Journal: September 27. Rain. Geese landing on lake.

Scores of barely visible geese in rain

Oh the noise of those geese.  Scores of them are arriving nightly.  I've been told that the geese migration (due to climate and habitat changes) is now from northern to southern Sussex County, but wherever they are going, they do seem to spend the night on what I continue to think of as "my" lake, even if it does officially now belong to the state of New Jersey.

Johnny, the grader was here for a very few minutes this morning (before the rains began).  He drew some orange and white chalk lines in the dirt.  I was heading out to offer him coffee, but by the time I got there, the rains had started and he was gone.  It rained all day.  I did some minimal sorting, but it was a basically a day of no house progress and honking aimless geese.

The day was so long and gray, it seemed a good evening to go the little movie theater in Newton.    To my dismay, discovered that the theater, which was built in 1924, and was in operation not that long ago, seems to have gone the way of small town movie theaters in America.  I didn't think it was a good sign that all seats were always $7.00, but did appreciate that it was still there.  Alas, I just learned that it closed for good last Friday.   According to an article in the New Jersey Herald, there are no plans to re-open it and the site is being considered for a bank.

Journal: September 26. Hunter in a tree.

My old friend Elaine (we went to elementary and high school together--drove out from North Bergen.  She arrived around two--we repeated the yummy meal we'd eaten the day before (plenty of left-overs as you might have noted)--and then headed out for the hyper-humus walk.  I assured her we would not repeat the errors of the day before (she had been appropriately horrified at the tale of your mud immersion)  and also added that it was an especially good day to walk, as there is no hunting on Sundays.

Cleaning and laundering and sortings of blankets and laundry this morning (oh--I am the slowest in the world at these tasks--well--not slow folding--but it does take me weeks to get to it).  These minimal efforts at home improvement ended when Elaine arrived around 2pm.  She had been here the very first day I was sleeping here--when all was chaos and filth, so I was eager to show off all progress.  We had a grand feast of yesterday's left-overs--augmented by wine that she had brought (felt very lady's lunch in the country)--then headed out for a reprise of the Hyper Humus walk.  I assured her we would steer clear of off-trail adventures as I had no interest in repeating the muddy adventures of yesterday.  I was in the middle of an attempt at an explanation of my increasing tolerance for the many hunters who now populate my world when Elaine, glancing upwards, gasped.   Following her gaze to the upper branches of a nearby tree, I saw a man in full camouflage.   "What are you doing?"  I asked, with what I hope was only a slight tremor in my voice.  He replied that he was hunting. I had been told that hunting was not permitted on Sunday.    It turns out that since there are so many deer, they have lifted the no-Sunday hunting regulation.   I can't exactly recall our conversation--I told him we'd probably be walking back this way.  He replied that he'd been sitting in his tree since two (it was then about four)--and implying that our prescence would have scared off any deer for hours, he added that we had completely ruined his day.  This is not something you like to hear from a man with a bow and arrow sitting in a tree above you.  We apologized, and headed off.  Rather than return that way, we decided we'd be better off taking the longer, less scenic route home along the highway.  As we crossed the dam, we got a very close view of some hyper humus swans, evoking the calm, I've felt on this route prior to this very dramatic weekend.  I do believe that I was  more shaken by that encounter than I was by yesterdays wandering in the mud.

Journal: September 25. Yoga on the mountain. Sinking in the swamp

Very Busy Day.  No work on house--but many adventures.

Woke up early to drive to High Point State Park--the highest point in New Jersey-where I'd signed up for yoga class to salute the equinox.  I had a vague memory of going there once many years ago--perhaps when I was learning to drive--it's little over a half hour north, almost at Port Jervis--but much higher elevation, with spectacular views across the Delaware into Pennsylvania.  The class was fine--on the glassed in veranda of  an old stone lodge--now the park's interpretive center--the teacher was euphoric about the views, the proximity to real trees as we took tree pose, etc.

The class was followed a walk (with many fewer participants) through the forest and to the site of the old hotel that once sat atop the mountain (demolished, according to a placard, after much controversy in 1995).  I was excited to discover  that the park was designed by Olmsted--though later learned it was the firm of the Olmsted sons that actually did the work--still a surprise--and quite lovely--with its mix of man-made lakes, rocky cliffs, grand vistas and leaves drifting from the rusty yellowish, reddish trees.

