The House That Dreaded Sundown

It was a dark, hot night. The kind of night you have two fans going and still have to leave the porch door open with the screen latched. The wife and I had spent the last 24 hours in Portland attending the nuptials of her brother and his lovely bride, and all that frivolity had us wiped, so when we got home that evening, there was nothing on the agenda but some straight-up chilling, which in our house meant a couch, a couple adult libations, and a few episodes of the new Wet Hot American Summer series on Netflix. Part a reflection of our long day, part a reflection of our viewing choice, Cory was snoozing on the couch by 10, and a rerun of Tiny House Nation later I was about to board the same sleepy boat, so went to clean my teeth then stepped back in the living room to shut down the house.

That's when it happened.

I heard it first, an erratic ripple of the air in the room. I was by the front door, about to turn off the overhead light; Cory was still asleep on the couch; the cats were racing upstairs to the loft. I followed them with my drowsy eyes. And I saw it. Swooping and circling, spread-winged and squealing in panic. A bat. Condor-sized or so it seemed in the low light. I managed to say aloud, "Holy ____, is that a b-" and before I even knew she was awake, Cory was off the couch in full-on duck-and-cover mode, retreating from the living room and barricading herself in the bathroom before I could get out the "-at?" It's worth noting that most of the time when Cory takes a little night-nap on the couch, it takes a tad less than Megadeth cranked to 11 to wake her; the mere suggestion of a bat and she's like a Navy Seal, alert and enacting protocol at the first whiff of consciousness. End result? It was me and the bat. And two cats trying to test the efficacy of their rabies boosters. 

The next few minutes were a blur. I did the only thing I could think to do: open the door. This diverted the cats' attention from a free meal to freedom, and it was they who bolted for the door, the bat still making its manic circuit above the living room. So the door got shut again and the cats returned their efforts to the bat, chasing it into rafters the loft and out of sight.

Seemed I wasn't going to be sleeping, after all. Cats and wife were relocated to the bedroom and I armed myself with the go-to in-house pest-removal tool, a broom. I had no intention of hurting the little guy  - they're all over the place out here, and he obviously got in when Harrison, our elder feline, came in from the porch a little while earlier - but I had every doggone intention of going to sleep that night in a bat-free domicile. But then, there's a saying about best-laid plans...

At 2 a.m. I threw in the towel. I'd beat on every rafter beam with the broom handle and had only scared it out of hiding once, at which point I'd shrieked, dropped to the floor and completely blew any opportunity of directing the bat towards the door. I saw it fly into the highest point of the house, where several beams intersect, and despite beating on that to the point I broke the plastic ring connecting broom to handle, I never saw nor heard the bat again. I went to bed dead on my feet and vanquished in my own home. All that night my dreams were tormented by dive-bombing bloodsuckers frothing with rabies. The worst dreams were the ones in which I managed to capture and banish the bat; I'd wake relieved, but only for a blissful handful of seconds before the harsh, fear-inspiring reality of the situation reacquainted itself with my memory. Morning came. And with it our mission.

That day was like the third act of The Lost Boys as I thought of it, the third act of Home Alone as Cory conceived it (which I think accurately relates the fundamental difference in our characters; I've never denied I married out of my league): we had the daylight hours to prepare ourselves, hatch a plan and set it in motion, because as soon as the sun set and darkness once again spread its cold blanket over the house, our foe would come out of hiding, more panicked and desperate than before, and our struggle would begin again. Our plan was simple: darken the house, open the front door and turn on the porch light. The hope was that air current and illumination would attract it and away he'd fly. As a precaution, I had a Thor t-shirt tied through the broom handle and a bucket, heavy gloves, safety goggles, and a backwards Mariner's cap. I'm not trying to get all the rabies. 

So we waited, watching the sun slip ever closer to the horizon, dragging the light out of the sky and casting the ceiling beams in increasing shadows. Sunset was scheduled for 8:55. At 8:30 we turned off all the lights. As the division of labor went, when the bat showed itself, I would open the front door, flip on the porch light and try to direct the bat that way, and Cory would run for the bathroom and wait for it all to be over. Marriage is a partnership.

8:55 came. The tension in the air was thick and the potential energy was crackling in our veins. Every sound made us jump, every creak and crack and scratch or rattle was a beginning, and bold and certain as we'd been all day, in a dark house with only a t-shirt on a stick between us and a virus just a notch or two down from Ebola, it started to occur to us we might be in over our heads. But we had followed the bat across the Rubicon, there was no turning back. Bottom line, there wasn't room enough in our house for us, two cats and bat; somebody had to go.

