproof. Another assured me that the strip of fur around the wrist was faux. (Wouldn’t it be great if the manufacturers of faux news felt equally obliged to describe it as such?)

The third label stated the price, $14.99 (compare at $20). And the fourth explained that those reinforcing bits on the tips of the index and thumb made the gloves “touch screen compatible,” so that, should I need to check my Facebook page while standing in the middle of a blizzard, I won’t have to take them off.

By the time I had disposed of the four labels, I was feeling less sanguine about my purchase. Sure, neither cows nor rabbits had perished for the sake of the gloves, but some tree somewhere had been amputated to make those tags.

That wasn’t the only reason I felt guilty, however: I had bought more than gloves on my shopping trip.

We all know about the environmental cost of the clothing trade. I once heard a researcher describe the rivers near the manufacturing centers in China, which run all the colors of the rainbow with the dyes used on the fabrics.  Every time I walk into a clothing store, I think about those rivers.

But as I pushed my cart along the aisles of TJM, the profusion of colors, textures, and shapes made my head spin. And the prices! When did clothes get so cheap? When I was a teenager, getting a new sweater was a memorable occasion, but now sweaters, unaffected by trumpian sanctions, are practically a dime a dozen.

Outside, there was snow on the ground and the wind was blowing. The old sweaters in my closet had all sprouted a crop of pills, while here in the store, at easy reach of my hand and wallet, hung hundreds of sweaters, unpilled, just my size, just my colors, fresh all the way from China.

Reader, I caved. I bought not one, not two, but three.

At the checkout, I handed the clerk the sweaters and gloves, and my canvas New Yorker bag.

“What is this?” the clerk asked, pointing to the bag.

“It’s my bag,” I said.

“You want me to put your things in there?”

“Yes, please.”

She sighed. She folded the sweaters and began stuffing them and the cruelty-free gloves into the bag. “It’s hard to get it all in,” she said, as the line of customers behind me grew.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

But I really wasn’t. I felt guilty about the sweaters, but at least I’d saved a plastic bag.

Pasture

Sometimes I imagine, and not in a morbid way, that I’m lying on my deathbed, remembering my life. Like everybody else, I’ve had moments of high joy: wedding day, childbirth, work-related stuff. But there are also more subtly-flavored memories. Pregnancy, once the initial excitement abated, was one. I would lie on the sofa in the afternoon, not reading the book on my lap, not crossing items on my to-do list, not writing letters to my mother, but content to simply gestate.

Nursing my babies was another. Those enforced breaks from the brouhaha of early motherhood allowed me to put aside laundry and work. Rocking slowly, listening to the little slurps and gulps, I might have been a mother cat, blinking in the sun and purring as she nursed her litter.

But that was long ago. The last time I felt this kind of contentment was in the field in front of my house, in southern Vermont. It is a cliché spring morning. The grass is bright green, and the dandelions are glinting in the sun. Up high on the house roof, against the clear sky, the bluebird sings his wistful little song. And, for the first time in months, I am letting Lizzie and Emma, my goats, out of their yard.

They are twin Nubians, one black, one fawn, with droopy silver ears and Roman profiles. The moment I open the gate they dash out to the field, their long ears flapping, and set to gobbling great handfuls of grass.

The field is not fenced in, so I need to stay with them. In the past I’ve tried bringing a book to read, but the moment I open it Lizzie and Emma rush to look over my shoulder, reaching their long necks to nibble the pages: “What’s this you’re reading?” Another time I brought paper and pencil, intending to draw them. But again, as soon as they spotted me doing something with my hands, they cast aside all thoughts of grass and ran over to see, and taste, my drawings.

Since multitasking is out of the question, I watch my goats eat. They tear off amazing quantities of grass and shove them down their throats with a few mighty chomps. Later, when their stomachs are filled to bursting, they will lie down and regurgitate the contents, give them a proper chew, and re-swallow them. It’s what ruminants do.

I sit on the grass and do nothing. Cleaning out the hen house; getting the garden beds ready for the chard and kale and broccoli seedlings that are waiting on the kitchen windowsills; thinning the baby apples that are starting to swell now that the blooms are gone will all have to wait until the goats have eaten.

For now, I watch and I listen. A lulling rhythm soon establishes itself as the goats move across the pasture: step, yank, chomp; step, yank, chomp. The bluebird has stopped singing. Maybe his mate has arrived and they’re at the back of the house, stuffing old grass and twigs into their nest box.

