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Tag Archives: Casa Lagarto

Celebrating the MotH*

 No, I am not a lepidopterist.

Thankful this Thursday for a handy husband, the Man of the House.  As annoying as he can be (and all those who have ever been married understand whereof I speak), the cost of renovations over here at Casa Lagarto would have been far greater if not for the MotH’s abilities–and willingness–to pitch in and fix things.  Plumbing, light fixtures, drywall, roof leaks–nothing seems beyond him.

The MotH is a retired Broadway stagehand–a member of the illustrious band of brothers and sisters known collectively as IATSE:  the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees.  Furthermore, he is a member of Local One, the New York local branch.  Rock on!

I’m telling you, these guys and girls are a can-do bunch.

It’s fashionable in certain quarters to complain about the theatre unions, and the stagehands come in for quite a bit of the flack.  Any actor who has been scolded for moving a chair knows what I mean.

But they keep the show running, the scenery (and sometimes the actors) flying, the props at hand, the trapdoors opening and closing, and everybody safe.

You like that chandelier in Phantom… , the spectacular skating track set of Starlight Express, the ice skating in the Radio City Music Hall Christmas show?

Thank the stagehands.

And now, one of them is spending his retirement working every bit as hard far off the stage as he ever worked on and behind it. And in far weirder conditions.

This week, he had even planned to be in a canoe under the dock running a PVC pipe to serve as a conduit for the electrician who is going to clean up the wiring down by the water.  At the mercy of tide tables and spiders and the frustratingly hilarious fact that when you hammer something from a canoe, you tend to float off from within striking distance of the nail. (We know this from previous experience.  Don’t ask.)

He’d have done it, too, if it had not turned out to be possible to pull up some of the boards.

He’s saved us a lot of money.  The house is prettier, safer, and more efficient.

I can hammer a nail myself, and I could probably figure out the other stuff if necessary.  I am very glad it isn’t necessary, however.

 

* MotH:  Man of the House

Southern Style

Myrtles and Turtles

(Actually, there are no turtles in this post.  Just stretching for a sub-headline.  Sorry.  We might talk about turtles in a future post, though, so don’t give up hope.)

Today, on this Thankful Thursday, I am thankful for Crepe Myrtles.  And generous neighbors.

When we bought Casa Lagarto, there were already six Crepe Myrtle trees in the yard.  Now we have ten!  (Generous neighbors.)  Two of them have white flowers, four are various shades of pink and red, and four of them are mysteries.

The mystery myrtles haven’t bloomed yet, but the others have flowered, and two of them are flat-out gorgeous.  Those last four–well, they could be anything.  I can’t wait to find out!

There are two things I love about crepe myrtles:

  1. They are easy.
    You don’t have to do much besides leave them alone.  Some people prune them drastically every year.  Others call that “crepe murder,” and–needless to say with a name like that–frown on it.  Being a Libra, always seeking balance, I, once again, walk the middle ground.  A little pruning for shaping, but not scalping.  So far, they have weathered both drought and deluge, the grasshoppers (and other pests) seem to leave them alone, and they haven’t needed any fertilizer or other intervention.
  2. They are Southern.
    I think they actually come from southeast Asia, but the sight of a crepe myrtle always says “the South” to me–by which I mean the southern United States.  In other words…home.  Sure, palm trees are more recognizably Florida, perhaps–but a crepe myrtle is Southern style.  Delicate, lacy flowers.  Thriving in warmth.  Blooming anywhere from Virginia to Miami.  Nowadays, there are some cold-hardy varieties, I think.  And maybe they grow in California and other western areas.  But you tend to stick with what you learned as a child.  Driving down I-95, it was the sight of the first blooming crepe myrtles that meant we were headed south.  To me, it still does.

Easy.  I like that, because I am the world’s worst gardener.  And it’s nice to have the epitome of Southern Style on the property.

I’ve got a palm tree, you know. but it’s the crepe myrtles that I love.

Sometimes you CAN put off until tomorrow…

Procrastination is not always a bad thing.

I procrastinate a lot.

And I usually feel guilty about it.  The world is set up to reward those who get things done.  Even your sneakers urge you “Just do it.”

Laziness, in my case, leads to some extraordinary efficiency–because I am going to find the easiest way to do something if it kills me–and to many missed opportunities.  (Could have had this post done a week ago, for example.)

Today’s Monday Miracle, though, is the discovery that procrastination is not always a bad thing.

Here at Casa Lagarto, I don’t have much furniture, but I do have a labyrinth.  I’m very fond of the labyrinth, because hey!  It’s a labyrinth!  Do you have one?  And because my mom and I made it together, and because it was a cool way to use up some slate that was just sitting in the yard when we bought the Casa, and because it is a lovely peaceful way to spend some time outdoors.

