An elderly mom got an early Mother’s Day gift, courtesy of three entities who gave: Her a condo made-a stone-a, AT&T and a muddy spring.
All combined to take her request for a properly drained stretch of slight ponding, a size of a grown corn stalk and about 30 feet long, between her walkout patio and the edge of the condo association land, where she has planted a few small sets of flowers at which to gaze as she passes away the last of her days, which one hopes are still many and not spent in a daze. The whole area is smaller than her small driveway, on the other side on things. I was going to say size of a shoebox, but that would be stretching it like a shoehorn.
Then AT&T step in, with its landscaping/concrete/cable gurus, and in the heat of the night plants a cement culvert-cylinder a few feet in diameter high and more long. So instead of being able to stare at tulips and the like, this mom can bear down on — cracks in what amounts to a huge, industrial size concrete pipe.
But this mom is not about to take this sitting down in her rocking chair. But who to call? Cement Busters? We continue our story with the homeowner’s association reps who deal with such things, and they are triplicate. One is undergoing heart surgery. He will not be peering under a pipe. Another is on a vacation, a cruise I think. Can’t handle this over more fiber optics. A third is up north at the cabin. Woah be ye who try such things long distance. (OK, someone later made it over, but through up his hands, mostly. There is a meeting where it could be brought up, but later in May, about which time flowers are typically knee-high.)
So our stalwart tries the direct route, talk to the guys who also like she spend their time nosing around in the dirt, trying to make flowers or other networks grow. Why couldn’t said obtrusive barrel-sized thing be or have been placed a few more feet over, so sitting in the lot line where people spend less time looking at it.
Nothing’s been done yet. But maybe in time for Father’s Day? Or by which time this mom wins the lotto and can buy a tent and rent some Chippendales to carry her around like the Queen of Sheba she is. If she lives that long. (Check out the lyrics for Iron Maiden’s Powerslave.)
So this mom is left waiting for when the temps get warm enough, again, to evaporate the muck, or could enough to freeze it, before she can go digging in the dirt to remove her weeds. Until that case it’s peering around the edges of the culvert at Dandy-Lions and the most attractive of the weeds. (Or find some mild entertainment from watching Wily Coyote chase chipmunks through.) The wild violets have been blocked like a bad music responders, bad pop song. We could leave for now, those bleached out hostas still there from the first cold snap. Or grind around at the big bottom of that culvert. Before the buckthorn that are all you could left see in the first place, which this mom had earlier ask be trimmed back and the tree under which the buckthorn is rapidly growing cut down, overtakes the culvert completely. More than one person had asked that the highly invasive buckthorn be trimmed, so it can stop spreading those hundreds (maybe thousands in total) of berries across driveways, walkways and pathways.
So, on a related matter, this mom has asked for Her Gift on Her Day, to be in the form of labor, forego the flowers as there is no space for them left anyway, (as in a Labor Day holiday, and you then get three full days to fulfill.) The request is to power wash her now mud-added patio, and do her long overdue window too, (can we say garage), while they are at it. Just don’t wait until Labor Day. Maybe Memorial Day.