Pondiferousness

Ever since I was a preteen one of my dreams has been to have my own natural, earth-bottom pond. It does not help that I've worked in a profession which involves instructing people on how to properly build garden ponds. Ergo, after all these years of living vicariously through other folks' pond projects, one of the selling points of my property was the fact that it had a stream which flows almost year-round through a deep ditch. Stream + ditch = potential pond! All work & no play makes me a dull boy. Like many others I need artistic projects to balance out the drudgery of the practical work which I do to the house & yard, so a pond was a perfect outlet.

Getting right into the project (with thanks to Matt for taking the picture). This is probably the least flattering pic I will ever dare to post here.

The current view from my front kitchen window.

Fresh dam that would do any beaver proud. There was already a small pond about 1/4 the size of this one. I expanded it dramatically by backfilling in the ditch with tightly shovel-compressed layers of rock & brick rubble, heavy clay mud and logs/branches. I created the spillway out of old slate roofing shingles I had laying around and will presently be planting the top and front of it with gracefully arching swamp grasses, irises, wild blueberries and other water-loving marginal plants. Once established, the root systems will penetrate deeply into the structure and help to hold it together after the branches & logs have rotted away within.

It is approximately 700-900 gallons.

There is a saying regarding frogs in professions involving the pond industry. "If you build it, they will come." (I think that phrase was originally used in the movie Field of Dreams.) This fellow is one of a dozen who are frequently found relaxing and watching for bugs from the edge of the water.

The frogs are extremely tame, often allowing people to approach to within two feet of them. While building their pond, I laid down a chimney brick I was using as a line guide for the spillway and when I turned around thirty seconds later this little guy was perched on it.

Random Wildflowers

Northeast side of Mt. Ascutney

Wild Columbine blossom

Wild Geranium

Wild Dianthus (Sweet William)

And For My 200th Blog Post:

More pictures, what else would I be posting?


I recently took my parents canoeing on Long Pond in Lempster, NH. I bought the canoe last year almost brand new, very cheap. It is quite stable and tracks nicely.

The Lempster Wind Farm as seen from on the water (click the picture for more detail on the turbines). This is something of a pilot project which many other areas in the state are watching to gauge the success. I hope it catches on!

Wild blueberry blossom

Mountain Laurel Bloom

A rather odd-looking fungus growing on a tree on one of the islands in the middle of Long Pond

Out on a hike on the country roads in my neighborhood: my friend Matt on the right, his youngest son in the red jacket, my youngest child in the black fur coat

A lovely cow-meadow right above my house

The road above my house (where I had the night-time moose encounter in the previous post).

One of the ecological treasures in my area is the presence of some old-growth trees which are well beyond a century old, probably saplings when the area was first cleared for farm land. This sugar maple is one of them. We have dubbed it the "Whomping Willow" because of the resemblance to the tree in the Harry Potter movie.

A porcupine den in an old-growth poplar tree down in a ravine in the middle of the woods.

Eastern Phoebe (probably female) sitting on a clutch of eggs

Possibly a timely picture considering recent events, I took this a week before he died. It was in a free book pile that someone brought in at my workplace. I thought it made for an unusual children's book.

Sacred Sisterhood of Sacrosanct Cisterns

...dare ya to say that ten times fast.

The area where I live was primarily farmland a century ago and most of the open fields have since been reclaimed by the trees again. Vestiges of the farms still remain, such as these four cisterns I found hidden away in the woods.

This one has obviously seen better days. I imagine the crack was from years of freeze/thaw cycles, now there is a constant flow of water coming out of the crack, thus a convenient watering hole for the dog.

The fresh-cut boards on this almost-finished cistern enclosure would indicate it to be a new construction, I'm guessing that it gravity-feeds the farm house and barn located about a tenth of a mile down the hill from it. For those who are unfamiliar with cisterns, if they are for human use and drinking water, they need to have enclosures like this to keep bugs, animals, leaves and other potential contaminants out of them.

