Trifecta

I keep seeing three things that I really like, but aren't worthy of a blog entry. This picture has all three. I loved the profusion of Black Eyed Susan flowers this fall. They were thick and tall and always represent the last healthy surge of growth before it gets cold and colorless during the winter.

I love the white barn, an improbable hold out right next to the highway, right across from the thick development from the hospital to the high school. It's in perfect repair and painted bright white, even though it's got to be at least 50 or 60 years old.

The last thing is the hospital with the ever present crane looming over it. They've had two or three expansions of the hospital, and for a while there were two of these big cranes over the site. Each time you go by, the crane is pointed in a different direction and the light hits it differently every time. At night, the four strong red lights on it are always a cheery sight.

These are a few of the familiar things I get to see every day.

Goodbye Cuppy

Not your usual lighthearted animal tale. Kids may want to skip this one.

It was the night before Thanksgiving and I was cleaning up the house. The cats wanted to go outside, so I let them out as usual. My brother Steve came over and he brought his dog, Ray. Ray is very nice and gentle, and has never chased the cats or threatened them in any way, but the cats always freak out when there are any visitors, human or canine. I should have anticipated that the cats would want to disappear, but I forgot about it in my rush to get ready. When they are inside, they hide in the basement, but if they are outside, they just stay away if someone strange is around. We usually pull the cats in every night, but that night I didn't. I was too tired to stay up looking for Cuppy and Speedy, a process that sometimes takes a few hours, so I left the door open (they have a cat door in the front door) and figured I would see them in the morning.

The two cats stayed out all night, and Speedy came inside and went up to Andrea when she was getting ready for work. I was up when Andrea got in her car drove down the driveway. As she was leaving, I went outside to find Cuppy.

Unfortunately, Cuppy was hit by a car right across from our driveway, just when Andrea was at the end of the driveway. Andrea stopped as she was pulling out of the drive and found Cuppy beside the road. I could tell something was wrong, so I ran up to see what the problem was. The cat had just been hit moments before and was still warm, but was obviously dead. Andrea was distraught, but had to leave for work.

I took the sad little cat body inside. I thought Zach was still asleep and my first impulse was to bury the cat before he could wake up. On the way in, I ran into Eddy, Cuppy's sister, and I bent over and let her sniff Cuppy, so she would know Cuppy was dead. This is something I heard a long time ago, that pets can become confused and try to find a missing pet companion, but if they get to see that they are dead, they understand.

As I was going through the house with the cat in my arms to get a piece of plastic to set her on, I looked down the hall and saw that Zach was up and was out of his room, at the end of the hall in the dark. I was standing there with Cuppy in my arms, but it was dark, and I doubt he could see her. What he said next was bizarre, though.

"It's scary outside. Cuppy."

How did he know?

I ended up letting Zach see her, and I tried to explain what happened. He was not upset and seemed to understand.

We buried her under the hedge tree next to the compost heap. I wrapped her in one of my favorite old Durango Colorado t-shirts that I had worn until it was a bit tattered. Cuppy always did like to sit in my laundry basket and rub herself on the laundry I had worn. My last picture I took of her from a couple of weeks before was in my room sitting in my laundry basket.

The first day I went back to work, I was coming home with Zach and parked the car on the driveway and got out and stood there a moment. I was thinking about how she would run up to me if she was outside right when I pulled up in the car. She also used to meet and greet me at the end of the driveway when I finished a run, where she would rub against my legs, then lick the salty sweat off my forearms when I sat down to pet her. I stood on the driveway and realized that she would not be coming up to see me any more and Zach said "Where's Cuppy?" I'm not sure how it was that he was thinking the same thing.

