In December 2011 we got ourselves finally organized and fixed the roof, which was direly needed as the last winter had left us with a number of ice dams and some damage inside…. It was an amazingly mild December I remember and we got the roofers to come, and we did not forget about a new skylight either. Now with the summer in full swing I was watching the roof not getting a lot of sun on the backside and the trees leaving lots of droppings. So finally on July 28, I decided it had to be done and I bought the basic equipment at REI. I bought a harness for rock climbing (not ideal as I found out later), a nice static rope, two nice ascender devices (Petzl), an ballay device (ATS), a number of slings and carabiners.
I also added two reasonably cheap nylon ropes, a thin rope for a rope throwing setup, a simple handsaw and of course a set of excellent quality working gloves (very important!). Ready I was for my first ascend…. Well, I had to watch some tutorials on the web to make sure I could properly ascend and descend with the equipment I bought. Fun, fun… first try was with single rope technique (SRT) and full ascend and descend routine at about 1 meter over the ground 🙂 It worked at the second try.
One thing to always remember: be calm, move at a slow but steady pace and think carefully about what you are doing. Usually once one is up there it is very quick to cut the branch, what takes most time is to position and secure oneself and the pieces to be cut off. Once int he tree, always use two safeties, one is not enough.
Traces of work
Work more with your bare hands in the garden or use gloves. Three planted trees later.
Sprin
Enjoying spring in the garden.
Another late Post of Fall 2011
I just made an entry I had made pictures for but never got around posting it. It is about typical fall activities in the garden. In case you are not reading the entire blog the whole time, here is a pointer to the post for you pointer. I am typing this while I am flying back from Geneva to Boston. I am sitting here in Newark (NJ) waiting in the Lounge of Continental/Unite for my short flight to Boston. What a wonderful day…. I had a business class flight and was sleeping like an angel, did not even wake up for the 5-star lunch.
Leaf Zen in Fall
Boston is one of those areas on the map, where you have seasons, in fact you really have 4 seasons. There is winter, with pretty much at least one guaranteed snowstorm and several days if not weeks well below freezing, then spring comes along, with an amazing explosion of the vegetation. It is even more effective as over the winter you had almost forgotten how beautiful the natural colors (apart from gray) are. There are days that almost resemble summer with sunshine but it is not really hot, and over the evening the temperatures go back to a very reaonable level, sometimes they even go close to zero, but that is rather the exception. Everybody is getting excited for the summer, which beaches are we going to invade, maybe there is one we have not yet set foot on. Slowly we get used to the rich colors and prepare ourselves for the sometimes steaming hot summer in Boston. The kids are out of school and they spent most of their time outside, chasing adventures with the neighborhood kids.
Summer is there, we go to the pools and the beaches, windows and doors in the house are permanently open a great season to smoke cigars without smoking in the entire house. But all good things must come to an end. The end of the summer as a season becomes quite obvious when the kids start school again (the semester starts at MIT). But the Boston area is merciful and often the first weeks of Fall are beautifully mild; they are often referred to as the Indian summer.
There will be the day when it becomes clear that this is going to be the last BBQ on the terasse with the famous Hamburgerlers and Papi’s tasty special salad. We start to have to think about the windows and the door, they cannot stay open anymore and the first heating kicks. And then fall sets in, the leafs change colors from green to all possible tones of yellow, orange, red and brown and they start falling…. a spectacle to watch but as a home owner you develop a different view because now it is time to work in the garden and every weekend several hour will be spent to clean out the leafs. Of course one could have a company come and do it for us but the work has its nice sides.
Raking the leafs is the most ‘Zen’ activities I know around the house. Snow shoveling comes close, though the temperatures and the time when you have to do it (early morning) usually affect my ‘Zen’ quite a bit. The task of leaf removal is very well defined and it takes long, in fact it is rare that one can do it all in one shot with our garden. On the other hand it is not infinitely long. So one goes out gets the tools and starts to harp with the rake over the ground, in regular and long strokes the leafs are forces into piles. The fewer leafs the less power is required but of course the overall amount of leafs is fixed so with few leafs to clean the number of times you rake the entire garden increases. During the raking I often meet the neighbors and we talk about the usual things. Kids, the garden, the weather, work, the car and whatever else comes up. We have a wonderful set of neighbors and we get along very well with them, at least this is what we think. Often I have lit a fire in the back to burn some of the dead wood of our garden and sometimes we agree when it gets dark to grab a beer and sit around the fire and enjoy a wonderful evening together. Ana and I do this not so rarely, but this I can talk about in another post.
In the first year I put out over 150 leaf bags, I seem to remember that it was close to 170, but over the last years the number of bags has decreased as I have been taking down some of the trees and severely pruning others. I like to take a cigar with me when I rake the leafs together. The weather is mostly beautiful, and the kids are in most cases out in the garden, often they come by and ‘help’ me. Recently though only Blake has the stamina to stay around with me. He actually in general has taken a liking in repeating everything I do. The others will help for a few minutes and then find their friends and enjoy their last days before the winter comes back and the circle closes.
Big tree
Visible just for very few days a year…. spring time in the neighbourhood, a beautiful cherry tree.