"Doofer Dawg"

Clowning around with the dog.

Rant on Stereotyping

While perusing Digg today, I happened to follow a link to this video.

While it was campy and I found it mildly amusing, it was also offensive in it's stereotyping. I realize that in a broader social context, things like this may ultimately help the LGBTQ community in much the same way that inroads in the entertainment industry (despite some of the shameful exploitation and stereotyping) gave the black community more public exposure and helped to start a long-running dialogue with the rest of what was (and in some ways still is) a very privilege-based, racist society.

What bothered me most about this video I think is that I and many others are the target of this sort of stereotyping and misunderstanding. It brought back an incident which happened last year where I was introduced to a woman via a friend and the first thing which came out of her mouth was "Oh, so **** mentioned that you are gay, this is awesome, I love gay friends!" I shrugged this off at first because I have encountered it many times before and despite the fact that I know it is based on a stereotype, it is at least well-intentioned. Soon after that awkward introduction she proposed the idea of going out shopping, with me as her fashion critique and then hitting the clubs. This was a bit too much to take and I explained to her in an indelicate manner that I was not a walking stereotype.... I generally dislike the world of fashion, am not interested in pop-culture, don't like clubs and I am not terribly good at dancing. Further, I explained to her that, "I am nobody's TOKEN GAY FRIEND!"

Just because someone wants a guy in their life who has the potential to give them support & social interaction without the possibility for sexual entreaties complicating things, does not mean that anybody who happens to be gay will be a good fit. I for one am a direct, plain-spoken, grumpy bastard much of the time and I generally have no taste for partaking in most of the things which gay stereotypes represent. Stereotypes of most forms do exist, but they are only a small, prominent social bookmark within a much wider community which is far more reserved and eclectic. Further, I wholly support their right to be as they are and live as they see fit but for Heaven's sake, don't assume that just because I have an innate attraction to the same gender that I enjoy shopping for $900 clothing ensembles, have an inborn talent for applying makeup, and spend my free time drinking cocktails and popping pills to remove myself from reality while bringing my body to a state of near-collapse in a large, dark, people-filled room pulsing with laser lights and pounding house music. Does this sound like I am stereotyping my own sisters & brothers within the LBGTQ community? Hey, I've observed that the typification exists. I tried the clubbing/partying scene for a short time, seen what people turned into when they got caught in it for a long time and discovered that it wasn't conducive to a fulfilling, meaningful life.

If people like me, I want it to be because I am good with my hands and can build cool stuff out of discarded junk. I want it to be because I am filled with good advice and maintain a belief in the power of being truthful, because I can coax landscapes, broken lives and broken objects back into productivity; this coupled with an encyclopedic knowledge of nature and how things work. If people dislike me, I want it to be because I am eccentric, socially awkward and have a short fuse sometimes, because I am unfriendly and vicious when life gets to be too much to handle. I just want to be regarded as a person who has all the same strengths and flaws as anybody else in my particular situation. I detest the idea of somebody liking or disliking me just because I am gay.

Yeah, I feel badly for not being more sensitive and patient with that woman who assumed a connection/relationship where there wasn't one, but at least now she probably dislikes me for the right reasons.

Crazy Wildlife Experience

(Image courtesy of Wikipedia)

So it's midnight and I've just returned from one of the most surreal experiences I've had yet this year and feel compelled to write this down while the experience is still fresh.

Pepper and I went on one of our night-time bike-walks on the back roads. Being on a bike is the only way I can wear him out without overexertion on my part. It's great fun. I ride, he follows off-leash.

We were passing an old dirt road that runs by on the hill just above my property and I saw the glow from a pair of headlights up the road. Usually a stopped car on that road indicates somebody up to no good (we've had a lot of deer poaching and garbage dumping around here) or conceivably a person in distress. We went up to investigate what was going on and as I rounded the bend I saw what appeared to be a horse loping around in the headlights. Oh, right... someone recapturing a horse that jumped it's fence, happens all the time around here. The dog slipped away from me and I went after him. As we got closer I noticed that the horse was extremely tall and it's legs were far too long to be a horse's.

