Today is the first post in a three part story. I wrote it

Pocket Change

                Norman was a curly haired, rosy cheeked boy who lived on a small farm with his mom and dad. His dad raised chickens, pigs, and a few cows. There was never a time on the farm when there were no cats around the barn and Norman had a dog. Trixie was his canine companion and followed him everywhere, helping with the chores.

                The farm had a small orchard and large garden. It was Norman’s job to keep the weeds out of the garden and it was Trixie’s job to keep the animals out. Although Norman spent a lot of time on chores, he did have some free time. That is when he and Trixie would explore the open fields and nearby wooded glen. They found secret places to play among the rocks and trees. They splashed in a little stream that tumbled through the woods and raced across the fields.

“Norman, Norman Lee,” he heard his mom’s voice calling. Norman had been in the barn looking for Muffy, one of the barn cats. She had a litter of kittens and he had just found her nest. He slid down out of the hay mow.

“Coming Mom. I’ll be right there,” he yelled as he hurried from the barn.

Parked in the driveway was a shiny black car. His mom and another lady were standing beside it. The other lady looked a lot like his mom. Drawing closer, he could see a boy about his own age standing with them. His hair was so blond; it looked almost white in the bright summer sun.

Trixie ran ahead and stopped by Norman’s mom. She absent-mindedly scratched Trixie’s head while they waited for Norman to catch up.

“This is your aunt Rose and your cousin Frank. You haven’t seen them since you were just a baby. They are visiting for a few hours. You two boys can play together while I visit with your aunt Rose. Show him around the farm and have some fun.”

“Great Mom,” Norman said as he grabbed Frank’s hand and shook it. Trixie ran around the two of them barking. She seemed to know that they were going exploring.

“Come on Frank. Let me show you something that I just found.” They started walking toward the barn.

“I just found Muffy’s new kittens. We have to be quiet and we can’t touch them yet. They are too young.” Norman was glad to have someone his own age to play with and to share some of the secrets of the farm.

for a good friend. I will share it in three parts.

Today Begins

Today begins the clean up in the aftermath of the work to dry out my basement and from the debris from my firewood. The workmen had to dig all around my house and out into my yard in many places. There are mound of upturned sod and exposed rock all along the ditching.

Today I will try to gather and dispose of the rock and push the sod back into place. I want it closer to the way it was, so that I can mow when the grass gets a little longer. I don’t want to throw the rocks with the blades or destroy the mowing blades.

I want to open up the depression at the entrance of my driveway. It allows the rainwater to flow past my drive instead of coming back in and down my drive. It used to go into my basement when the rain fell heavily. Now, because of the sump pump, I don’t have to worry as much, but I want to eliminate the potential for any flooding.

Spring cleaning will have to wait until I can get the outside done or the grass will be naval high. The supervisor of the work crew said, “I don’t know how you can grow grass here. There is so many rocks and so much clay, I don’t know how grass can take root.”

It is what it is. The area all around the spot where my house was built had been strip mined and it was erected on the edge of the mining activity. I am sure that there were trailings stored where my house sits now.

Everdry

So much through the night and rain today and yet no water running into my basement from my driveway. The outside sump pump is doing its job. The water is being channeled outside of the door and into a pit that the crew dug. The pump situated inside diverts the water through piping and out and away from the house. The crew also diverted water from the down spouts out into the yard or into a nearby drainage ditch.

The humidity in the basement is still high and will be until the concrete dries completely. The water will evaporate into the air until it cures. I feel blessed that the water is staying out of my cellar, although it has made a hole in my wallet.

A wet winter and a wet spring, is this a forerunner for a wet summer? I hope not. The last two years, my garden was ankle deep in mud and very little grew other than weeds. I couldn’t remove the weeds and they overtook my cultivated plants.

I usually overplant tomatoes. I make my own salsa and can it. I prefer it to store bought brands. It has a sharper more acid taste than theirs. It is fresher and adjusted to my taste. Alas, there is none left. I used the last quart last year, even though I tried to stretch it as far as possible.

I am looking for a banner year of tomatoes, banana peppers, and green peppers that I add to enhance the flavor. Onions, some dried hot peppers, and packages of Mrs. Wage’s Salsa flavor with added vinegar are dumped and cooked until hot, that placed into jars to be cold packed and then stored until needed.

My mouth waters thinking of it. Storage now in my dry cold cellar and basement is something I look forward to doing this year.

Day Number Three

Today is the third day of the workers in my basement. They are telling me that there is at least one more day of work. Yesterday, they did more trenching around the outside of my house and carried out the debris that was jack hammered loose on the inside. It wasn’t a warm day, but it was humid and the guys were sweating like crazy as they loaded and dumped the waste concrete.

Their next chore was to hand dig the trench around the inside wall of the basement. The ditch is almost twelve inches wide and I am not sure how deep it will be. There will be an interconnecting drainage pipes that will deliver the influx of water to collection pots. Inside the collection pots are sump pumps that will push the water up and out.

In my cold cellar, a small room at the back of my basement, they will install beams that should remedy a bulge in the block wall. It will stabilize it and keep it from advancing and collapsing. The drainage ditch also runs the inside perimeter of that room as well.