The sun—surprise!—actually feels warm now, and I discreetly take off my down vest and sit on it, to keep from attracting the attention of Lizzie and Emma, who will want to investigate. I breathe the clean Vermont air, chew on a grass stem.  Is this what they mean by “pastoral peace”? It’s a very ancient human thing I’m doing, sitting in a field, watching goats pasture. I think about the shepherds watching their flocks on Christmas eve two millennia ago, and about the even older psalmist who identified with sheep being led to rest in green pastures.

I think about those other peace-inducing states—being pregnant, nursing babies. Like watching goats graze, they are only seemingly passive. Lying on the sofa, rocking in the chair, sitting on the grass, I am doing nothing, but accomplishing a great deal: growing a fetus, feeding an infant, keeping goats safe while they pluck dandelions.

These are things that nobody ever taught me. For once, I didn’t have to take notes, or memorize lists, or practice techniques. They arose in me naturally, without recourse to the frontal lobes of my brain.

I hope that death is another thing that comes naturally, without conscious effort--something that, along with our animal brothers and sisters, we humans instinctively already know how to do. And I take comfort in the thought that in some future spring the molecules of my body will turn to grass for somebody’s goats or cows or sheep, and I will be part of that pastoral peace forever.

Milestone

Google Blogger, which keeps track of such things, tells me that as of last week I have published one thousand posts on My Green Vermont. Other than breathing and sleeping and brushing my teeth, I can’t think of too many acts I’ve repeated a thousand times.

Back in 2008 the friend who got me started (thanks, Indigo!) had to explain to me what a blog was. Wanting to avoid unnecessary gaffes, I consulted a number of websites about the rules of successful blogging. And they all said the same thing: you must post frequently. Daily, if possible. Several times a day, if you’re really serious.

I took the advice to heart and gradually increased my output until by 2010 I was posting over four times a week. That was the most I could manage, given that I’d also taken it into my head to accompany each post with a drawing. None of the how-to-blog sites recommended this, but I did notice that most blogs featured photos, many of them beautiful, sensational, or both.  Apparently, online readers expected to be served pictures along with words.

I had a digital camera but its battery was unreliable, and rather than deal with that I decided that it would be simpler and more creative to illustrate my posts by hand. (Now, after all these years, I could paper a room with the originals of my little drawings.)

How did I come up with so much to write about? It turns out that blogging is like finding a loose thread in one of those factory-made hems—you give a little tug, and it just keeps coming. I would start a post about one of my pullets laying her first egg, and that led to memories of being in bed recovering from the measles, with my pet lame chick hobbling and cheeping on the blanket.

I wrote endlessly about chickens and goats and gardens and woodstoves and the wonder of having made it to Vermont, where I could finally live “close to the earth,” as I proclaimed on the blog’s banner. When it became apparent that I couldn’t sustain my homesteading way of life indefinitely, we moved to a retirement community, and for a while I wrote about the dramas of downsizing, and the necessity of letting go of beloved objects and remaining flexible in spirit if not in body.

And then, one day, there seemed to be nothing more to write about. Gone were the goats and the milking pail, the hens and the egg basket, the compost and the wheelbarrow. The woodstove gave way to an efficient gas fireplace and my garden was reduced to a couple of potted citrus trees in the sun room (I gamely squeezed out a post about those).

What was the meaning, if any, of my new life? What occupied my mind? There were my fellow residents, obviously, and the shock of living in a kind of village where the only people under sixty-five were the staff. Plenty of grist for the mill there, but what if a neighbor took it into her head to read my blog?

Between 2015 and 2018 I only managed a measly total of sixty posts. And, just as the advice websites had predicted, my readership all but disappeared, drawn no doubt to livelier, more committed bloggers who managed to post every day, or even twice a day.

Then this year, in the dark of winter, I was spending my days in a miasma of politically-induced despondency. I badly needed to shake myself out of that state. What if I started blogging again, maybe only once a week? I could pretend that it was a real job that required me to post every Wednesday, except in case of emergency. What did I have to lose?

And so I tricked myself back into writing, and once I gave that initial tug, the thread kept coming. Now my week has rhythm and shape.

With a feeling of dread approaching nausea (what if, this time, the thread has broken, the well run dry?) on Thursday morning I force myself to spew whatever is in my head onto the screen. On Friday I piously gather any crumbs worth preserving and ditch the rest. I spend the weekend adding more crumbs and worrying about how I’m going to wrap the thing up.

On Monday I ditch some more and, if I’m lucky, come up with an ending. Tuesday is for drawing and for fighting the improvements that Canon insists on making to my scanner. On Wednesday, just before I hit “Publish,” I ditch some more (how could I have let this ridiculous sentence almost make it into the finished piece?). For the rest of the day I bask in the relief-- reminiscent of the way I once felt after my daily run--of having written.