Quick drive home to make lunch for Debbie, who was planning to arrive around one.  Gazpacho, chicken salad, grilled asparagus, zucchini, eggplant and onions.  She called around 1:30--she was with David and they were lost--their gps got hampton lane mixed up with something else--I did a little counseling--they arrived starving around 2--got to show off the house--porch floor is all there--just needs another coat of paint, wall is built.  Years ago, when taking her daughter Sarah to ride in the Sussex County Horse Show, she'd stopped by the house (no-one was there), so she'd gotten a sense of the complete deterioration, and could now marvel at ongoing improvements including the newly installed porch floor.

Marveling continued over  that splendid lunch in the backyard, and then, as David settled in with a fat volume of Solzhenitsyn's memoirs, Debby and I headed out for a hyper humus hike. 

The old hyper humus property (where they dug out black earth through my childhood) now belongs to the state--the eighty acres we sold to Green Acres are officially connected to it.    There are more walking paths than there were in days gone by--but, despite its designation as a wildlife management area, we never see more than two or three other people.  It remains pretty wild.    We walked across the dam and onto the Sussex Branch Trail and were about to turn back at my usual turning point (a rusting bridge across a canal that I'd always assumed led to nowhere) when we decided to see if we could find another route back.  I knew a path that once existed had been long overgrown, but in recent weeks, new trails had been cut by hunters, and it was slightly possible that the exact route we wanted might have been opened.  The worst that could happen, I told Debby, was that there we would find ourselves blocked by swamp and would have to turn around.  So--in we plunged.  We bravely bushwhacked our way through the reeds--much easier than brambles, balanced on logs to cross little canals and were doing quite well even as we longed for easier going. 

And then it looked like we'd found it.  Look, here's a path, Debbie exclaimed, stepping happily onto what looked like a gray gravel trail.  But the trail was not a trail at all, it was most likely, a semi-dried canal, and in a nanno-second Debbie was up to her waist in muck and sinking fast.

Luckily, my stronger-than-expected yoga arms and my desires to be a good hostess (first hostess rule, i imagine, is to not lose any visitors in quicksand), I managed to pull Debbie out, and she then of course, had to work with me to extricate my left leg which was on its own journey to the center of the earth.  But we made it.  We were well muddied, but managed to find our way back to the rusting bridge that we'd crossed not that long before, and made it back to the house well before dark.

We cleaned up a bit, had a quick snack of smoked oysters and tea before Debby and David headed off on their long drive back to Boston. 

Journal: September 24. Stone Wall.

Not so easy to build a stone wall.  Shopping for stones, I was assured by Flo, the proprietress of Polowy's Stone Suppliers, Inc., my neighborhood stone venders, that it would not be difficult for me to build a classic stone wall--the kind that line the roadsides in New England--flat rocks miraculously resting atop each other for centuries.  Good fences make good neighbors and all that.  In my assorted fantasies of restoring the house, I've imagined myself hamering  and painting, digging and planting, etc.  I hadn't thought about building stone walls, but the truth is aside from massive cleaning efforts, a little weeding and lawn mowing, and a bit of labor intensive but not terribly successful scraping of layers of paint from the screened in porch floor, most of the work around here has been done by the pros.  I did like the idea of building those walls--like a jigsaw puzzle they told me. 

Once the stones were delivered, and John had pushed around enough dirt with his backhoe to start building, despite my misgivings about my wall building abilities,  I put on my work gloves and joined him.  In about two seconds I realized a stone wall, at least a short sloping wall like this, is really built by one person.  And in this case the person wasn't going to be me.

Journal: September 20th. Back to New Jersey. Stone Delivery.

Thanks to the gift of the extra three hours of parking, didn't rush out first thing Monday morning, but did get a call from George en route.

He was wondering about the stone--seems its just about time to put up the wall--so before pulling into the house, I stopped at Polowy's and ordered two palettes of weathered rattle blue stone which was delivered a few hours later.

 One advantage of having the stone yard minutes away--free delivery.  We'll probably need more palettes--but we'll order them when necessary.

No work on the wall today--despite my grand intentions--it is clear that I will be fairly useless in wall-building--it's appealing because (I'm gleaning this from my internet researches) it's slow and contemplative, but I suspect if I embarked on this project, the slowness would be legendary.  It could take years--and I do still have to sort and store the linens!

Journal: September 17th. Kol Nidre.