8:55 turned to 9 turned to 9:15, 9:30, 9:45, and still no sight or sound of our winged tormentor. It was like the thing was toying with us, just sitting up there reveling in our paranoia. I dared an excursion into the loft for another round of beam-striking, convinced (somewhat) that this time I would remain calm and collected when the bat escaped it's hidey hole.

But there was no bat to be brave in the face of.

At 10 we turned on a lamp in the living room. Ten minutes later we dared to sit on the couch again, my shirt-broom still in-hand and our eyes affixed to the ceiling. Twenty minutes after that we turned on the TV, still keeping the volume low in case there was something else to hear. But there never was. We went to sleep that night confused, still nervous, and at a complete loss for what to do next.

The next day I did some research. Turns out there's no Animal Control services out here in Lyle, you either deal with problems the old fashioned way - yourself - or you call the sheriff. We were not going to be calling the sheriff over a single bat, thus labeling ourselves as helpless city slickers for our tenure out here. So instead I called the health department. After politely chuckling at my harrowing description of events, the very nice director asked if I'd lived out here long, to which I could only reply, "Apparently not long enough." He went on to explain how only 6% of bats tested in our county over the last decade tested positive for rabies, and most of the time it's our own imagination and preconceived notions that make the experience of finding a bat inside so tumultuous. In reality, they're scared and hungry, very tiny non-aggressive things, barely different than having a bird in your house. They do not want to bite you. They do not want to infect you and your loved ones with a heinous disease. They do not want to turn you into a vampire. All they want is out. To that point, they're also very pliable animals, able to compress themselves through holes and cracks no bigger than a dime. So bottom line, if we didn't see the bat that second night, it's because the bat wasn't there to be seen. Now, does that mean there's some kind of minuscule opening in one of our ceiling beams? Yep, but between the beams and the outside world are the metal sheets of our roof, so it's not like moisture can get in, only bats, which the health department director assured me - in response to my shrill, panicked question - that they have no interest in doing, there's nothing inside for them but terror, starvation, and possible consumption-by-cat. So long story short - we totally overreacted. Opening the door most likely would have worked if the cats hadn't thwarted it, and my Rambo-esque montage of preparation - themed to "Danger Zone" by Kenny Loggins, natch - was completely unnecessary, as was our fear.

So then the moral here, if even there is one, is don't let the bats in your house go to your belfry. And seal your roof.

If At First You Don't Succeed...

Well, if you're one of the seven people who follow this blog with any sort of regularity, you might have noticed it's been a month or so since we've posted anything. That's because for the most part, there wasn't anything to post, and we were really hoping that would change. But alas, the Rubicon has been arrived at and now we stride across knowing there is no turning back, only moving forward. Or, to put it more succinctly, our first-year garden here on our hill in Lyle is a total bust.

Maybe it was the rush with which we put things together, arriving in late February to our new home and throwing the garden together in less than two months. Maybe it was the myriad birds that call our property home, pilfering the seeds soon after we had tucked them into the soil. Maybe it was the deer who also seem to consider this place their own, ready to nibble the first fleck of green that peeked above ground. Maybe it was the 26 days of 100+-degree weather we had in June alone that withered whatever dared grow. But whether one of these excuses or another all together, the end result is the same - outside of the potatoes we planted early in the year, we won't be getting bupkis in crops this season. 

It's the most confounding thing, especially since our garden last year grown under mostly similar circumstances in Portland thrived. Only half our crops actually sprouted this year, which makes us think thieving birds are the most likely culprit. At first we thought it might be the soil, but then we'd see green beans start to sprout in a box where the jalapenos never appeared. We saw corn get a foot high before abruptly cancelling it's lifespan, while in the same box carrots never took hold. None of our herbs came up, ditto our lettuce and Mesclun. And half of this stuff we planted twice, once on Planting Day back in May and again towards the end of June when the bust was beginning to make itself known. The only things that still show any vestige of existence are the ginger plants, a few green shoots still among them, the grape vines that haven't grown in size but still retain green leaves, and our pair of cherry trees, faring much the same as the grape vines. In these latter two instances, the native soil in which they're planted might be cause for some of the blame, it's very clay-y, to the point we abandoned plans for using exclusively native soil in the garden and instead went with raised beds and a potting mix. As for the rest of it, who knows, all we can do is plan more wisely next time, like replacing the garden-stake/netting deer fence we quickly improvised with a more sturdy and long-lasting one of posts and wire, and maybe laying down some windowscreen over the beds after sewing them, to prevent hungry birds from scavenging our bounty before it even blooms. Maybe adding a scarecrow for the same effect.