And because I fret daily about meeting my self-imposed deadline, other worries, such as about the fate of the nation, not to mention the planet, are temporarily forced to take a back seat. It’s going to be a long, angst-filled political campaign. The way things are going, I may have to start posting daily, just to keep my sanity.

Bag Balm as Metaphor

Driving down Vermont country roads these days I often see a sight that breaks my heart: a small dairy farm in the process of dying. It happens in slow motion: the roof begins to sag, the equipment to rust, the fences to lean. And then, one day, the cows are gone. In the spring, dandelions sprout in the barnyard and Virginia creepers climb the silos which, by the time winter comes around again, stand decapitated in the snow.

There were over 11,200 dairy farms in Vermont in the 1940s, 1,091 ten years ago, and only 749 last year. It's mostly the little dairies that go bankrupt, while the mega-farms, those with over 700 animals confined in barns, have doubled in number. Falling milk prices, government regulations, high equipment costs, and, especially, the change in Americans' drinking habits (less milk, more beer) are all to blame.

The situation is so depressing that last February the co-op that owns Cabot Creamery sent farmers a list of suicide prevention hotlines along with the milk check (See Seven Days).

Fewer farms, more macmansions: Vermont is not quite what it used to be. If you doubt Vermont's drift away from its rural, farm-based identity, all you have to do is look at the change in the Bag Balm tin.

Created in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom in 1899, Bag Balm, that panacea for skin-related cold-weather ills, originally came in a green tin with a picture on the lid of a cow's head framed by a garland of clover leaves and blossoms. The side panels featured a drawing of an udder along with indications and directions for use: "For minor congestion of the udder due to calving, high feeding, bruising or chilling..."

The farmer was instructed to massage the balm gently into the udder fifteen minutes twice a day, or oftener. After a few sessions, those old-time farmers noticed a smoothing and softening of their own chapped skin. And this is how, despite the "Veterinary use only" caution on the tin, Bag Balm spread from the cows to their caretakers and then to village dwellers, skiers, tourists and assorted flatlanders as a sovereign remedy against winter skin woes.

This year, when a succession of weeks with below zero temperatures gave my spouse's hands that old sand-papery feel, he went out to get more Bag Balm and came back with a smaller tin that proclaims itself "Vermont's Original Bag Balm." The formula is the same, as is the pungent, uncompromising smell of the ointment, and there is still a picture of the cow's head on the cover, albeit much reduced. But the drawing of the udder is gone.

In fact, there is no mention of udders at all in the new tin. Gone also are the instructions to "thoroughly wash treated teats and udder before each milking....[After milking]strip milk out clean, dry skin and apply Bag Balm freely." The manufacturers must have figured that all this talk of teats and stripping would freak out customers who don't want to think about where milk comes from. Instead, they are now marketing the Balm as a "skin moisturizer for hands and body," Vermont's version of Jergen's or Eucerin.

Not that I blame the makers of Bag Balm. They are just trying to keep their business afloat, and with fewer cows with sore teats around, they had to expand their customer base. They have a gorgeous website which includes a video of real farmers talking about the product. But I miss the old tin, whose no-nonsense instructions transported me, every time I opened the lid, to the steamy inside of a dairy barn at winter milking time. I imagined the Holsteins, big as school buses; the doe-eyed little Jerseys; and the farmer making the rounds from cow to cow, filling his bucket and squirting an occasional milky jet into the mouth of the waiting barn cat.

This (admittedly romanticized) scene is becoming as rare as the original tins of Bag Balm.What can we do to help small farmers hang on, not just in Vermont but all over the country? Those of us who are neither economists, politicians, or farmers can start with what is right in front of our noses: we can buy, eat, and think local. And if like me you don't drink milk, you can still help the cause by buying local cheese--in Vermont, we have an astounding 150 varieties.*

*France supposedly has 1,000 varieties of cheese, but also 67 million Frenchmen, vs. fewer than 700,000 Vermonters.

The Tire and I

Back in the mists of our early marriage, my husband showed me how to check the air pressure in the car tires. But those were the halcyon days of full-service gas stations, when the attendant always asked “check your tires, ma’am?” I would answer yes, and he would crawl around the car doing whatever was needed while I sat drumming my fingers on the steering wheel and looking off into space.

  

Now, a half century later, the chickens of my cavalier attitude towards tire maintenance have come to roost. Twice in the last six months, while I was far from home, the tire warning light gave me a fright by coming on.

The first time was during an episode of “wintry mix,” when the sky was simultaneously spewing rain, snow, and those annoying Styrofoam-like ice pellets. I was wearing a down vest instead of a parka and shoes instead of boots—I had expected to stay in the car, after all—and when I pulled into a filling station I had to tromp through a mountain of gritty snow that the plow had piled in front of the air pump.

