Vernal Vengeance

Many ancient religions (and contemporary religions as well) reenact the cycle of the seasons in their rituals. Most rituals begin with an acknowledgment of Winter's mortification--an empty lifeless state. Then, a rite of purgation or cleansing occurs (Spring cleaning, anyone?). Next: invigortion--an attempt to bring new life into the world. Finally, a celebration of the return of life. This pattern can be found in ancient Babylonian festivals and Catholic mass. And in our front yard.

All of our mortificant shrubs and trees are slowly awakening. the creeping phlox was first to show:

Incidentally, this variety is the "Flirty Eye Creeping Phlox," which is my new pick for best fictional venereal disease EVAR!

Next, the Japanese Cherry tree decided to wake up. I was worried in the Fall, but this one seems to love our yard.

Our Redbud tree is also beginning to show, albeit coyly. We have just a tiny spray of color around its ankles.

More on this tree later in the season. Legend has it, that this is the tree from which Judas hanged himself. Its wood is so weak, because it refuses to allow suicides to ever happen again, preferring its own flesh to be broken and torn instead. How's that for some medieval atonement theology? Happy Easter weekend!!

Even our Zombie Crepe Myrtle is starting to moan and shuffle. In the Fall, I decided I didn't like its shape, and overzealously pruned it. Turns out that plants need leaves to survive though. Go figure. This time, I won't cut these little guys off.

Yay Spring!!

Belated Ice Worries

This should have been posted 2 months ago, but we noticed, in the really cold weeks of January, that we had some weird fortress-of-solitude type crystal growth emerging from the turf. Odd, yes? Hoary gelid stalagmites. (You can always remember that stalagmites push up from the ground mightily, while stalagtites hang tight to the ceiling).

The ground between the house and the air conditioning unit is pretty much a cesspool. It's always very wet due to the condensation drainage from the outside unit and a drain pipe from the inside unit. I'm guessing that's what caused this.

A few weeks ago, after the thaw, I dropped a socket wrench from 3 feet, and the thing sank into the muck up to the head. Looked exactly like this:

We've put in a splashpad to redirect some of the moisture away from the foundation, but that won't change the fact that we live in the swamps of sadness. But, you know, happier.

Rage Against the Beige

When we moved in, one of thing that we liked about the house was that we wouldn't have to do a lot of painting. Then we moved our stuff in and realized that the living room was the perfect storm of beige. Beige carpet. Light beige furniture. Dark beige walls.

Well, Christmas came, and the elves brought me multiple gift cards to Lowe's and this:

a 10-inch laser-guided miter saw!

The elves explained to me it could be used to do lots of things, like cut chair rails and molding, butcher exotic cuts of dinosaur meat, or install hardwood flooring. "Just look at those Lowe's gift cards!" the elves chittered, "think of the possibilities!"

The Ms. declared we would repaint the living room. We would install chair rail. We would hang drapes. It would be a glorious new era of post-beige domesticity. More than anything else, it would be blue. Let the amateur carpentry begin!

One thing to consider when picking a paint color is photons. Photons are factually awesome. Lighter colored surfaces bounce back more photons into a room, creating more light, while darker colored surfaces absorb the photons, leaving a darker room.

Since the living room already has limited natural light, and the dark walls sucked out even more light, we decided on a two-tone blue scheme. "Sea Mist"on top of the chair rail, and "Grassy Lake" below.

this joint looks crooked, but it isn't

After a lot of tape masking, priming, painting, touching up, cutting molding, measuring, coping joints, mitering joints, finish nailing, puttying of mistakes, caulking, even more painting, and the rearranging of furniture, I think we've got a much brighter, more open, and colorful room.

Before

After

Now we just need to replace the carpet... (that's what literary folk call foreshadowing).

moss-be-gone!

There are so many gorgeous moss-trimmed trees here in NC...it really makes me appreciate living in a wetter climate. But I DON'T like it when moss grows on our patio and house! Yes, just like the trees, the north side of our property grows moss. It could be lichen, but we'd have to ask my dad, the amateur lichen-lover, to verify.