When we laid out the slate, it was clear that maintenance was going to be a factor.  I live in a subtropical climate.  Grass and weeds grow like…well, like weeds…if given half a chance.

Being lazy, I didn’t do much prep work.  We pretty much just drew the pattern with a non-permanent eco-friendly spray paint and dropped the stones where we wanted them.  There was no digging or grading or anything.

And there we had the labyrinth.  On top of the grass.  (There wasn’t really so much grass right then.  More of that anon.)  The slate varied in height from thin little…um…slates…to slabs over two inches thick.  Clearly, it was not going to be possible to mow the labyrinth as it existed on the first day.

I pondered the situation and decided that I was going to have to set each stone into the ground.  You know.  Level.  So a mower could pass over it cleanly.  But it was hot, and we had just moved a whole lot of rock, and it seemed that the digging part of the project could wait for another day.  Meanwhile, I would use the weed whacker to trim the grass in and around the labyrinth.

That was two years ago.

The digging part of the project hasn’t happened yet.  It was always too  hot or too cold or I was too busy with other projects.  Honestly, I just didn’t want to do it.  Even weed whacking seven circuits every week or so was not enough to convince me that the effort involved in sinking them into the ground would be worth it.

They sank a little bit over time.

And then–Tropical Storm Debby!

The uphill side of all the stones is totally level with the ground.  The downhill side not so much.  But a little fill dirt will take care of that.  And any fool knows it is easier to drop dirt than dig it up.

So, I’m not gonna need to do any digging to get my labyrinth in shape.  (In fact, had I done it at the beginning, I’d be digging again to dig it out!)  I’ll probably be able to mow over it this time next week.

Procrastination is not always a bad thing.

Oh, and the grass?

That’s another area where procrastination helped.

We had a lot of bare spots in the yard.  And then we made more by hiring some guys with a stump grinder to get rid of the cypress knees and some tree roots so we could mow. ( I’m tellin’ you, between the labyrinth and the cypress knees and the sweet gum balls, the back yard was a death trap for lawn mower blades!)

And the Man of the House (hereafter to be known as the MotH) kept wanting to buy sod.

I don’t know much about laying sod, but I have a pretty fair notion that it’s not like rolling out a carpet.  I was not enthusiastic.  I kept saying, “We just have to give it a chance.  It’s not getting enough water,” and putting on the sprinkler when my memory of the necessity coincided with our designated watering days.

Plus, we put out a little grass seed now and then.

Recovery was slow.

Until Tropical Storm Debby.

Now, the lawn is doing rather well.  And the MotH is no longer muttering about sod.

Procrastination is not always a bad thing.  And neither are tropical storms.

Lizards are letting me down

Friday Finding

The lizards over here at Casa Lagarto are not holding up their end of the bargain.

See, we have a lot of lizards here at the Casa.  Chameleons and geckos and skinks…and a truly shivery nekkid-looking thing that bears more of a resemblance to a snake than one would think would be quite safe for a lizard.  Other than the nekkid-looking thing, I am quite happy for the lizards to hang out here. (As long as they stay outside.  That’s part of the deal.)

Lizards are good for eating bugs.  And bugs…well, you know.

Oh, sure.  There’s that cycle of life thing and the food chain and all that.  But bugs, to me, are kind of like the garbage dump.  We all know we have to have them, “but not in my backyard.”  (And the garbage dump doesn’t generally display the vampire tendencies of the mosquitoes.  So there’s that.)

But lately, we’ve had an awful lot of grasshoppers.  And not just any grasshoppers, mind you, but the Eastern Lubber Grasshoppers–otherwise known as the Georgia Thumper.  These things are huge.

You want to see a picture?  Click here for a shot taken by Scattergun UK and posted on Flickr.

That shot doesn’t provide any reference point as to size, but take it from me.  They are HUGE.  Like, I’m not sure a fight between Godzilla and a Grasshopper in a Japanese horror movie would end with Godzilla taking home the title.

(Okay, okay.  They are not that huge.  But they are bugs!  It adds a certain ick factor.)

And they are decimating the plants.  The leaves on my canna lilies are all raggedy-looking.  I think they’ve started in on the hydrangea, and I knocked one out of the camphor tree yesterday.

There doesn’t seem to be anything you can spray to control them.  You’ve got to take them out one at a time. My husband is on grasshopper patrol.  But, you know, you can’t spend all day lying in wait for insects.

And I would have thought that the lizards would have done more to prevent this problem.

I’m disappointed in them.

 

 

 

 

 

 


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