I connected the air pump hose into my tire, got some quarters, waded into the snow bank, fed the machine, returned to the tire—and nothing happened. I offered the machine more quarters, hoping that my generosity would persuade it to disgorge some air, with no success. As a layer of wintry mix hardened on my glasses, I went into the station and asked for help.

“I’m sorry, the machine is out of order,” the attendant said.

“Do you know where I could find one that works?”

“Nah, not around here…”

Shivering, I got back in the car, dried my glasses, and drove home with bated breath, the tire light flashing reproachfully all the way. While I recovered with a glass of wine by the fireplace, my husband quickly inflated the tire with his portable air pump.

The next time the tire light came on was a sweltering July day. I was driving through the adorable Vermont countryside, replete with cows and barns, meadows and ponds. I stopped at a country store and was told that the nearest station was 30 miles away, but when I got there, there was no air pump. After more miles of hills, woods and farms I found a station with an air pump, which was out of order.

Sweating from every pore, holding my breath lest the tire go completely flat, I traveled on and at last found a station with a working pump. But by then I was so frazzled and dehydrated that all I could do was throw myself at the mercy of the cash register guy, who kindly inflated my tire while I sipped some Gatorade.

It took a while—about five months --to gear myself up for it, but yesterday I announced to my husband that I was going into the garage to check the tires, and would he stick around in case I needed help.

It was 20F outside and barely warmer in the garage, but I figured that this would be good practice for me, since the tire light liked to come on in extreme weather.

I found the air pump, plugged it into the cigarette lighter socket, and approached tire #1. I have a lifelong aversion to getting my hands dirty, and I wear gloves to dust a book or wash a dish, but this job would require fine manipulation, so gloves were out of the question. Trying to keep from touching any dirt, I unscrewed the inflation nozzle cap with my fingertips. This required me to kneel on the unpristine floor, but I reminded myself that in a real situation, i.e., by the side of the highway, conditions would be far worse.

“O.k.,” my husband said, “now screw the air hose connector onto the nozzle.”

I had to bend my arm at a weird angle to do this, and no matter how hard I tried the hose connector refused to connect with the nozzle. By now my fingers were red and stiff with cold, and smudged with grease.

Suddenly, a hiss as from a thousand cobras came out of the tire. “Quick! You’re losing air! Keep turning the screw!” my instructor said. But my frozen fingers could barely function, and the hiss was making it hard for me to concentrate.

Somehow the hiss stopped, and I checked the pressure gauge: 32 psi—just right.

But as I began to unscrew the hose connector, the hiss started up again. “You’ve probably lost too much air. Check the pressure again,” he instructed. I did: 31psi. “You’ll have to reinflate,” he said.

I rescrewed the connector onto the nozzle until the hiss went away. I pressed the On button on the pump and held on as it blasted air into the tire. I checked the pressure: 33 psi. I’d have to let some air out again, take another reading, reinflate….

What circle of hell, I wondered, was I stuck in? Would there ever be an end to this? Would my frozen fingers bend again? I didn’t remember the station attendants of yore having all this trouble.

Somehow, I got tire #1 done. I had to grab the door handle to stand up (my knees were frozen too). I brushed the dirt off my pants, hobbled over to tire #2, and genuflected. Some neighbors walking by saw me struggling with the air pump while my husband stood by with his hands in his pockets, and quickly averted their eyes.

Contrary to my expectations, tire #2 was no easier than #1, and neither was #3 or #4. Practice was not making perfect here. At one point there was an episode of cross-threading that I don’t want to even think about.

“I think that’s good enough,” my husband finally said of my work on #4. He helped me up and led me into the house.

“This is ridiculous!” I exclaimed, scrubbing my hands at the kitchen sink and slathering lotion on them. “Am I going to have to go through this every time I check the tire pressure? It’s too damn hard! There’s got to be a better way.”

“Uber?” said my husband.

But I will not capitulate. Research shows that it takes on average ten thousand hours to master a skill such as playing the violin. Assuming tire inflation to be only 50% as difficult, that means I’ll have to spend five thousand hours crawling around on the garage floor, screwing connectors and reading psis before I get it right.

Even so, I have no illusion that I’ll ever approximate the easy grace of those gas station guys of yore who so sweetly used to ask, “Check your tires, ma’am?”

Some Things I Miss...

Some things I miss from my previous life:
Two goats
Ten hens
Nine garden beds
Four apple trees
A sloping hay field
A tumbledown stone wall
A swamp
The woods behind the house, and the thrush that sang in them
The imprint of fawn hooves on the driveway in mud season
The squeaky-door song of the phoebes at dawn
The frogs in the frog pond
The black bear at the bird feeder
The ermine in the garage
The milking pail, the cheese press
The me who believed she could keep it all going.