I thought the moss was quaint at first, a sign that we'd really left the hot, arid Southern California climate. But the more it grows, the slipperier (more slippery?) it gets and the more it stinks, making our patio look like the Creepshow episode where that guy touched a meteor, then everything else he touched grew green fur until his entire house and body were covered in it....eesh!



So, the handyman said he could pressure-wash it for a fee. But we're done working with him because he's paranoid and constantly lectures us on how to fix our house (while he's fixing our house), and how to avoid being attacked by the enemy during battle. We thought about buying or renting our own pressure washer, but it's a little pricey. We've reserved our Christmas Lowe's gift cards for painting the living room.

Some people suggested bleach or vinegar - possibly inhumane and inefficient choices, respectively. In the end, we decided to buy a tub of OxyClean, mix it in a bucket of water, slosh the mixture all over the patio and house siding, and "power" spray it all with our own hose. The Portly Groundskeeper actually did all the hard labor while I napped.

The whole process took about an hour, and it actually worked pretty well! All the green moss is gone, bringing the patio back to it's normal non-life sustaining appearance. Some little bits of brown dirt-looking areas are still ground into the cement, so we're going to try the whole process again next week to see if we can improve the results. I've tentatively nominated myself for the job to be considerate.

As far as we can tell, there is no way to prevent this phenomenon from occurring, but we are looking into options such as anti-mold/mildew paint. We'll see.

Advice from the Handyman

"If you hit a deer with your car, or see someone hit a deer, you should take the deer. Don't call the cops. The cops will just wait until you leave, then strangle or kick the deer and take it home. You take it first. You'll have a better Thanksgiving."

"By the way, you know what a deer looks like, right? A donkey is not a deer."

Evergreens

When we moved in, we noticed that our front flower bed had these very pretty orange flowers in it, and an undead crepe myrtle (more about this later).

Well, the flowers died, so we replaced them with some contrasting evergreens. "Vintage Gold" Chinese False Cypress in back and "Blue Star" Juniper in front.

Our deadliest catch

We dug a new flower bed this weekend. Why? Because gardening is cheap entertainment. While digging up turf and cultivating the soil, we dug up a deadly little visitor. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you a millipede of the genus apheloria...

This thing is about the size of my index finger.

 

I was curious what all the day-glow orange was about. Isn't that nature's way of indicating friendliness? No wait, it indicates danger.

After a quick google, it appears that the aphorelia millipede, when threatened, emits a cyanide compound from its flanks. ITS FLANKS. Was this millipdede designed by the KGB? Sarah Moyer notes that

Apheloria corrugate is a chemistry marvel. It produces hydrogen cyanide (HCN). HCN, also known as cyanide, is a well-known poison that once inhaled will compromise the respiratory processes on a molecular level and in high enough doses result in death.

Storage of the HCN is a slightly complicated task. Since HCN is a gas at room temperature and could harm Apheloria corrugate if they stored it as HCN, their bodies are designed to store it in a special way. On both sides segments 5,7,9,10,12,13, and 15 to 19 of its body, they have two different chambers that each contain a different chemical that produce HCN when they are mixed.

When they want to defend themselves, they release the first chemical (mandelonitrile) from its storage chamber into the reaction chamber that contains an enzyme (benzoyl cyanide). Once these mix, they produce benzoic acid and HCN. It secretes from glandular pores located on each side of 11 segments of its body. They produce droplets that stay attached to the gland opening. Shortly after they secret HCN, the smell of bitter almonds will surface which will kill most of their enemies.

An adult Apheloria corrugate can produce as much as 0.6 milligrams of HCN. This is enough to kill ants and deter many of their other enemies. It's 6 times the lethal dose of a 25-gram mouse and 0.01 times the lethal dose of a human.

OK OK, so maybe .01x the lethal dose isn't technically deadly (unless you put 100 of the millipedes in your mouth, which is a remote possibility in this house), nevertheless, apparently the HCN is enough to make a person fairly ill. So yeah, we threw it over the fence into the backyard. Oops.