We'll try to sew some later summer/early fall crops in a month or so, once the heat has hopefully subsided to a steady low-80s, but other than that, all we can do is learn from our mistakes/bad luck and try to amend things so the next go-around is more plentiful. When we started this blog we said we were going to show you the highs and lows of getting adjusted to country life. At the least we stayed true to our word. 

Lava Beds and Protection Against Invading Hordes

If you follow us on Twitter or Instagram, you might know that we have a fair amount of deer moving around the property. They graze in our side yard and the copse of snarled pine between ours and the neighboring acreage, they bound over the leaning wire fence that marks our western boundary, down the slope of our eastern claim, and they sleep under our front porch, in the bushes beside the blacktop, beneath the ivy of our walkway, and sometimes even in the driveway up against our cars.

Buckskin tire warmers are an optional feature, but worth it.

As such, there are certain precautions we've had to factor into our life here on the hill, including stomping on the porch before descending the steps, clapping when approaching the front of the house from the backyard, and most definitely fencing in our garden, which meant finishing the garden both practically and aesthetically. Hence the overly-dramatic and slightly-exaggerated post title.

In the last few weeks as the temperature has been climbing, most of our garden - note "most," not all, we'll get to that - has started to thrive, and the allure of all that fresh vegetation has proven too tempting for our woodland friends, who have been spotted nibbling on potato plants and zucchini leaves, and even approaching our intrepid cherry trees, to which Perry responded by rushing out of the house in his sock feet hooting and waving his arms. The deer seemed unimpressed and in no way alarmed, but moseyed on regardless.

So before the plants got any more enticing we pushed our garden plan into overdrive. We'd always known fencing would be needed, but as a permanent solution is pricey, we were hoping to put it off until next season. When that proved naive, we had to improvise. But the first thing we had to do was build the bottom level of the three remaining beds for which we'd allotted space. We don't intend to use them until later in the season or even next year, but we needed them in place before we could move onto phase two, the lava bed.

Our rows are two feet wide all throughout the garden, perfect for pushing a wheelbarrow through or setting down a storage bin while harvesting. Maintaining the green space therein, however, is a pain in the ass. The push mower doesn't get the edges against the cinder blocks, and the cinder blocks being cinder blocks shred any weed-eating line that comes in contact with them while trimming. Our solution was to line the walkways with weed blocker and then cover it all with red lava rocks easily procured from any hardware or home improvement store. After building a wooden frame around the garden - all 80 feet of it - we set about covering the 240 square feet remaining inside. It took a while and a couple pay periods to procure all the supplies, but in the end it came out pretty much how we planned.

All that was left was the fencing itself, which was where the real improvisation took place. In the long run, we're hoping for a wood/wire grid fence around the garden that we can build other fenced spaces against, one for chickens, one for bees, and one for a goat or two. For now, though, we settled for seven-foot garden stakes and simple mesh deer fencing, which we attached to the stakes with zipties. It isn't the strongest or most foolproof fencing around, especially in the high winds we get here in the Columbia Gorge, but so far so good. We even watched from the back porch the other night as a lone doe walked the perimeter but found herself thwarted from stealing the delicious veggies inside. Mission accomplished.

Speaking of the delicious veggies, a lot has happened since our last garden update, both positive and negative. The potatoes are still growing like gangbusters, and in fact the larger of the plants have shown signs of starting to flower, which means we'll probably end up harvesting them a week or so early, owing to the premature and very sunny summer we're having here in Washington. The zucchini continues to grow, as do the carrots and green beans, and even a couple of ginger shoots have pierced the topsoil, but it's the corn that takes this update's spotlight. All the kernels but one have sprouted and are starting their stretch for the sky. The leaves are green and hearty and hopefully the stalks will yield several sweet and yummy ears at the end of the season. And the trio of grape vines - once all but given up for dead - and the pair of nascent cherry trees - cruelly sheared day after day by shrieking winds - have all begun showing signs of vigor, leaves sprouting left and right defiantly, determined to bear fruit. If only everything we were attempting to grow could share their tenacious spirit.

Because alas and alack, there are a few crops not doing so well. In our herb box, only the cilantro has shown itself, and in the same box where the green beans are doing so well, the green leaf lettuce is also failing to thrive, and the jalapenos are just big spicy failures at this point, as we've seen neither stalk nor leaf of them. The lettuce is especially a shame, as that's the product of our garden we use the most, almost daily. The Mesclun that went in alongside the lettuce is growing, though not as it should. We're wondering if perhaps the seeds we sewed were duds, or if they were scavenged by birds. We replanted this weekend, so if it's the seeds, we'll see soon enough. Greenfingers crossed.







