Marty’s blog

Up at 6:30. Who could sleep with this flying overhead for a half hour!? The crop duster is spraying again for gypsy moths. Back and forth just above the treetops. Had plenty of tijme to grab my camera, but it’s hard to catch a moving target trying to anticipate where it will come out over the trees. Got this one shot, then went back inside for an hour. They say the chemical is not harmful to people - it’s some kind of bacteria that only affects the moths - but why take chances?

Each homeowner pays $47 bucks a year, which is a bargain when you consider that the trees are a big part of the investment into the property. On just two acres, we have well over 100 trees over 2 inches in diameter. Here’s a tree inventory I took last year. (We have since lost our oldest tree, a huge red oak over 40 inches in diameter.)

I’d love to get more sleep, but the painters are here early - got to go.

This is the kind of thing that makes me completely lose my faith in humanity.

It does make it easy to understand, though, why so many people in general don’t give a fuck about anyone else. When tragedies occur around the world, and a neighbor the other day said “Myanmar, what’s that?”

Who cares?

When people only vote “their own interests” — or what they think are their own interests. Or when they don’t vote at all. Or when New Orleans floods, and once it’s no longer covered on the nightly news it’s forgotten. Or when there is famine looming in parts of Asia, but that’s not my problem. Or when stupid presidents invade countries and cause the deaths and maiming of a few hundred thousand, but my neighbors are happy because now they’re protected from terrorists. And they have nice lawns.

So I’m thinking…who are the real terrorists? Who is the real threat to my well being?

When I explain to my neighbors that we all have shallow wells, (about 50 to 60 feet) and that the ground has good drainage, i.e. sand and gravel (glacial till) - and that whatever chemical they spray on their lawn quickly finds it’s way into the aquifer that provides the water that THEY (and we) drink - they reply that “the lawn company” says it’s okay, and if it was bad for the groundwater, the government would ban it.

They must mean the kind of government regulation that they all hate, being predominantly Republicans.

I asked another couple who sprays, and have 4 teenage kids including a daughter who might want to make more stupid babies one day, and they said that they had to do it because neighbors like me, who don’t zap my acre of dandelions, are responsible for dandelions seeds coming up in their lawn. I think what that means is that I’ll be responsible if their kids get cancer.

Another neighbor, a really nice old guy, 75 to 80, moved out here from the city 30 years ago and has been drinking the water all that time. He has had three different types of cancer in the past several years. The other day I saw him with his pump sprayer, with his own concoction, nuking his dandelions. Since he has about an acre of lawn, he must have used hundreds of gallons gallons of the stuff over the years. He doesn’t seem to think there is anything wrong. He said “if it doesn’t hurt grass, how can it hurt people?”

I decided a very lengthy explanation would probably fall on deaf ears. I just asked him to think about it.

And then one day, they’ll all be shocked when they hear the official news. OHMYGOD, there’s poison in my well!!

It’s funny though, how none of them like their picture taken when they’re spraying poison on their lawns. One young gent, with a perfect lawn in a neighboring, new cornfield subdivision was sure not happy when I approached with my camera. At least that’s how I interpreted his gesture. When I saw the Hummer in his driveway, I decided it was probably useless to solicit a conversation.

In a speech given recently by Richard Moe of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, he describes so well a relationship that many of us have understood, but not been able to put so eloqently to words.

Sustainable Stewardship: Portland, Oregon
Historic Preservation’s Essential Role in Fighting Climate Change

I did something around the house today I never did before. I chlorinated the well. Never had to do that before because I always lived in or near the city.

You’re supposed to do it once a year, and we’ve been here a year and a half already. Assumed “the guys” who owned the house before us kept on top of it. Not. The bolts to the well head were so rusted, I had to beak them off. Obviously hadn’t been removed for many years. We were getting a lot of that brown water. Supposedly rust, and some kind of brown algae. Who knows. And since it hasn’t been done for a while, it also means all kinds of living organisms in the system probably - e coli and that sort of stuff. Euww! Well at least we don’t drink the water, anyhow, because it runs through a softener and tastes kind of not so great — salty. It’s great for bathing and laundry though. You use a lot less soap, and never a soap film anywhere like with hard city water.

But for drinking, it’s Ice Mountain for us.

Anyhow, stupid me. Here’s how it works.

Step one: remove the well head and pour in two gallons of “pool shock”, i.e. very concentrated chlorine bleach and run the garden hose into the well for 1/2 hour to circulate the solution.

Step two: bypass the softener and open all the cold water faucets one at a time until you smell the chlorine, and flush the toilets twice. Then no water usage for 24 hours.

Step three: tomorrow, I’ll flush the system by running the hose outside for about 3 hours to clear the system of chlorine

Step four: Run all the cold water faucets until the odor is gone.

Here’s the stupid part that the “procedure” sheet didn’t tell me to do. TURN OFF THE HUMIDIFIER ON THE FURNACE.

