10:52 a.m. - 2002-09-17
Little Oriental Ladies
The chinese chestnuts are getting ripe. They are rather frightening - like small, round porcupines dropping from great heights when I'm out there innocently pruning the evil wisteria. I've come close to getting beaned a number of times.
And then they lie on the ground like spiny land mines, so it's impossible to wander around in bare feet. Eventually they crack open and expose the lovely brown nut, leaving the outer covering to decay into a zillion sharp, spiny pieces.
The chipmunks and squirrels love them, and can somehow get at the nuts without getting spined to death. It's a goof to watch them running around with huge chestnuts hanging out of their mouths. And true to prediction, our first "little Oriental lady" stopped by yesterday to ask if she could take some.
Her name was Yu Chan, and she wasn't what I expected from Drucy's description. Yu Chan is a tiny Korean woman who is 48 years old, has a twenty year old daughter, and looks....oh, maybe 25. She has a 15 inch waist, I swear! When I complimented her on her great looks, she giggled.
"I like keep fit!" she gushed. "I exercise hour each day! Jump rope 700 time every morning!"
700 times. It makes me want to faint. Not even for a 25 year old body would I jump rope 700 times even once, never mind every morning.
Yu Chan was thrilled that I would let her take the chestnuts, no charge. She even told me how to cook them, in case I felt adventurous, which I actually do. Here's Yu Chan's recipe:
"You take 20 nuts. You cut cross in side of nut, you know, like in skin of nut. Then you put on baking pan and put in oven. 375 degrees. Then you cook, oh, well, you cook till done! I think you cook like, oh, 20 minute."
And then she looked a little shy and started to giggle.
"I must tell you - you eat when you alone! The chestnut, it give terrible gas! It very embarrass!"
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I also met our neighbor across the street, who came over to introduce himself when I was dragging old, dead pipes to the garbage.
I had been dreading meeting him, because he seemed overly preoccupied with mowing his lawn and I was afraid he was a classic suburban lawn Nazi. But, no, Jack turns out to be a rather robust, retired man with a big smile who seems to have more physical energy than he knows what to do with, and his lawn is a good outlet.
I apologise to him for the state of our land, and promise that we intend to clean it all up, given enough time, but he brushes off my concerns.
"It looks great already!" he gushes. I think he's not just being diplomatic. "It already looks 100 percent better! It was in such terrible shape when Mrs. Esslinger lived here. She had a lawn service, but they only did the minimum. No, it looks much better!"
And then he excuses himself to go weed his canna lilies.
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And now for the inevitable garden report.
After I dragged the dead pipes out yesterday I felt this surge of gardening energy, perhaps inspired by Yu Chan and her obsessive rope jumping. I started out in the back patio area, pulling up ivy, then went out to the "ice cream parlor" which is a little area in the woods that has a semi-circular grouping of rocks. In the middle of this grouping is a brick patio which has been covered over by dirt and greenbriar. I'm slowly trying to clean it up and unearth the bricks, and a few days ago I cut as much of the greenbriar as I could reach. Yesterday I loaded what was a surprisingly large pile of thorny, dead branches in to the wheelbarrow and dragged it to the street for the composting trucks to pick up.
Huntsville has terrible curbside recycling - no glass! - but they do have an active yard waste composting program. You can put out entire dead trees and they will take them away and turn them into wood chips.
And then I decided I should finish pruning the Van Fleets, but on the way I got distracted by the quince bush, which was being held hostage by a great huge smilax vine and a few other vile, viney things that I haven't identified. I wound up working my way over to the Grancy Greybeard tree, which was so full of vines that it even had several dead branches dangling in the air, held up by vines. It made for a great tug of war between me and the vines, but eventually I had a streetside brush pile about six feet high.
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