The soil beneath the concrete was heavy with rocks and clay. Bucket after bucket was carried out and dumped, to make way for the drainage pipe.

They are to seal any cracks or holes in the cinder block walls as part of the process of waterproofing. On the outside, the trenching will be dug below the frost line. They will give the exposed wall a plastic coating and membrane, lining the bottom of the ditch with a “J” panel to redirect any water. Water from the downspouts is directed away from the house.

On the outside corner, they are digging another pit and installing another pot and sump pump for hauling away any water from the outside. Water has a tendency to run down my drive in a heavy rain and into my basement. With extremely heavy rains, I have had water, ankle deep in the cellar. Two smaller sump pumps couldn’t keep up with the influx. I used a third outside and would redirect the outside water out into the yard, away from the garage door.

Tomorrow they are to install an air circulating system. It is to remove more water from the air than two normal dehumidifiers. The target for me, is to have a dry basement where I can store things without worry of mold, mildew, or rust.

Here’s to a Dry Basement

Ever since my wife, Cindy and I bought our house about thirty years ago, we have had a damp basement and in the rainy seasons, there has been a small trickle of water across the floor. Of course, when we bought the house, it was at the end of a dry summer, and the stream had dried up.

Even with a dehumidifier, the basement has been damp, allowing iron and steel to rust and some items to have mold grow on them. It has been a battle to store things in the cellar and keep them functional.

When the rain is heavy, the water sometimes flows down the drive and because it overwhelms the drainage pipe, it can flow into the basement. There have been times that the water becomes ankle deep. So much water cannot be removed by the two sump pumps and I have to enlist the aid of a third to overcome the influx of water.

Hopefully, today is the beginning of the end of a wet basement. I hired a company to come in and redo the French ditching around the outside of the house, to brace a bulging wall in my cold cellar, and to retrench the inside of the foundation, installing larger sump pumps and a ventilation system. The claim is the retrenching will channel the ground water into the pumps. The new ventilation system will remove more moisture than two regular dehumidifiers.

It wasn’t an easy choice. Their fees were tremendous, but I don’t plan to live here forever and I won’t think about selling it with the wet cellar that I bought.

It’s Finally Spring

It seems that it has been a long time in coming, but I think that it has finally arrived. I am sure that there will still be a few temperature potholes ahead, a few frosty bumps, and maybe even a snowflake or two, but there promises that spring is bursting forth.

I can see the swelling of buds on the tips of the trees. Several of my crocuses have pokes their beautiful blooms above the soil, purple and golden. The miniature tulips are pushing out their leaves. Soon they will be blooming.

The tulip stalks on these plants only grow to a height of about 6 or 7 inches high with the flowers that are 2 inches in length. I didn’t know that tulips were that small until mine grew the first year. I was used to seeing the much taller plants.

The Coltsfoot plants have shot up overnight, flowering with their sunny yellow blossoms. They make way for their leaves to emerge later.

After attending one of my writers meetings last evening, I arrived home to be serenaded by a chorus of peepers. The peepers are a colony of small frogs that inhabit a swampy area behind my home. Their regaling and singing says it’s springtime and mating season. Several tart the process, but later, I can hardly sleep with a window open, their songs swell to a constant barrage of peeps, trying to outdo each other.

Yesterday when I rained, it had the smell of summer dust being settled by the falling drops. That held the memories of summers past and the promise of the summer to come.

Aches and Pains

When I woke in the middle of the night with the old man’s curse of having to use the restroom, my right shoulder ached. I slept with it out from under the blankets. It was a deep down ache: an ache that filled the muscle to the bone. It wasn’t in the shoulder joint, but in the muscle itself.

It caused me to think of my mother, Sybil. Often she would sit with her upper arm and shoulder wrapped in a sweater, even when the weather was warm. She said, “It’s my bursitis.” I don’t think that she was ever diagnosed by a physician; it was a self diagnosed disease.

I know that the one malady that she actually developed was insidious, one that she didn’t recognize and one that we didn’t realize and understand until it was too late. We had small inklings of the disease Alzheimer’s was starting in her brain, but she put on such a good front that her doctor didn’t believe us.

She talked and seemed to make sense, but the memories of her past slowly trickled through her fingers and blew away. The present and the past met. She no longer understood what had happened and not what was happening. The world swirled around her and she was locked inside the prison that Alzheimer’s had forged for her.

At first she complained that she couldn’t read with her glasses, when in reality, she forgot how. She kept payroll for several companies, did taxes, was a treasurer for church, loving to work with numbers. She finally gave that up when each attempt became a struggle. That was heart wrenching to see. The recognition of family disappeared behind the veil of that disease. She couldn’t leave her house for more than an hour, without becoming distressed and restless.

Slowly she was lowered into that well of Alzheimer’s until nothing was recognizable. She threatened her husband and my dad with a meat fork. She didn’t want to keep herself clean, even with his help. He could no longer handle the person that she became. It was a difficult decision for him, but decided to place her in a nearby personal care facility.

Eventually it seemed as though Alzheimer’s turned out the light on all of her senses. She refused to eat. It may have been that the illness subdued the very desire to eat, took away the basest of human drives, that of needing food and drink. What a cruel taskmaster, Alzheimer’s.