About ten minutes after pouring the chlorine into the well, the whole house started smelling like a swimming pool. And it kept getting worse until my eyes started watering. Took me about a half hour to figure it out. The heating system was blowing chlorinated (humidified) air all through the house. Duh.

Never gave a second thought to our water supply until we moved here. Lots of issues, including overdevelopment and the threat to our water supply.

Water really will be a major issue of the 21st Century.

I could somehow survive without a car if I had to. Or a flat screen TV and a microwave. But not without water.

Every time now that I see someone having their acre of lawn sprayed with herbicides, insecticides and fertilizer, I cringe. I want to ring their doorbell and have a heart-to-heart. Probably not a good way to makes friends though.

There is just too much that is strange about this story in the local paper (the Northwest Herald), that I don’t know exactly where to go with it. Judge for yourself:

Dangling deer head stolen from tree in man’s backyard

“It is definitely an oddity,” Kummerer said.

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Now mind you, I’m an omnivore and have no special bone to pick with venison eaters. I reprinted it all above to permit me more easily to try to pick away at it a little bit.

1. Prized deer head?? Okay, yes, I’ve seen animal heads mounted before. But that still doesn’t mean I get it. Oh yeah, I forgot, it’s a “sport”. i.e. Man armed with shotgun battles buck with large antlers in a death match.

2. What is the relevance of being a Vietnam vet?

3. I mentioned this before - hunting with bows and arrows is the cruelest way to kill deer because they usually don’t die instantly, wandering and suffering from their injuries for many hours or days before they perish. Is using a bow and arrow considered more virtuous because it is somehow more challenging?

4. What is the relevance of him living on a ten acre property?

5. Somewhere down the road he was going to do something with the head? Like what, write a symphony?

6. “It’s a good thing we got to eat the animal”. Why, does it cure some kind of disease?

7. The 200 pound deer was the catch of his life? That’s kind of sad.

8. He saved the head to “memorialize it”. Memorialize what exactly?

9. “Oh my gosh, was that a beautiful animal”… I agree. The keyword here is “WAS”.

10. “This is just crazy.” Yes, I agree.

11. The crime scene?

12. Why are the Conservation District Police involved? Does anyone else get the irony there?

When I woke up this morning, I looked out the bedroom window and it all looked so gray and dreary and I wanted to stay in bed and hibernate some more. But finally I got up, and when I went outside on the porch for my morning coffee, and looked out into the woods, my perceptions changed immediately.

As the fog was rolling in, the first thing that struck me was the aroma. After the warmer weather, and the drizzling rain over the past 24 hours, the ground is thawing and “waking up”. With the decaying oak leaves still on the ground from last fall, everything smells so earthy and fantastic!

It may not be officially Spring, but it’s in the air.

The squirrels have lost their winter fat, the hungry hawks are busy reducing the rodent populations - including our friendly squirrels, unfortunately - and the red fox is looking for a denning place.

It’s anything but dreary!

About the squirrels, I mentioned in my old blog about the family we had nesting last year in one of our oaks.

The mother and her three offspring have entertained us the past Summer, Fall and Winter. So far, they have all avoided the predatory red-tails. They are now all thin, and back to their acrobatics in the trees in the back yard. I see them out the window often when I wake up in the morning.

No, it’s not dreary. I just needed to get out of bed.

If you’ve never experienced migrating flocks of hundreds of Sandhill Cranes flying overhead, you’re missing one of Nature’s great spectacles. As they fill the sky, they fill the air with their incredible whooping and cackling as they look for places to stop over on their flight north to Canada.

The subspecies seen here in northern Illinois is probably the greater sandhill crane , the largest of the species.

Imagine the sounds of dozens, or even hundreds of these in unison. They are very loud, and even a pair of these large birds calling at once can be an awesome spectacle.

Despite Man’s best efforts, through our ignorance and degradation of the environment, to eradicate the fascinating creatures, Nature, and a some individuals have had other ideas. There have been efforts to bring back this endangered species of crane, and it looks like some degree of success.

My only dissappointment is that my wife and I seemed to be the only ones outside today in our neighborhood watching this miracle.

While so many are inside your churches, arrogantly worshipping your own hallowed place in this universe, your god is putting on a show for you, outside, that you won’t see.

How much of your god’s creation don’t you see because you just aren’t looking? Or looking in all the wrong places?

Believe in your god. But please give up the time you spend on your wars, your religions, all your self imposed ignorace, and take that time to witness the real universe your god has created. Then maybe you will cherish it more and protect it. If not for yourself, then for your children, and mine.

A beautiful place to walk quitely together and meditate. Just silence and the wind..and the calls of the red-winged blackbirds, already beginning their breeding rituals. So Spring is around the corner!

“Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got
Till it’s gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot “

Joni Mitchell

I went a little off-trail this afternoon to get these shots. Relying on my footprints in the snow to get back to the trail, suddenly it started to get dark and they were getting hard to see.

But as I am posting this, you can see that I found my way back.