Cuppy loved being outside and always mewed loudly to be let out. It was usually difficult to get her to come inside. She had some kind of homing instinct, and when she felt threatened outside or was blocked from coming back, she would go into the woods on the other side of our neighbor's house. We think this is the place where she was born. When the house next door was empty all those years, I would go through the empty yard and walk the fenceline along the mowed path and call her name. She would come out, very happy, sometimes not even minding if I picked her up, purring loudly as I carried her home. She would do what Andrea called the Licky Cheek Rubbers, where she licked your hand and then rubbed her jaw line on your wet hand, so she could groom herself with your hand. Once home, she would beg for some milk and then go find a place to sleep, usually in my laundry basket on a pile of my dirty clothes. Tracking her down at night was often a pain in the ass, as she could stay hidden outside through several attempts to call her in. Since the new neighbors moved in, I was no longer comfortable walking across their yard in the dark to retrieve her if they were home, so getting her in at night got even harder.

Cuppy was also the cat that would bring the mice and birds she caught into the house. She was a busy little hunter, and Andrea would often call on me to remove her trophies from the floor and take them outside. It was really exciting when she brought in something that was still alive, and we had to frantically chase it down. She did not understand that this was not a good thing, she was always proud of her catch. She could be a little angry and feisty sometimes, and she clawed me a few times when I had her cornered and she didn't want to be picked up.

We found her with her two sisters about 6½ years ago, abandoned by their mother, hungry and scared. She got sick twice, and was near death both times, but we nursed her back from the brink. She had a little notch in one ear where one of the older cats slashed her, and when she was little the bigger cats were pretty hard on her, which forced her to be sly and scrappy. She was tougher and gutsier than her sisters, and more independent. I always felt like she was my cat, and honestly, she was my favorite of all the cats. I thought she was terrified of the road and never went up there, so the fact that she had been across the street surprised me. I can't count the number of times I took a high beam spotlight up to the road to see if she had been hit after looking for her off and on for a couple of hours with no success. Andrea said she died doing what she loved, being outside, which was true, you really couldn't keep her inside, she always wanted out.

Since she's been gone, life has been a little easier. There's no more cat round-up, and no one begs for milk in the kitchen anymore. We don't have to worry about finding a snake or lizard in the living room. While this is more convenient, I would gladly have put up with these minor inconveniences just to have her still around. She will be missed.

New Oven & Stove

When the stovetop quit working and we decided to replace it, Andrea wrote on her wall that the 70s called and asked for their oven back.

She wanted to do it for some time and the stovetop was the straw that broke the camel's back, as the dishwasher was in a near failure mode for over a month.

Andrea went out and found what she wanted on the third try. I'm glad she did it after going out the first time. It's no fun buying major appliances.

We hired someone to do it, thank God. They took the old double oven out of the cabinetry, and he converted that into a little closetlike enclosed cabinet and a microwave oven shelf.

The new oven didn't work at first, and we discovered that there was a bad breaker in the fusebox downstairs. It wasn't completely shot, it let current through, but it was fouled up enough that the oven wouldn't heat up, which explains what happened to the old stove.

It wasn't dead, it just wasn't hooked up to good juice any more. Which means we could have fixed it with a $30 fuse.

But now we have new appliances. I will post the pics of the completed job when we get the cabinets repainted. I just realized I don't even have an after pic of the installed appliances.

Fungus Scout

Zach was totally interested in the strange leafy grey fungus that grows on the side of the locust tree in our front yard. I gave him a magnifying glass to see if that would be even more interesting. It was, both the toy and what he could see through it.

More of the Heart Pond

The pond down the road looks like a heart when you look at it from above. It has a great location for getting good photos across it, so I've been shooting it for years, and it's probably got at least 5 or 6 entries on this blog. I used to change the cover photo to show it in various times of the year to match what time it was.

Now I just add the photos from time to time.

Leaf Patrol

This fall the leaf season seemed to come early and last a long time. We got a tow behind leaf sweeper last year, and the endless hours raking in years past turned into several hours, a vast improvement.

The resulting pile of leaves was 8 yards deep, 9 yards wide, and 7 feet tall. I estimate that we have about 5 tons of material there to rot away into nice compost.

Front Walk

Our front courtyard and the area between the front walk and the house were originally covered with a plastic liner and filled in with River Rock, or a coarse limestone gravel.