Kol Nidre tonight in the city.  Breakfast tomorrow night at Jackie's.  I'm carefully timing my departure to arrive on Wooster Street just as parking becomes legal at 6pm.  Services at 7.  Many chores before I leave.  Regular garbage day.  That is something that is now routine and manageable.  Buying more tomatoes for gazpacho.  I already have pounds more than necessary, but it is coming to the end of the tomato season so it seems appropriate to bring bushels into the city to distribute as new years gifts.

First a stop at the garlic farm--early Friday is the only time they actually have produce (or so it seems).  I get a pound of green beans and some garlic. 

Then another trip to Hilltop Greenhouse to pick another ten (or is it twenty?) pounds.  Ideal farms for red, yellow and green peppers.  Windy Brow for apples--because they are excellent and everyone is always pleased to have fresh country apples.

All this fruit and vegetable shopping feels extraordinarily productive--even more so, I'd imagine, as work is continuing on house.  Porch looks better every day.  Soon I'll buy stones for wall.  So much has been done, and most of the work is still ahead.  oy.  Sometimes I think it's a good thing I can barely imagine it.  If I really understood what I was in for, I'd probably have quit long ago.

Journal: September 16. Thinking about stone walls.

The porch ceiling is up and almost completely painted.  The vinyl siding and cedar shingles removed revealing original brown wood. George and the two Johnny's--carpenter/painter and grader/landscaper have been working for days, digging out dirt with the back hoe, removing layers of rotting soaked wood from the side of house, moving towards the goal of house which keeps water from seeping in.  A few missing bats have emerged from under the siding and in the eaves.  This is a good sign--it was chilling to think that after years of thousands of bats, there were none.   Maybe they didn't all die, but just decided to clear out to make room for me, leaving a few behind to keep an eye on things in case the house is abandoned once again.

Although the house is looking fairly battered, all these removals are an improvement, and it's becoming possible, even for me, scarcely a visionary in this department, to see that we are actually making progress.

All that digging and removing means we have to build a new retaining wall on the side of the house.  There is a stone supplier minutes from the house.  I drive over and wander about asking dopey questions, staring at rocks and learning about different kinds of stone walls.  Turns out the walls I most like--are just piles of rock--you buy palettes of stone and then just pile them up neatly (not that easily, George reminds me, but I think it is something I could do with help).  My choice at the moment is called Weathered Rattled Blue Stone.    We should be ready to build the wall next week.

Journal: September 14. Grading. Storage shopping. Solar Seminar. State Police

While George and the two Johnny's work on grading the hill on the side of the house, removing old siding, I head to the dentist for what I think is going to be my first root canal.  Turns out my tooth is still alive, so no root canal today (but other exciting possibilities like implants loom ahead).  Released from demands of dentistry, I buy apples at Windy Brow, go to the post office and library and spend a big chunk of the afternoon shopping for various storage systems for the piles of paper, linens, etc. that I've been swearing I'd sort and store.

Get home in time for a quick dinner, then off to a"seminar" at Home Depot, my new center of higher education, on solar installations.  Lots of data on financial incentives--here is a huge initial outlay (and I suspect the panels wouldn't work on my roof--I'd have to just have a great solar wall somewhere in the yard)--but the sales guy was quite convincing.  Aside from all the standard arguments (which he barely touched on) there is  a program in new jersey --well it is in many states, but also in new jersey called SREC--solar renewable energy certificates-I could be convinced, but it might not be the answer for such an old house.  We shall see.
 I'm thinking this might be  the kind of project my sister might be interested in a her house money into--and if the guy was speaking the truth--in addition to no electricity bills--we would be getting
cash money fr om the electric company--so we'd come out even?  Is that possible?

Back at home, I was cooking up a little chicken soup (it was after nine) and was interrupted by a knock on the door.  No-one comes to my house  unannounced at night.  Opening the door, clutching (quite inadvertently) my green ceramic paring knife, I faced two  State Policemen.   They wanted to know if I'd just come from Lousiiana.  I think that was what they said.  Turned out that another trooper had killed a deer with a bow and arrow near my house--and was out looking for his prey in the dark (when you use a bow and arrow--the deer might run off--then you have to find it--hunting ends one-half hour after sunset, but I guess you;re bound to pick up your fallen prey).  As he searched, he saw me returning from my late night at home depot--and thinking that the house was still "abandoned,"  and mistaking my california plates for louisiana ones he became  suspicious perhaps that I was a slow-moving Katrina refugee, he called his patrolling buddies.