(photo by Alison Cobb)

A Touch of PTSD

If you live long enough, stuff happens to you.  For me, most recently, it's been the breast cancer diagnosis and surgery of my daughter A.  The great good news is that her lymph nodes are clear.  I had never thought very much about lymph nodes before, but now I think about A.'s all the time, and send them messages of gratitude and encouragement.

These have, needless to say, been trying weeks.  Never had Francis Bacon's saying, "he that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune" struck so close to home.  Happily, my particular hostage is doing very well. I, on the other hand, surprised myself after the good news about the lymph nodes by going into a sort of decline.

Before the surgery, I spent days of panic in which I only assumed the worst.  No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't talk myself into imagining a less-than-dire scenario.  All attempts at rationality failed, reducing me to a trembling, gnarly tangle of dread.  The only explanation I can think of is that I was acting out of a deep well of primitive superstition, believing that if I allowed myself to picture a happy outcome, I would instantly jinx its chances of happening.

My strategy apparently worked, and when we got the good news I felt that Atlas himself had removed the weight of the planet which had crashed down on me the day of A.'s initial diagnosis.  I also expected that I would immediately begin to feel much better.  Instead, on subsequent days my dark emotional state persisted, as if my body--and the feeling did, in fact, seem largely physical--had grown so accustomed to being in alarm mode that now it couldn't shift out of it.  I felt raw, exhausted, yet unable to rest.  I finally concluded that I was experiencing a minor case of PTSD, and that I would just have to wait it out.

I'm happy to say that the dread is subsiding.  The other day I was driving through Vermont's annual foliage extravaganza, with a Bach piano partita playing on the radio.  The assault of so much beauty on eyes and ears simultaneously almost forced me to stop by the side of the road.  For a moment I didn't think about lymph nodes, Francis Bacon, or the need to perch serenely on the knife-edge of uncertainty.  There was only the visual buzz of the sumac, the honey locust and the maples, and the measured, majestic gracefulness of Bach.

Last Week Was Really Something

Over a five-day period, thirteen members of our family came together right here in Vermont to celebrate (in more-or-less chronological order):

--The publication of her first novel by my daughter S
--My husband's and my 47th wedding anniversary
--The legal marriage (as opposed to the unofficial one, which took place a decade ago) of my daughter A and her partner K.  The celebrant was Beth Robinson, who spearheaded the civil unions legislation in Vermont.
--My husband's 70th birthday, which he marked by jumping out of a plane at twelve thousand feet


That's a lot of rejoicing--but no joy on this earth is unalloyed, and beneath all the hoopla ran the anxious continuo of A's very recent breast cancer diagnosis, which is what has kept me from writing here lately.

But days pass, plans are made, and hope revives.

In the midst of the festivities, we also interred my mother's ashes, as per her instructions.  We dug a hole under a young beech tree and poured in the cream-colored grit.  I patted it down with my hands, and was glad to see an earthworm wriggling in the moist dirt.  Together, the worm and my mother's remains will enrich this particular bit of Vermont soil.

The birds are mostly silent now;  the sumac is turning red;  and it's time I got back to writing.

Dog Walk in the Gloaming

Wolfie had one of his bad-limp days on Sunday, and I was thinking maybe he shouldn't come on our evening walk.  But when it was time to leave, my husband decided to join us and, hating to leave Wolfie alone, I put leashes on him and Bisou and we set off on one of Wake Robin's many paths.

You could wander practically forever in the woods here.  The paths themselves are a thing of beauty, meticulously cleared, with lots of signs so you don't get lost, and little plank bridges over awkward spots that always make me think of Japan.  You'd think people come to places like Wake Robin to get away from chores.  But here the residents tap maples and boil sap for syrup;  keep honeybees;  do battle against buckthorn and poison parsnip;  and maintain the trails.  It's the Vermont take on aging.

The woods at this time of year are starting to get that slightly toasted look--the acid greens of spring giving way to the avocado shades of late summer--and on the tips of distressed trees and bushes you can see tinges of red.  The birds, finished with their parenting duties, are mostly silent now.  The crickets are still chirping, but their slower rhythm tells me that fall is around the corner.

Bisou and I led the way down the darkened path.  Behind me Wolfie hopped on three legs--I could hear the heavy thud of each step as he came down on his good front left.  He was panting loudly with the effort.  "Do you think he'll get exhausted when we were far from home?"  I asked my husband.  "At least the ground on the paths is easier on his joints than asphalt," he said.

