The worst of winter has been felt

And we have all begun to melt.

Sap is rising and the spirit swells;

Time to peck at our frozen shells.

The story is done!  I started it in January of '09 and wrote 28 chapters furiously in two-three months, not knowing where it was going. I took a break until this January and the ending appeared in the distance.  Seven more chapters and it finished itself.

Please visit A Little North Of Here and enjoy my awful art and earnest prose attempt.

Thank you very much.

I am reading, 'The Botany of Desire', which proposes evolutionary links between some plants (apples, tulips, spuds, etc.) and us. It is very interesting, and I've learned a new word:

Look it up! Find ways to use it! You'll impress your family and friends at dinners and over kool-aid!

The temperature has relaxed and the misty rains have come. They are both welcome. It was a good Saturday to visit the farmers' market and other produce stands in our sphere.

We bought peaches and squash and radishes and apples and green beans and onions and pumpkins and tomatoes (alas, our personal garden could not provide enough tomatoes this year) and raspberries and local strawberries (which is a first because a farmer experimented with ever-bearing) and a bar of soap. Michele was very taken with the soap booth.

After a tasty lunch and a satisfying nap and a walk with the dogs, I went into our little woods to re-establish a path that we have intentionally neglected since adding Jackie to our family. Buzz has always been manageable, if not enthusiastic to our directions. We have great memories of him on the woods' path, including the time a deer jumped right over him.

Jackie, however, was not tractable from the second she joined us. Walking on our pleasant woodsy path, which ran close to two roads, was too dangerous for the undisciplined little female Jack Russell. So we let the path grow up and become impassable for ten years.

Now Jackie is old and cooperative. So I am working on our old path. The first phase was clearing away trees with the chainsaw. No dogs allowed for that part. The second phase was clearing the downed debris away. The dogs were allowed to hang about for that activity, and they did well. In fact the dogs and I stayed out until after dark for this exercise. I did the hauling, and they did the sniffing and digging and staying close. It reinforced my decision to trust them to stay nearby on the upcoming path.

The dogs and I happily entered the walkout basement to our house. I wiped them off and took off my sandals. Together we went upstairs to see what Michele was doing. Michele, in turn, wondered what we had been doing. I explained. She nodded with acceptance, knowing that the dogs and I are prone to rolling in nature.

"Throw that shirt down the chute," was all she said.

I went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. Goodness, I was dirty, and goodness, I felt good.

 The story, Water Babies, by Charles Kingsley, has pulled at me with slender, almost invisible strands of nostalgia. I must have been exposed to a copy when I was a young child.  I connect with the fanciful illustrations.  They are slightly, hauntingly familiar.

So it was understandable that I pursued Water Babies illustrations for our new Art Prints For Kidz website.  This pursuit has helped me to learn a lot about these books (there are many versions).  First, they are expensive.  Second, the art can be alluring and intriguing.  Finally, the story is rather different than you might expect.  Well, at least different that I might have expected.  I finally read the thing and found out.

Water Babies is a tedious, long-winded, frequently harsh, frequently intolerant of abuse toward the innocent, and infrequently clever morality tale.  Some of it impressed me.  Much of it confounded me.  It comes across as pompous and self-congratulatory.  I cannot imagine children a hundred years ago, when it was written, let alone today's electronic-driven kids, enjoying or understanding it. 

Here is a very short outline:  Tom, a young, abused, godless and ignorant chimney sweep, accidentally enters the bedroom of a wealthy young girl when he drops down the wrong chimney.  She screams bloody murder, and sooty Tom runs away with the estate's workforce in pursuit.  He eludes them by going over rough territory with a mysterious Irish woman shadowing him.  Tom develops a terrible thirst and a terrible desire to be clean, so he lays down in a stream and becomes a "water baby", which is a euphemism for a youth who has died tragically.  He is reborn as a small baby with an Elizabethan collar of gills.  He eventually makes it out to the sea with unseen fairies protecting him, and eventually joins with thousands of other water babies.  He is a prankish tad, and encounters situations and forces that show him he must do what he doesn't like and behave properly if he is going to progress to being a man.  The young girl he frightened, Ellie, coincidentally falls by the seaside, hits her head and becomes a water baby.  The Irish woman turns out to be one of two fairy queen sisters who are guiding him toward a proper adulthood.  One fairy queen is responsible for punishing those who do ill, and the other is responsible for encouraging correct behavior through loving mothering.  Oh, and we are encouraged to wash with plenty of cold water, as it is the English way.  Oh, yes, and there are many entreaties to be gentle and just to the innocent and the defenseless.

I give Kingsley credit for a long and complicated story.  I also credit him with causing a great deal of fascinating art. 

Here's to you Charles...you followed your own advice and worked hard to accomplish a difficult task.  I may not understand much of it, although I see the points (be upstanding, kind and a proper Englishman), and I admire the effort.