Back hoe and trailer in repose

I sputtered about being a registered tax payer,  but eventually got my bearings and assured them that I did indeed live here. I would have thought the enormous  back hoe out front was good evidence that I was doing some maintenance and the house  was not abandoned, but in any case I  thanked them for their attentiveness to my property and bid them good night.  My neighbors at the end of the road then called--they'd been alarmed when the two patrol cars, lights blazing headed past their house-I assured them all was o.k., but despite the adrenalin rush, I am now feeling that I am in fact quite looked after, both by neighbors and the state.

Journal: September 13. Porch. Colors.

Oh dear--many days with no postings.  I'll have to start filling in the blanks.  Things are indeed moving along.  Today, George and Johnny got the tongue and groove ceiling up--lots of measuring and hammering.  The paint needs a second coat.  George asked if I wanted to be responsible for getting that done, i.e. did I want to get Sarah or Sam or another hapless visitor to put on the second coat.  As I spend a good part of my days in one house related chore or another, I'd like to think I could easily paint a porch ceiling or two.  But, truth is, I know I couldn't do it.   I couldn't think whom I might be able to recruit for a job that should be done in the next few days, especially as George pointed out painting a ceiling was harder than most painting jobs, we agreed Johnny would do it.

While they were putting up the ceiling, I'd first made another trip to the paint store with my trusty sample of Glacier Blue (color of siding)  and my little card of Constellation (color of ceiling) to choose a color for the porch floor.  Again, I can't tell if I'm bowing too quickly to tradition and history.  For years I'd imagined that if I ever was able to re-do the house, I would restore the white cedar shake shingles.  Instead I'm wrapping the house in gray blue plastic.  The porch floor and ceiling will however be wood--and I quite unwittingly chose colors very close to the colors they'd always been.  The ceiling is a much paler blue gray, that's true, but the color I picked out today for the floor, pike's peak gray is not all that different from the old porch.  So be it.

porch in process

This afternoon, while the ceiling was hammered into place, I tackled the piles of pictures and papers that have been waiting to be sorted for months.  Family pictures I'd never seen, my mother's canceled bankbooks,  (do bank books no longer exist?  I certainly don't have any), graduation programs, yellowed newspaper clippings of my father's "famous cases."
The case that I remember--the one where he saved a young man--an accomplice in a robbery that resulted in a murder--from the electric chair--was not represented.  As I recall (though this might be a muddled memory), the man's family gave us a set of Lionel Trains--the best toy we'd ever had--who knows where that ended up?  There were however articles from the Hudson Dispatch recounting my father's  successful challenge to keep the auto insurance rates of being raised a huge amount, as well as articles about the discovery of a cache of money discovered in a garage--there were many claimants--the money belonged to an imprisoned gambler--Joseph Moriarty--and had been found by the FBI.  My father was the lawyer for Hudson County--which claimed it was the rightful recipient.  The final decision was not saved--and I don't remember what happened.  In any case, I spent way too much time going through this stuff--and it still hasn't been filed away.
I did however successfully do a laundry--it was warm and sunny all day, but minutes after I took the well-dried clothes off the line, a sudden storm blew in--dark and ominous--thunder, hail--very dramatic.  I drove to my weekly yoga class at lafayette village in a huge downpour--but now all is clear and star filled with a slim crescent moon moving across the sky.

Journal: September 1. Driveway Graded. More Chimney Down.

Another hot day.  Cool in the house.  Except for some quick forays to talk with George, I stay inside until close to sunset.  It's cooled enough for me to do a little weeding both the big garden and the flower bed along the driveway.

Today is the first day of bird hunting season.  I'm awakened by gun shots at dawn--but no more for the rest of the day.  Not sure of the rules and regulations.  It's not easy wading through fish and game regulations, but it looks like most waterfowl are, as it happens, fair game.    For reasons known only to them, a flock of 13 Canada Geese have taken to our lake the past few days.  They arrive in the late afternoon--make a few grand circuits, settle down for the night in the shallow corner where the swans often rest and are gone in the morning.

They are of course now considered a nuisance bird and their hunting is encouraged.  We shall see how they do this season.

More exciting, I spotted a Northern Flicker previously known as a yellow-shafted Flicker (west of the rockies, it's counterpart was called a red-shafted Flicker--just like Hellman's and Best Foods Mayonnaise) but unlike the double named mayonnaise, both yellow and red-breasted Flickers have abandoned their colorful original names, going for the duller georgraphical appelation.

Nonetheless I think I will claim the sighting of a yellow shafted flicker as the main event of my house-bound day.

disappearing chimney