It's hard to know what to do about Wolfie.  He spent a day at a diagnostic center a couple of weeks ago, and had lots of x-rays, which showed abnormal bone growth on his metatarsals.  His joints are clear--it's not arthritis.  The bone growth could be caused by cancer or by a horrible fungus, but the vets agree that either of those would have made him much sicker by now.  We've tried him on different kinds of pain meds, none of which appear to make any difference.

He doesn't seem to be in acute misery.  His coat looks fine and his appetite is good.  He's mostly enthusiastic about going on walks.  But oh, the sight of that big black dog hopping clumsily on three legs!

While Wolfie hopped and I worried, Bisou was busy collecting teeny tiny sticky burrs all over her long, wavy ears, the gold feathers on her legs and belly, and her lovely red tail.  Every day after our walk I have to comb the things out of her coat, and lately they've gotten so bad that I'm almost tempted to stop walking in the woods and stay on the paved paths.  But as soon as the weather turns cool the ticks will hatch again (spring and fall are their favorite seasons), and then the woods will be out of bounds until the serious cold arrives. 

We walked for almost an hour, and by the time we neared the house Wolfie had stopped hopping.  This could either mean that he no longer hurt, or that he was so tired of walking on three legs that he had to put his bad foot down despite the pain.  Of one thing there was no question, though:  he was happy.

So at least for now, while the days are long and we're still able, before the ticks hatch and the snow flies, we'll keep on walking the paths.

Prong

You may recall my recent fruitless attempts to teach Bisou to give up her sled-dog ways and walk nicely on leash (http://mygreenvermont.blogspot.com/2014/06/country-dogcity-dog.html ).  The only weapons in my arsenal were:  1.  treats, which I would administer during those fleeting moments when I could catch her being "good," and 2.  stopping dead in my tracks whenever she pulled (every minute or so) and "ignoring" her. 

Weapon #1 worked from time to time, but was no match for the lure of a robin hopping on the grass, or a whiff of rabbit.  Weapon #2 just made her laugh.

For the first time in my five-year love affair with Bisou, I was starting to feel seriously annoyed by her.  I found myself putting off our training sessions until it was almost dark, and looking for excuses to avoid them altogether.  And yet, because for very good reasons dogs cannot run free at Wake Robin, Bisou urgently needed to learn to walk on leash.

When my German Shepherds reached adolescence,  our obedience teachers unhesitatingly recommended a prong collar.  If you are using a flat collar, a big, powerful dog suddenly taking off after a chipmunk can easily knock you off your feet or pull your arm out of socket.  So I learned to use the collars properly, and none of my dogs ever gave signs of physical or emotional damage (needless to say, the prongs are blunt, not sharp).

After weeks of frustration, as Bisou pulled me up yet another hill and I began to run out of both patience and treats, trying a prong collar on her began to seem like a possible solution.  Given her sweet and gentle looks (Bisou is a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel), very few people realize what a tough little customer she is, driven by her spaniel genes to run like the wind and hunt the scurrying denizens of woods and fields.  This is a dog who, when she came to us at eight weeks old, met our two German Shepherds without blinking.  And when Lexi and Wolfie would get into one of their sparring matches, standing on their hind legs and flashing their teeth, Bisou would run smack into their midst, play-growling with all her heart.

After much thought, I decided that it was important to put an end to the vicious cycle of her misbehavior and my frustration, and to make it possible for both of us to enjoy our walks together. Confident that I could adjust my use of the prong collar so as not to traumatize her.  I went to the pet store and bought a small one.  At home, before putting it on her, I slipped it around my forearm and gave it a good yank.  I didn't feel much, but then I realized that Bisou would have the collar around her neck, so I pulled my hair out of the way, clipped Wolfie's prong collar around my neck, and yanked hard.  It wasn't pleasant, but it wasn't awful, either.

I knelt on the ground and called Bisou.  "Sweetie," I said, clipping the collar on her, "I'm doing this for the sake of our relationship." 

The minute we stepped outside, Bisou, as was her wont, catapulted to the end of the leash.  The collar did its work.  "Yikes!" she said, "What was that?" and ran back to me.  I took a step and she charged forth.  "Yikes!  It happened again!" she observed.  I took another step, she charged.  "Yikes! etc."

And that was that.  After the third time, she figured out what was happening and made sure that the leash stayed loose as we walked.  I watched her carefully for signs of upset, but she was stepping  jauntily, head up, tail high.  She was enjoying her walk, and so was I.  Since I didn't have to stop every time she pulled on the leash, we covered a lot more ground than on our prior outings.  I can hardly describe my relief at no longer having to constantly monitor her, to give or withhold treats, to control my urge to yell at her. 