Despite me yelling for him to come back, Pepper went to greet the VERY LARGE female moose directly ahead of us. She did not appreciate his company and began pursuing him back toward me. I got off my bike, attempting to nestle myself up into the trees out of her way. Pepper plowed right into my bike, knocking off the headlight. The moose brushed past me and kept up the pursuit, they rounded the bend to the right and were gone. The driver eased her vehicle up beside me to inquire if I was OK while I was picking up my bike and attempting to reattach the headlight. It was a rather awkward introduction,"Yes, I'm fine thank-you. Hello I'm ****, your neighbor down on.... That was my dog and it would appear that he is currently learning a valuable lesson if he doesn't get himself killed..... pardon me, nice meeting you but I have to go see if I can find him." Just as I said that they came into view at the intersection again, this time going the other way... she was still chasing him, her nose only a couple feet from his hind-end.

I caught up with Pepper a half mile down the road, thoroughly winded and with no moose in sight. We are home now and I am thankful that he didn't get injured and equally thankful that I don't have a heart condition. Currently kicking myself for not having the camera on me. In the brief conversation I had with the driver, she indicated that the moose didn't seem bothered by cars so she had followed her a fair distance in the car from her place a couple miles down the road. This would be the first close-encounter I've ever had with one. For those of you unfamiliar with moose, they are very large. I stand almost six feet tall and her shoulders were about even with the top of my head.

Now I am wondering what it would be like if there was a version of the show "Jackass" for pets. My dog would be a shoe-in given the amount of stupid-crazy situations he gets himself into.

Pepper = Smiley Doggie! :)

Just more shamelessly cute pictures of my four-legged son.

"Pardon me sir, could I trouble you for a belly-rub?"

Putting Down Roots

It has been a little while since I last posted here. My world has been busy. Springtime has brought mud season... many days of standing outside in knee-high "sh*t-kicker" boots .... rooting around with a shovel, trying to muck out ditches which have long since been filled in with silt; working a large chainsaw to fell more trees and make next year's firewood while clearing land for gardening (and hopefully making it less likely that said trees will fall on my house). Did I mention that the power lines to my house no longer consist of separate leads with some sections of bare copper threating to start a fire if the 3" gap between them were ever bridged? Many thanks to one of my roommates (a former lineman) who helped to make this possible.

Some of my friends haven't heard from me for months. I hope they don't think I've forgotten about them. May they understand that I am busy building something for myself and others. It is where I find the most peace.

Some days I stumble around the yard, dragging brush and thinking about the past as I pile it up, piling up the past and putting it away again in the back of my mind. I go for long walks in the woods with my dog, trying to draw a line from there to here. Heh, it's been a wild ride. I didn't even realize it, but I'm standing taller and putting down roots. In the middle of rough times, a long-time dream happened simply by yielding to the gentler path and learning how to put the Ego back in His cage (Ok, so he still reaches out from between the bars and takes swipes at others, I'm not perfect).

My late ex doesn't pop into my head much anymore. He is still there, sometimes smiling and laughing (those are my favorite memories of him), sometimes I see him being angry, hurtful and vindictive. Sometimes I see myself being angry, hurtful and vindictive. Sometimes when I am wandering off the trail and my mind is blank, I look up and see him and/or other people from my past, standing there and looking happy, sometimes showing me where to go. I feel like I could reach out and touch them, but they disappear as fast as they came. The human mind is a strange thing. I wish I understood mine more.

These experiences all came from somewhere, went somewhere, are currently going somewhere. Worrying excessively about the future and replaying the dark parts of the past is counterproductive though it seems like human nature to do so. Still trying to keep the past in perspective, examine it, learn from it, put it away and let it build a solid foundation for what is to come. Easier said than done sometimes.

