Waterfalls Over The Years

 

Every now and then the Memory feature on my iMac pops up with a nice compilation of photos and videos. This morning was one of those times.

By the way, I have my right hand main finger and thumb bandaged up so I can type this. Remember my cat scratch injury of Sunday? I'm having trouble healing because I use those digits and it hurts. I put some band aids on this morning and it seems to help. At least it's not hurting as much when I use that main finger and thumb. Damn cat!

Anyway, this compilation of my visits over the years to different waterfalls is a nice palate cleanser from my several recent negative posts. 

The one "waterfall" that really impressed me was Niagara Falls. I had heard so much about Niagara Falls that I wasn't ready to be impressed but I was!

The first time I visited Niagara Falls was early on when I moved in with Bill and we took a road trip through Canada. I think that was in 1965 of 1966. 

The last time I was at Niagara Falls was with Pat about ten years ago. I was just as impressed the second time as I was the first time. Pat wasn't impressed though and wanted to leave. I want to go back and spend some more time there, perhaps take that Maid of the Mist ride down below. However, I have no urge to go over the falls in a barrel. 

The other falls pictures are from Toccoa Falls in Georgia, Bill's hometown of Toccoa Georgia. Also quite an impressive falls. Bill liked it too.

Few things impress me but nature always does.

Yard Work - I Need Help!

Jordan - my possible new help to maintain my yard

I love yard work.

From the time I was a little kid growing up on 120 Washington Avenue in Downingtown, Pennsylvania I wanted my own yard.  I envied my fellow classmates who lived in houses that had their own back yard.  We lived in a second floor apartment in a large, cheap ($22 a month) apartment building in the white trash poor section of town.  That apartment building is still there and it is still the white trash poor section of town.

120 Washington Avenue, Downingtown, PA - no back or front yard here

I got my taste for yard work from mowing the lawns of some of my customers on my paper route.  I also pulled weeds from my Great Aunt Grace's garden.  I've always loved working outside, with the fresh air and my hand in the warm earth.  I can still remember the fresh spring time smell of buttercup flowers as I was on my hands and knees pulling dandelions out of my Aunt Grace's backyard garden.

Of course I did have my taste of working in the garden which was my father's corn field.  My brothers and I spent many a hot summer day hoeing and weeding eight to twelve rows of corn.  But I never considered this yard work.  I considered this WORK.  Besides, it was for my father and it didn't count.  Slave labor.

My father and brother John at my pop's corn field - see how thrilled John is?
After we pulled our required rows of weeds, we were treated to ice cream.
Bribery always sometimes works with kids.

Our family didn't get our own house with land until the summer of 1958.  I was 16 years old and soon to enter my senior year in high school.  I was too caught up in my pubescent adolescent years to have much interest in yard work at that age.

After high school I joined the Army.  When I got out of the Army it was back to apartments again for me.  Ub 1964 I met Bill (my spouse of 47 years this year) and, of course, moved into his apartment in New Jersey.  After a year or so of that apartment me moved into an apartment in Philadelphia, PA.  Still no backyard or front yard for me.  Finally, in 1979 we bought a small row house in center city Philadelphia and I finally had my own backyard, albeit a very small postage stamp back yard.

Our Philadelphia "backyard" - not really 

We lived there for eleven years but I never had much satisfaction from that backyard which really wasn't more than a location for potted plants.

It wasn't until we moved to East Brandywine Township outside of Downingtown, PA in 1980 that I finally had my own "backyard";  all 6.875 acres of it!  Needless to say, I had plenty of backyard then and had a wonderful, interesting and time consuming time.  Remember the old adage "Be careful what you wish for?"  Well, I had more than enough yard work.  Me, the deer, and the bugs, and everything.

Our East Brandywine Township backyard - too much - salad for the deer

Fast forward to today.  I have the ideal suburban backyard.  Our backyard now is real.  It is in the back of the house.  I can plant whatever I want to and don't have to worry about deer eating my plants nor neighborhoods kids picking my flowers like I did in Philadelphia.

So what is the problem now?  I am too old for all this work!

This morning as Bill and I were driving back into our development back from morning errands, I saw a young man working outside my neighbor's house.  Now I've been thinking about this for quite a while.

HOW ABOUT HAVING SOME HELP?

Bill getting ready to decapitate the Pampas grass yesterday

Yes!  I need help.  I admit it.  I'm seventy years old now and after spending four hours yesterday cutting back one Pampas Grass plant, I decided I needed help.  Preferably the help of a young, muscular, healthy man.  Hey, you can't blame me can you?

I called my neighbor and asked her if I could approach her Landscape Guy (one has to be careful about things like this one does).  She said "Sure!"  I took a walk up and introduced myself.  I was greeted with a firm (masculine) handshake.  Good first step!  The young man (most men are "young men" to me these days) introduced himself to me.  I explained my situation.  He said he would be glad to come down to my place and check out my "situation" (don't even go there).

So here I await.  I have succumbed.  I am now the Old Man who needs help maintaining his property.  Has it really come to this?  Oh yes it has.  This is just another milepost on my Journey In Life.

Some people go to the opera, some go to the races, other go on a cruise.  Me?  I find my solace working in a pastoral backyard with just the birds, plants and fresh air for company.  I don't have to deal with the vagaries of people and their whims and demands in this sylvan setting.  Only me and Nature.  The way it was meant to be.

One Determined Sparrow

There has been a compromise of sorts between me and the Determined Sparrow. As soon as I would bring down the pole to the Purple Martin house (a tricky operation, lowering two metal poles without slicing a finger off if one of the poles slips), and tearing out the beginnings of the sparrow nest, the Determined Sparrow would wait until I put the pole back and he would again begin building his nest. He wasted no time. Not a Shy One, this sparrow. After the last nest clean out, I left the door to the apartment opened. The Purple Martin birdhouse has six apartments, two on the bottom and one on the top on the side facing east. On the other side (west), two apartments on the top and one on the bottom. Mr. Determined Sparrow preferred the one on the bottom facing west. I raised the pole again and went to the shed to observe what Mr. Determined would do now. He shot right up into that now garage door opened apartment. He looked up and down and around and then sat there, contemplating his next move. His mate joined him. Both of them sat there in the apartment without a front. Today was very windy. Any nesting placed in the apartment without a front would surely blow away. For most of the day, these two would flit back and forth between that open apartment and the post of an old blue bird house. I left them to do some yard work. As the sun was setting I heard a perky “Chirp! Chirp!” What do my eyes see? I see a little sparrow head peaking out of the blue bird house, looking in my direction, as if to acknowledge that he has accepted my compromise. A few minutes later, I saw a pair of bluebirds sitting on top of the blue bird house across the way from the sparrows' new home. Maybe we all can live together after all. Just not in the Purple Martin house.