Hallelujah!

I woke up this morning to Charlie's chatter. It was already light. Yesterday the sky was ashen and sober all day long. It was a good excuse for us to remain in our pajamas in our warm dry house. The fireplace has sat cold and empty for more than a year. I only have a few logs stacked near the fence outside. They have fungus growing on them. Fire doesn't discriminate.

We are not quite prepared for winter. Now is the time to check the gutters and close the vents and change the filter in the furnace and inspect it for leaks and call the chimney sweep and unhook the hoses and bring in the patio furniture and mount hooks to hang the bikes in the garage and change the oil in the snow thrower and put away my razor and bring up the flannel shirts and the long underwear from the basement. It's also a good time to uproot some of the perennials in the front flower bed to transplant elsewhere. I'm thinking about relocating the red sage to the bare section of slope in the back yard. Charlie knows that area as "muddy!" The sage's flowers hold their crimson color well into the frost. There are bushy Mugo pine out there too. I haven't even moved them. But they are small still. Their growth is negligible. They are barely distinguishable from the weeds. "Too TI-ny!" Charlie would say, as in an ill-fitting shirt.

I thinned out the crabapple tree in front of the house after getting inspired at the botanic gardens. I really hacked it quite a bit. But now you can see the trunk. Where it splays out the branches meander and contort.

Charlie and I went on a walk and a neighbor close by was tending to her yard. We chatted for a while. Charlie was shy. He gets silly. He stood up and turned around in his stroller and began to shake the stroller and call like a howler monkey. We left with a trash bag full of iris tubes. I like the idea of planting a few clumps beneath the newly trimmed crabapple just behind the creeping periwinkle.

Charlie goes out with me when I water and walks up the hill and then runs down it.

"Up the hill!" He looks at me and exclaims. He takes deliberate bounding steps up the grade. Then he gets to the top and I pray that when I look away to drag the hose and reset the sprinkler head that our new neighbor's Chesapeake Bay Retriever doesn't lurch his giant head through one of the gaps in the fencing and bite Charlie. Because that could happen.

I had this grand idea of building a retaining wall out along the east fence to hold the earth back. Now I'm reconsidering. I have myriad ideas; a fountain, a pond, a bridge, a deck, a treehouse, living plants. That's what happens when you buy a house and know nothing about landscaping. You have to learn as you go. And pretend you have some kind of a master plan in your head when your wife questions your ability.

I promise her a vegetable garden. I point out where I will plot it. She says, "You mean where the bushes (Russian Sage and Blue Beard) are?"

"I'll move them," I say with a wink.

Same with being a dad. I sat up, squinted and checked the clock. It was 7 am. I strained to comprehend his words, but they were unintelligible. "Ado-ba-do-ba-do-ba-do-ba-do!" Based on his language ability or lack thereof, I picture him as a great leader or a landscaper, respectively.

We got up and made breakfast together –oatmeal. I asked what we needed to make the oatmeal. "Bowl." He said. I retrieved the bowl from the cabinet. I asked what we needed next. "Next?" He thought. "Brown sugar." He said. "What else?" I inquired. He walked to the pantry, opened the door and pointed up to a shelf. "That!" He said. "What is that?" I asked. "Oatmeal." He said. I added water and put it in the microwave and I told Charlie to go to his room if he needed a dry diaper.

He sprinted down the hallway toward his room screaming along the way, "Dry diaper! Dry diaper! Hallelujah!"