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Letter To Clifford, 4
These are letters to my mom written last year. I am on hiatus. Good books I have read or am reading, Crichton's, State of Fear, not by far his best writing but extremely thought provoking and a hell of a 5 or 6 page bibliography, with notes, at the end, A Paul Auster, I can't think of the name though, about a fireman drifting meeting a skinny card sharp, and they have adventures together, really good. And I'm in the middle of Jack London's, Sea Wolf, it really good, too.
Dear Mom, 3/30/05
Spring has sprung here in Virginia. Daffodils are blooming and Forsythia is coming on and there is this hedge surrounding my back porch which I think is called Winter Jasmine and it has yellow flowers all winter so there is a lot of yellow around here. For another month or so there is still the possibility of frost or snow so the only thing going in gardens right now is spinach, carrots, potatoes or other cool weather crops. T, my girlfriend, whom you've met twice, grows over an acre of vegetables and flowers so she has started over a thousand plants indoors under lights and is now starting to harden them off and they spend the days outside. They are grown in 18X24 inch flats, each of which holds fifty plants. She is also starting an asparagus bed this year and raspberries and blueberries and a few grapes.
As agent for J and LF I am this year undertaking the task of attracting a Purple Martin colony to the property (40 acres two hours west of Washington DC). I have been given the go ahead to purchase two more expensive four-room additions to go on the existing pole with one four-plex, which I put up a few months ago in anticipation of the May-June nesting season. Apparently, the attracting of Purple Martins is a somewhat exacting science and so in the four to six week window in which I have to attract Martin sub adults to their new home I will be playing a Martin dawn song bird tape in the hours preceding dawn (I will put the tape on a timer so I don't actually have to get up to start the tape every morning), and I may have to keep some of the birdhouse holes plugged until they are needed so that sparrow and other common birds don't invade, and I may have to smear a little mud around the openings and stick a little pine straw to it so it has that messy lived in look that Martins evidently like, and I have a couple of plastic Martin decoys to attach on or near the birdhouse, and I may for all I know have to put on a Purple Martin suit and sing a little song my ownself and maybe wear a sandwich board that says--Young Martins Welcome, or, Hey, Young Martins, If You Lived Here, You'd be Home Already.
I repainted a utility shed yesterday and it looks pretty damn good.
I hear that me and my four brothers and one sister were successful in getting you to graciously accept the idea of in-home help and that there is a young woman named Katrina Washington coming by a few hours every day. I hope she is to your liking or in the likely event that she is not exactly to your liking I hope you can find some peaceful middle ground on which to stand, and be peaceful, about it.
I received your Easter card last week. The card was nice even though Easter day itself was cold and rainy.
Take care--from your youngest 45-year-old son, Jim Louis.
Letter To Clifford, 3
Dear Mom,
J's wife, L, brought out here last summer two birdhouses. They had to be put together. One of them was octagonal, you know, eight-sided, and me and her and her oldest son (10) spent the better part of an afternoon screwing together the metal sides of the two tier birdhouse. So, each tier had eight sides, which meant 16 total sides for this birdhouse. There were 400 nuts and 400 bolts, so small that a person would be better served to have tweezers instead of fingers to handle them.
There used to be little rubber pads covering the bridge of my reading glasses but they are now lost so when I bend over they fall off. While I was helping to construct the birdhouse I had to keep pushing up on my glasses. When I started sighing L said I didn't have to do this if I didn't want to but you and I know she didn't exactly mean that. And anyway, I have a lot more than one or two sighs in me for any given job.
In addition to the difficulty presented by the large number of parts there was the danger of slicing off one or two fingers because the metal was thin, and sharp, like a steak knife. Telling her son, J, to be careful, was about as useful as yelling at a deaf person.
The F's, J and L and their three sons, J, A, and W, don't usually stay out here for the whole day, and so when they left that day last summer I still had a few mystery parts to add to the birdhouse. It was a mystery I was able to solve but then I had to consider the construction of a second birdhouse. The second birdhouse turned out to be much simpler, and studier, so I decided to erect it first, out in the back pasture. The problem with this studier birdhouse is that it only comes with four bird apartments as opposed to the other less sturdy birdhouse, which has sixteen. These are supposed to purple martin houses and you need more than four apartments if you expect to attract even a small flock the first year. And you start trying to attract them in March or April, depending on which part of the country you live in. This being February I thought I should start looking.
I looked on the Internet recently and found several suppliers for the sturdy birdhouse that is known as the American Heritage Quad Pod Purple Martin Birdhouse system. As the name (Quad) implies, each unit, sold separately, had four bird apartments. I had set up just one Quad (four apartments) and the pole can hold up to three more, for a total of sixteen purple martin apartments. I was thinking two more, for a total of twelve apartments, would be adequate. But on sale they cost $125 a piece (regular price--$175). I have the ability and permission to spend J and L's money for property related expenses but I'm not going to spend that much money on a birdhouse, without talking to them first.
I have some tree trimming to do today. Perhaps that will take my mind off of $700 birdhouses.
Take care, from your youngest 45 year old son, Jim.