Have I become calmer and wiser over the years? One likes to think so but is not yet fully convinced. I am now almost 30 and feel like it has been only a week since I was a teenager. Should I start planning to affect a mid-life crisis in a few more years so people don't think I am abnormal? No, I think it is sufficient to keep them convinced that I sit on a bit of controlled madness.

Gun Attack!!!???

On Easter Sunday Pepper and I were driving back home after visiting my parents for Easter dinner. I was slowing down & coming to a stop at a light on a four-lane section of the road in downtown Claremont. The tan-colored pickup truck ahead of me was pitching to the left next to the other stopped vehicle at the light. It had a bunch of veteran-themed bumper stickers on it. The driver put his hand out the window, seeming to brandish something that he was pointing at the folks in the front seat of the darkly-colored jeep next to him. He was holding it and pointing it like a gun... I felt my face flush and get tingly... my heart felt like it jumped up behind my larynx. A rapid-fire series of thoughts went screaming through my head:

"HOLY CRAP!!! This is rural New England, this type of stuff does not happen here, especially not in broad daylight!!!!"

"I am about to witness a murder, memorize the make & model of the vehicle along with the plate number!!!"

"I should ram him, it might throw off his shot!" *heart pounding out of my chest*...

As I revved up the engine and got ready to let off the clutch, his hand turned slightly and I saw that it was not, in fact, a gun, but an eight-inch-long package of rolled candy which he was passing to the person on the passenger side of the vehicle next to him. He was holding it pinched between his thumb-joint and the knuckle of his index finger with the candy sitting parallel with his wrist and his hand clenched, thus looking like the barrel of a handgun.

When the light turned green, the truck pulled away and I realized that I was still staring at the back of it as it got to the next set of lights, with white-knuckled hands on the shifter and the wheel, my left foot quivering on the clutch. The person in the car in back of me began to honk his horn angrily because I was holding up traffic. I let off the clutch slowly and pulled ahead as my heart-rate began to slow down again.

It is extremely rare that I ever do something impulsive let alone an action with the potential to be life-altering. That driver will never know that he came within a split second of a damaged truck bed along with a probable case of whiplash and/or a broken arm that day. Even though I was erring with the welfare of others in mind, it would have been a very awkward apology as well as an unbelievable explanation to the police. It was one of those moments which felt like an hour compressed into a few seconds.

Moral of the story: it is generally a bad idea to pass things from vehicle to vehicle while in traffic, especially objects which can be mistaken for weapons. Oh yeah, and look before you leap.

Three cheers for the path not taken!

Chinese Bluegrass

Picked up off BoingBoing: Crazy-awesome fusion tune integrating traditional asian instruments into the bluegrass genre!

House Of Escher

Yay! I'm FINALLY posting pictures of my country shack... only a year after promising to do so. It has been dubbed "The House Of Escher" because the varying angles of walls, floors & skewed frames/casings inside might loosely resemble a M.C. Escher painting. Keep in mind that the original structure (built in 1939) is the small section that you see the mudroom/entrance tacked onto on the front (on the left in the picture below), it is also the only part on a proper foundation. All the other rooms sit on a combination of piers, posts, blocks and a slab. Every single room is an add-on and every room is a different age. The house has settled at strange angles and the back half of it sits about a half-foot lower than the front half. Some of the additions were put on after it settled. You all think I'm nuts for taking this place on yet? If not, you will need no further convincing after I post pictures of the interior... I just need to edit out all the dust, grime, vermin, bat-skyte-crazy repairs/"upgrades" and general threats to public health... which I expect will leave a perfect void in place of the original photographs.

East side, the small pine tree has since been removed, and the weird collapsing wood-shelter/whatever-it-is attached on the far right is in the process of being torn off. Note the 3 separate chimneys: I was told that every room used to be heated by a separate woodstove. These will eventually be torn out and replaced with triple-wall metal stovepipe.

South side: again, this section on the front was the original structure, a tiny cabin, now it serves as the kitchen area.