I stopped at a spot with a view of Lake Champlain and gave Bisou permission ("Smell it!") to sniff around.  The sun was setting in a clear sky behind the Adirondacks, and my heart felt as placid as the surface of the lake.  Having deciphered the messages on the grass to her satisfaction, Bisou looked up at me.  "What a terrific dog you are, Bisoulette," I said, meaning every word.  And she wagged her tail and trotted happily beside me, all the way home.

Dying To Shop

For most of the last decade I've been in shopping withdrawal.  Along with the woods, the cow-dotted meadows, and the pastoral quiet of our former place in rural Vermont came an almost total absence of stores.

And in my heart I believed that this was a good thing.  It kept us from buying things that had been manufactured under dubious conditions in the far reaches of the planet and that we didn't need in the first place. It forced us to focus on our souls instead of on our stuff.

The availability of everything I could ever want on the internet kept this withdrawal from being absolute, of course.  But as far as actually seeing, touching, and smelling material goods for sale, I was as isolated as a hermit in her desert cave.  Occasionally this lack of stores got annoying, such as the time I had to drive forty-five minutes--albeit through a gorgeous snow-shrouded landscape--to buy a spool of brown thread.  And whenever we left home and ventured into civilization, a casual drive past a strip mall would have me slavering with the desire to buy something, anything.

Now I live around the corner from Vermont's ultra-cool shopping mecca.  The little market three minutes from our cottage carries four brands of Spanish olive oil, one of them from my mother's village in Catalonia, and goat cheeses from at least a dozen local farms.  There are furniture stores overflowing with exquisite pieces made by Vermont woodworkers from Vermont wood, and  boutiques selling clothes woven by Vermont weavers from the wool of Vermont sheep.  There are stores that cater to the enlightened pet owner and kitchen stores that make even me want to cook.

So I have been doing a lot of slavering, but mostly in vain.

If, for example, I go into the market for some breakfast yogurt, I have to ignore the olive oils and the cheeses and the racks of locally-baked breads bristling with grains.  For there is only so much even I can eat, and every day of the year Wake Robin provides us with a lovely, nutritious meal, and the oils would go rancid and the cheeses moldy and the bread stale in our pantry if I succumbed to my urges and brought them home.

I also have to give the furniture stores, the boutiques and the kitchen stores a miss.  Having just pressed one of my daughters into taking my husband's grandmother's wedding china, what am I doing even looking at noodle bowls from Japan?  We have given away, sold, or thrown out eighty percent of our belongings in order to fit into this cottage.  I'd better do a thorough examination of conscience before I bring even a salt shaker into our tiny space.

Maybe I could buy some clothes?  Clothes don't take up a lot of room, especially if they are made of silk.  But we all know where cheap silk comes from, and what those brilliant dyes are doing to rivers across the globe.  Besides, I have clothes hanging in my closet that are a couple of decades old and still perfectly wearable.  So buying clothes isn't a good way to assuage my shopping urges.

I suspect there isn't one.  Maybe what I need is to start meditating again, sitting on the floor and breathing, focusing on my soul, etc.  As it happens, my meditation cushion, which dates from sometime in the 90s, is looking scruffy.  There is bound to be a meditation store nearby....

How I Survived the Move

From the first conversation about how maybe it was time to leave the house on the hill, it only took us five months to move into our cottage in Wake Robin, near Lake Champlain.  Some people take years to complete the process of choosing and then moving to a retirement community, but we said, "Why prolong the agony?  Let's get it over with."

This was my husband's and my fourteenth move since the Summer of Love of 1967, and you'd think that all that practice would have made us into pros, but this was by far the hardest move of all.  Since we were swapping a 2400 square-foot house with ten closets plus attic, basement, and outbuildings, for a 1400 square-foot cottage with four closets, we had to get rid of most of our stuff.

You will be surprised to hear that during this period I was not my sweet unflappable self.  In fact the combined anxieties about disposing of truckloads of belongings, and getting it all done in time for the move turned me into a sort of emotional porcupine.

And when, weary and guilt-ridden after a day of packing and sorting and flinging quills at my spouse, I tried to take a break, the chaos around me made it hard to relax.  Unclassifiable objects mocked me from half-filled boxes;  the dogs, anxious and bored, followed me panting from room to room;  and there was no comfortable place to sit. At the rate I was going, when we finally arrived in Wake Robin I would have to go not into independent living, but into skilled nursing.

That was when the universe sent me the inspiration to  re-read War and Peace.  For $.99 Tolstoy's masterpiece wafted into my Kindle and wafted me away from my chaotic Vermont homestead and into 19th century Russia.