Friday before Easter
Today we went with the kids along the minuteman bike path starting from Mill Street. We unpacked the scooters and Blaki’s stroller and off we went along the bike path direction Lexington. It was a perfect spring day with wonderful sunshine but still a little brisk. The kids were glad to be outside, at least that is what it looked like and Ana an I hoped for, and we strolled along the really nice path. Unfortunately there are actually quite some cyclist on the path — no surprise of course — and we had to watch the kids so they would not get in the way to much. Marki tried his new scooter (he has it already since we left Geneva, but rarely used it) and as it is a little more difficult to steer we had some falling but Marki mostly took it his usual way ‘I’m okay!’.
Gisele is by now quite good at using her scooter and she kept up pretty well with our two rowdy boys. Blake meanwhile just took in the fresh air and enjoyed the stroller ride commenting at times in his peculiar way. He demanded food and at times pointed out the good stuff on the path. I was calmly working on my large ice-coffee black which we had picked up at Dunkin Donuts right around the corner. I lite my cigar and Ana and I slowly followed or trailed the kids.
After some time they got bored of the scooters and we started to play racing. Ivan would mostly win, and Markus was the coach, so he would not loose :-). Gisele just played for the interactions and was happy, most of the time. After about 30-45 minutes we arrived at the playground which we figured must be part of Arlington Heights playground.
After our long walk we thought it was a good idea to pick up the two drawers from my ‘new’ office table which I had recovered from the office from one of our retiring researchers. A very nice old simple but solid wood desk. The material is in pretty decent condition but the varnish is all dirty broken up and scratched. Anyway we got the two drawers and on our way back I figured, if I restore the desk I should start with the drawers. So we stopped by ACE hardware and got some stripper and polyurethane and some sand paper.
After we unloaded the car I got started on the drawers while Ana made a classical wok and the kids played with our neighbors kids in the garden. When it was lunch time (a typical Spanish one at 4pm) I had just finished to strip both drawer and sand the first one. The result was rather promising. After an excellent lunch (many mmmmmms!) I sanded the second drawer and carefully put the first layer of polyurethane on. The result I though was really wonderful. The table has a rather dark color but looks so much better in its natural wood color. I really hope I can do the same with the desk.
After this is took a beer and lit a fire in the back to burn off some of the smaller and bigger branches which had fallen off the trees. A very ‘zen’ activity which I shared with Blake. Blake seems to enjoy to spent some quality time with his papi, and I do enjoy my time with him.
A (Birth)Day in Newport (RI)
Today we celebrated Ana’s birthday…. an important one but I will stick to the etiquette and only mention that it was over 28. We got up pretty early and got the kids ready. Our cleaning crew came in early and we took off to have a relaxing breakfast at the ‘newly’ discovered bakery. It is not necessarily the best one we know, but the area with the tables is really comfortable. From there we took off and drove all the way down to Newport. We just followed our usual interstate 95 and it lead us to Rhode Island. With little problems we went on to interstate 195 and crossed over Mount-Hope bridge. The bridge with quite some mist looked spectacular which Markus commented with ‘Mommy it is dusty today’.
We stopped at Easton beach and walked along the beach at a temperature of about 12 C and little wind. The swell was good and we even had the pleasure to watch two surfers doing there tricks on the waves. The water was of course pretty cold which did not stop Gisele, Markus and Ivan to ask for their swim suits. After some explanation they gave in and we had a good walk along the beach collecting beautiful stones and quite large and nice shells, which reminds me that I still have to take them out of the back of the car before they develop too much of an odor.
We also visited the playground, where Ivan took care of Blake as a perfect version of the older brother. They took all the slides and Blaki enjoyed himself and did not cry once. Meanwhile Ana and myself sat on a bench and stared at the sea, the surfers and were imagining how our summer would go if we stayed in the Boston area. We have not decided yet where the summer will take us, will it be Geneva, or rather the New England area.
We drove through parts of Newport and parked the car near the long wharf and walked down what in the summer must be a bustling street, but with the weather and the time of the year it was rather quiet. At least we did not have to pay the parking meter, which is switched off until the end of April. We took an all American lunch (hotdogs, hamburgers and Belgian waffles) in the Ocean Cafe and decided that we should take the ocean drive to watch the heavily advertised mansions. I had read about Newport and the mansions, which the fine New York upper crust built in the last centuries and even expecting great houses we were very impressed with the beautiful mansions in perfect landscape. In fact many of the houses were not small but rather big palaces and we imagined together what we could afford after having won a big lottery ticket :-). We decided most of the houses were way too big and we would under these circumstances settle for quite small and modest places. For anyone who has not been there, we can recommend this trip. The places are stunning and some of them are even open for visits. As it says in Edward Rutherfurd’s Novel ‘New York’: ‘Once one belonged in Newport society, one had reached the top.’
On our way home I took interstate 495 and Ana only realized it when we had already arrived at our favourite furniture store ‘Hardware Restoration’. Again it proved that I am lucky and they just on that day had received one of the Mayflower cubes which we had eyed for our night stands. This saved my day because this night stand at a great price made a wonderful birthday present for Ana. We hurried home, setup the night stand and I did some overdue reshuffling of my office. The kids went to bed smoothly and Ana and I enjoyed the rest of the day and night in harmony….
Toilet incident
Clogged toilet and running water — bad combination. Water was flowing for one hour from bath room floor to the living room…. damage seems not too bad. Good I woke up at 3am, could have been much worse in the morning.
Greetings from brisk but sunny Arlington