But the little boy in me isn't sure he likes having his eyes opened to what this story is actually about;  growing up and being a responsible adult.  I preferred ignorant innocence.  And now I am getting a little whiff of self-irony.  How about you?

"Don, Don, Don!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

That was when I first heard of the conflict.  And, now, I shall hand the narrative to my lovely, frantic, wife:

I'm not frantic now, but BOY, I sure was Saturday. We had just picked up our dogs, Jackie and Buzz, from the kennel where they had spent the last 24 hours.

When we got into the house with them, both dogs made their usual bee line for the back yard door.  I let them out, going into the yard with them to open up the 'playground', the area that we left wild, but fenced, just for them.  They can dig and dig and sniff and lounge, it is there for them...I checked for squirrels, didn't see any, so opened the gate.

And away they ran....surprisingly quiet, was the thought that ran through my brain...then they stopped, and started to sniff and run around a tree.  I saw nothing, so turned to go back to the house.  But then, I heard the excited yip, then another, and turned back into the yard. 

They saw something, or thought they saw something...I walked up the path, not slowly, not fast, talking to them and telling them (ha!) that there was nothing there.  But then, my eyes started to take it in, but my brain was saying NOOOOO.  It was a woodchuck, groundhog, a large problem!
 
He was in a smallish tree, a Sumac, and he was having a very hard time hanging on as both dogs were jumping at the tree, shaking it, making few sounds, just a few feet below the rotund little animal.  I watched for maybe 2 seconds, and the groundhog fell.  I couldn't watch as both dogs jumped on it, and I turned away, running and yelling for Don.  There was NOTHING I could do.  I knew better than to intervene.  Don had told me of woodchuck experiences gone bad,  and with 2 Jack Russell terriers and a wild animal writhing behind me, I figured this could turn into one of those times.

I got to the house and opened the door and yelled as loud as I could.  He was right there in his shop, but had water running and couldn't hear.  I shouted, "The dogs have a woodchuck, on the ground!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

The air started to change color as he ran past me and grabbed a walking stick.  I followed, but stayed by the gate into the playground, and from that spot I couldn't see anything but I could hear.  He was shouting at the dogs to let go (!!) especially Buzz, and I'm being kind by saying shouting.  I could see that Jackie had let go and was running around away from the scene and back into it. 

Then I was called........Oh...........Oh............Yuck!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Of course, I ran over as Don was now shouting at me to grab Buzz, and really, I didn't want to...but I struggled through the underbrush and got behind Buzz.  Don was on one knee with the walking stick holding the woodchuck down, Buzz trying his best to stay away from me as he continued his grisly hold on some part of the animal.  I had a hard time getting my hands on him, but when I did, I pulled and lifted him at the same time and he came away from it rather easily. 

But twenty pounds of squirming, wriggling, panting male dog still wanted more of the woodchuck.  Buzz was hard to keep a hold on through rutted, holey terrain.  I hung onto him with maternal fervor, and we finally got through the gate.  I put Buzz down, closed the gate and turned back for Jackie.

This is never going to end, I felt.  I was afraid Jackie would now go for the woodchuck because Buzz was not there.  A bloody attack is about the only time she defers to him, and now he wasn't there.

Unexpectedly, Jackie didn't want to worry the the woodchuck further!  Don continued to hold it.  It was easily 15 pounds.  Jackie continued to run up closely to see what was happening, but then turned and scooted away as I tried to grab her.  If I got within 6 feet of her she darted in another direction.  Finally I stopped, flushed and wrathful.  I addressed her with MOTHER'S voice, and she listened.  

She saw Buzz, and went to the gate.........and stayed, as I had been asking.  I opened the gate, put her through, followed and shouted back to Don that I had them both.  My job was done. 

Now, back to Don.  

Okay, Don here.  The dogs were boiling over the woodchuck when I arrived, biting and jerking and mauling as it curled and tried to defend itself.  I waded in with my staff, eventually (in perhaps fifteen seconds that seemed far, far longer) pinning the woodchuck on his back, with my staff across his throat.  My goal was to immobilize him so he couldn't bite the dogs.  I looked constantly at his teeth.  The uppers were half an inch long, the lowers were over an inch; bad news chompers if they were put to use.

Woodchucks are bad news with or without those terrible teeth.  They burrow under foundations and cause serious problems.  Normally, I leave them alone if they stay away from the house, but this one (and he was big) had climbed a five foot chain-link fence to get into trouble.  I didn't want him to come back and I didn't want him to suffer slowly with whatever injuries the dogs had inflicted.  So I leaned on my staff.

Now the big pine tree in the playground has another source of nutrients buried between its roots.  It has been some time since the last of thirteen raccoons nurtured it.  It is a very healthy tree.