I quickly realized that, in the decades since I'd first read the book, either Tolstoy had become a much better writer or I had become a better reader.  My jaw fell open at the masterful characterizations--Natasha's childish arms;  Pierre's spectacles;  Princess Mary's timidity.  My preference for the characters had changed as well.  In my twenties I had had eyes only for the intense, handsome Prince Andre, but now it was plump Pierre's soul that captivated me.  And those battle scenes that had bored me almost to death I now found fascinating--in part because they confirmed my suspicion that there is no "art of war," just a lot of noise and confusion and sheer dumb luck, or lack of it.

The day the movers came, I hardly noticed, so immersed was I in the battle of Borodino.  And Napoleon's retreat from Russia got me through the first hectic twenty-four hours at the cottage.  But the best part of this second reading of War and Peace was being able to take refuge in Tolstoy's voice, which remained the same, both powerful and serene, throughout my travails.  For the last week in the old house, that voice was the only constant in my life, and every time I dove into the book I thought, "does Tolstoy know, wherever he is, how grateful I feel?"

Despite my porcupine impersonations--or perhaps because of them--the move went without a hitch.  In fact, when the movers first arrived, the driver went through the house with me--up to the top floor and down to the basement, out to the garage and the old milking room--and as he passed the piles of neatly packed and labeled boxes he whistled and said, "boy, you've really got things under control here!"  It was one of the proudest moments of my life.

Here We Are

I finally found my drawing tools, so I made a picture of our cottage:

Legend:
1.  The Adirondacks
2.  Lake Champlain (visible only in winter)
3.  Weird little gingko
4.  My portable citrus orchard
5.  Grassy knoll mowed weekly by angels in human form

As you can see, my Vermont is still quite green...

Ta-Ta For Now

I guess I'll never be one of those heroic bloggers who manage to post every day no matter what is going on in their lives.

What is going on in my life right now is our impending move to a cottage at Wake Robin, a retirement community just south of Burlington, a stone's throw from Lake Champlain.

When I first envisaged this move, I thought I could keep up posting at least once a week, but I'm not  managing even that.  And it's not as if I don't have plenty to write about.  In fact, it's probably  the overabundance of topics that, as much as the sorting and packing, has kept me from posting.

Nothing prompts intensive soul searching like having to hold in your hands and make a decision about every single object in your house.  Some day I may write about all that has been going through my mind this winter and spring.  Paradoxically, this shedding of an old life and jumping into a new one requires the recklessness and optimism of youth, not to mention its energy.
But at present all I can think about is trolling liquor stores for empty cardboard boxes, keeping an eye on my dwindling stock of packing tape, and getting rid of the horrible odor that remains on my hands after a day wearing disposable gloves (I can't decide which I can tolerate better, to have my hands grimy with newsprint or smelling of rubber.)

So for now I'll go away from these pages, to return sometime in June when we're settled in our tiny abode in the northern reaches of my green Vermont.  I'm sure I'll have a couple of stories to tell.

The Warbler and the Septic Tank Guy

As a grace note for our potential house buyers, yesterday we had the septic tank drained.  The septic tank guy was dragging the heavy hose across our lawn, when he stopped by the front door, the one we hardly ever use.  "There's a bird nesting in that wreath," he said.  "Probably a warbler..."

I take a minimalist approach to Christmas decorations, but last winter I did buy a plain evergreen wreath for the front door.  A few days ago, I was walking up the driveway, scanning the house for defects, when I saw that the evergreen wreath had turned brown, and was sure to depress and deter anybody who came to see the house.  I decided to remove the wreath right away, and throw it into the dumpster (there is now a glorious rusty-green dumpster parked by the garage), but by the time I reached the house a million other urgencies--call the septic tank guy, the floor guy, the auction guy--had erased the wreath from my mind.

And that's a good thing, because in my abstracted mood I would have flung the wreath into the dumpster without noticing the tiny brown nest sitting amid the brown leaves.  But thanks to our alert  septic tank man, the future of the three diminutive pale-blue eggs is now assured.

I am willing to accept the septic tank man's tentative identification of the bird as a warbler.  (How many septic tank guys on the planet even know what a warbler is?  But in Vermont, he's probably not the only one.)  I've tried to get a look at the parent bird, but every time I come within ten yards of the nest he or she flies out with a loud grouse-like flutter.

Where security is concerned, this bird is a lot more uptight than the bluebird nesting in the back of the house, who hardly bothers to leave his perch when we walk out into the patio.  One thing he does leave, unfortunately, is great Pollock-like streaks of white poop on the newly painted barn-red wall.

So now we have a dismal brown wreath on the front door which cannot be touched until those eggs hatch and the (probable) warbler babies fledge.  And on the back wall we have bluebird poop which will continue to accumulate until the early- and late-season sets of bluebird nestlings take off.

If these birds don't leave us alone, this house will never sell.