West side.

North Side

Creative engineering/architectural marvel of the 21st century. A toolshed... with a long roof addition to serve as a woodshed... and the sun-porch which was apparently cut off from a mobile home... sitting on the side of it. I've since torn most of the tattered plastic off and enclosed the front of wood-storage area.

Late 70s/early 80s(?) model of mobile home which came with the property. This will be deconstructed at some point within the next year or two and many of the materials will be re-used to upgrade the main cottage as well as the tool shed.


Northwest side


Front yard facing south, dirt road in the background


Main yard facing southeast from the house. The planter is an old hot-water tank which was cut open and welded to angle-iron legs. Some of my friends think it is either hilarious or ugly. I am keeping it because I love to see low-brow junk recycled into something useful.


Main yard facing east from the house. The brick fireplace on the left has since been torn out and replaced with a stone fire pit.


Back part of the main yard facing north. The picnic table and everything you see in these photos came with the place. The random well-tile-turned-flower planter has since been emptied and put on the well: an engineering conquest I am proud of because I did all of it myself using a rope, breaker-bar lever and a come-along winch to move it fifty yards onto the well (and it weighs at least as much as three of me).

"Not so bad" you might be thinking? It is way shabbier and mind-bending up close. These photos were taken in the first week of moving in last year. Much has changed since then: Many trees cut down, a lot of equipment moved around... piles of pallets everywhere... but a lot of the junk has also been consolidated or eliminated. A work in progress for AT LEAST the next half decade I think.

I always have plumbing problems...

...on Sunday mornings when I am getting ready to head to Meeting; currently waiting for one of my roommates to wake up so he can help me troubleshoot an inexplicably dead well pump. So much for my plans for the rest of the morning :( *Sigh* This too shall pass.

In other news, due to the fact that I now have broadband internet access at home. A video of "Boscoe," previously mentioned in this post has been YouTubified. See below for something big & hairy.

2 More Blessings To Count!

Despite the fact that I live way out in the sticks, high-speed internet is now available thanks to one of my roommates calling up and schmoozing the local cable-company folks. (Have I stated how envious I am of people who have the ability to politely finagle things out of others in such a way that all parties are satisfied with the arrangement!?) This was the same cable company who gave me a pretty firm "no" several times (due to the fact that my house is so far from the main tap). After Matt spoke to them, they came and strung almost a thousand feet of RJ11 cable from the trunk line out on the main road and regardless of the distance, there is excellent signal strength. I don't know how he convinced them, but I am extremely grateful for it.

So that huge ice storm we had back in early January caused ice to build up on the electrical lines and rip them right out of the house. The linemen came by and fixed them but the electric company sent a letter a couple weeks later telling me that they fixed it this time so that I would not be inconvenienced, but they would not fix it again because the lines were unsafe and I needed to update the entrance. This is due to the fact that it is the extremely outdated separate-lead arrangement: 2 separate wires, bare in some spots, no ground wire, strung over numerous poles and weaving through 400 feet of large white pines (another random disconnect waiting to happen once of of those trees decides to fall or drop a large branch, as large white pines are known to do frequently). In the process of having the cable strung, my roommate also looked into getting the electrical lines re-strung to my house and as it turns out, the electric company has been wanting to do this for years and will be covering the cost of the entire arrangement all the way from the road to the meter base! I thought I was going to have to pay over a thousand bucks to buy a pole and have it set in my yard! Now I don't have to kiss my tax return goodbye!

Quotey quote quote...

I remember this quote vaguely from a junior high literature class, today I spotted it on a coffee mug of all places.

"Greatness is not in where we stand,
but in what direction we are moving.
We must set sail sometimes with the wind
and sometimes against it-but set sail we must,
and not drift, nor lie at anchor."

-Oliver Wendell Holmes

Incidentally (and totally coincidentally), I've had pets named Oliver and Wendell... it appears I have a name in place for the next one.