This was pretty for the first 5 to 6 years, but then started filling in with rotting leaves, blown over cut grass, and the weeds that grew in the natural compost that results when rocks are left sitting for a few years.

It wasn't too bad when there were large yew bushes there, but we tore them out about 5 years ago, and the front walkway was just a weedy mess.

I hand screened a 5' section at the end of the driveway, and liked the thought of turning the area into something we could plant with a flower bed, but the work was backbreaking. Finally, the summer had been dry for a long time and I realized that the ground was as ready as it was going to be.

I broke up the rock with a rototiller and ran it through a screener from work. The cleaned rock went into a strip around the house, the dry line under the eaves. The rest of the material like the plastic liner was tossed in the trash (I couldn't believe how many nails were in the dirt) and the weeds and roots were carted off to the compost heap. The volume was replaced with fresh screened compost.

The work was time consuming and not so much backbreaking as back-aching. I was listening to hours of podcasts, so it wasn't too bad. Finally, on the night of the 24th, the forcast called for the first rain we had in over 2 months. I decided it was time to finish the job. I took some time in the afternoons for two days that week, and it still wasn't enough, so I stayed out the night before the rain until I finished, which was around midnight. As I was cleaning up the area and putting all the tools away, it started to rain.

It's cleaned up, and now next year we need to plant it to really see what we have. Stay tuned.

Mums for Mom

Zach wanted to get the flowers before I said anything or suggested it. Planting the mums in fall is sort of a tradition, and Andrea and I had talked about it and I was going to see if they were any good at Hyvee. Zach went right up to them and said he wanted one before I had even thought about talking to him about it. Sometimes he's a step ahead.

Learning Photography Under a Yellow Hyvee Tree

We stopped to admire the bright yellow beauty of a tree in the parking lot of Hyvee. I handed the camera over to Zach and asked him to give it a try. He leaned back and shot up through the tree's leaves. It was a good first time.

One Last Walk at Jacomo

Before the colors left and started to get cold, we took one last walk around the dam at Jacomo.

Zach always likes to stop and stand on manhole covers. Actually, he does it on anything that's round, including little plug covers. It's like he's suddenly on stage, or maybe he thinks it's a Star Trek transport pad.

We got into a habit during the summer when walking the paths. Whenever we found evidence of a Raccoon or Possum crossing, Zach would stop and point and declare happily, "Poop!" He would make sure I saw it, which is useful in avoiding stepping in it.

The upper part of Lake Blue Springs is very stumpy. I found an interesting stump remnant in the tall growth at the fringe of the lake, and the lake itself is full of them.

We stopped at the strange little dock/platform, which I have never been able to determine what it is for. It is built like a dock section, but it's pulled out of the water like a boat. I thought for a long time that it was a dredging platform, but there's no evidence it was ever used for that. It has one crank standing on the platform, an old pulley that may have had a steel cable on it at one time, but I can't tell what it was used for. It will have to remain a mystery.

We ended the tour by going past the huge maples that turn bright red every fall. They are around a flagpole with a monument to some early settlers.

Todd George Parkway

The long awaited link between Colburn and Woods Chapel extending Todd George Parkway finally opened. There is a link in the middle connecting to the new Strother Road exit on I-470, which was under construction most of Zach's first year while I took him to day care at Pat's house in Lakewood.

The road parallels I-470 through undeveloped farmland. It was mostly soybean fields browning in the fall weather the first times I drove it.

I had heard that this block of land belonged mostly to the Mormon church, who had owned it for a long time, almost stretching back to when they were driven out of Independence over 100 years ago. I don't know if that's true, but there's no buildings on it except for a single farm silo.

It ends at Woods Chapel at a big Lee's Summit water tower in a place that was undeveloped farmland just 3 or 4 years ago and is now the edge of development around Lakewood, with a big busy intersection.

It's new and unspoiled and it's so fun to have a little country drive in an area so close to town. I wish they would make it into a park.