And effectively, that ends our garden building for the year. Over the fall we'll finish building the top levels of the last three beds, maybe throw in a winter crop or two, cold-frame a bed for this and that, perhaps, then come early spring we'll finalize our fencing, but for now, we wait and see what a little sun, a little water, and a lot of patience can do.

From Our Bookshelf: ANIMAL, VEGETABLE, MIRACLE by Barbara Kingsolver

The cornerstone of any education - which is absolutely what we're out to get up here on our hill in Lyle - is reading. As we planned our escape from the city and city ways, there was a collection of books that helped give us direction, as there will be even more in the future to help us navigate our endeavors. So from time to time, we thought we'd share some of these books with you - some inspirational, some practical - because the best thing about getting an education is sharing what you've learned.

There were lots of books we could have started with, but the one that most comes to mind is the nonfiction work Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by award-winning novelist Barbara Kingsolver (The Poisonwood Bible). Subtitled A Year of Food Life, the book traces the first year Kingsolver and her family - a husband and two daughters - abandon the industrial food complex and settle on a farm in rural Virginia with one objective and one objective only in mind: eat for an entire year nothing but locally-sourced food, including whatever they could grow or otherwise harvest. In addition to being a humorous, anecdotal narrative about what happens when you put a bunch of highly-educated city slickers on a working farm, Kingsolver's book also provides many practical lessons on farming, raising chickens, preparing and preserving the things you grow, and even serves as an easily-read treatise on the importance of self-sustainability, the trouble with our food system as it stands, and the dangers we face as individuals and a civilization if the latter isn't tempered by the former. Not at all preachy, AVM is instead a polite argument by example for a return to a more agrarian method of food production. There are certainly more scientific books you can read on the subject, Michael Pollen's The Omnivore's Dilemma one of the best among them, but the appeal of Kingsolver's work is the conversational and as-mentioned anecdotal feel she develops. She's not lecturing us, she's letting us in on the secrets of her family's sustainability, presenting them in a way that makes them easily adaptable to our own lives, no matter what degree of locavore we're striving to be.

Sometimes you have ideas without words, vague sentiments that float formless within you until something or someone comes along and gives them those words and yanks them from the vague, plants them in the actual, in the process showing you how to bring your ideas to life. For us, Ms. Kingsolver's book was one of those impetuses. If you like reading us, chances are you'll love reading her.

Home Decoration: Back Porch Picnic Table

The view from our back porch is pretty freaking spectacular. Facing north, the panorama encompasses rolling Washington countryside as far as the eye can see - and no more than seven or eight homes in all that space - as well as a striking view of Mt. Adams, approximately 50 miles ever-so-slightly northwest. You can see the hills imitating the ocean when the wind ripples the tall grass, you can see rain approaching from miles away accompanied by clouds that move across the terrain like a shadow-colored tablecloth spreading, you can see the fog creeping out of the river valley like something alive. Deer and cattle graze in the distance. Osprey, Turkey Vultures, Hawks, and the occasional Bald Eagle soar overhead. Ten-thousand trees spot the landscape, twenty-, who knows? Like I said, pretty freaking spectacular.

And if there's anything a spectacular view needs, it's a spectacular place from which to view it. The builders of our log home - it was erected in 1989 by the family that lived in it for 25 years right up to the day they sold it to us - accomplished this with aplomb. Our back porch runs approximately 22 feet long and 8 feet deep and sits on four posts off the main level, and is covered by the top level's overhang. It's always shaded and open on two sides - north and east - to allow a cross-breeze. It is, quite simply, one of the best spots, if not the best spot, in the whole house, and we hang out there every opportunity we get. Three or four nights a week at least we'll grill supper out there, some evenings we'll just have a libation or two in the cheap-o plastic Adirondack chairs we got til something better comes along, and it's a great spot to relax and read. Even Harrison, the older of our two indoor cats, howls like a sick banshee if he doesn't get his daily excursion. So to further maximize our enjoyment of the back porch we thought we'd get a picnic table so we could eat out there when the weather permits.



A quick trip to Home Depot in The Dalles and we were the proud possessors of a good-sized picnic table kit that didn't set us back too much and seemed easy enough to put together. A screwdriver and the included hardware were all that were required for assembly, and aside from an injury to Perry's back incurred when loading the kit into the car at Home Depot (an injury that kept him on the couch with a heating pad for two solid days, which he didn't mind as his copy of The Familiar had just come in the mail, and the Mariners played afternoon games), it was a relatively painless process. A few of the logs were a little rough, but with some sanding - which happened a week later once Perry could stand under his own power again - and some expertise weatherproof staining by Cory (one coat, let dry, then sand, then throw on a second coat) it was all done, no more than two or three combined person-hours. Pretty lax commitment for the outcome, if you ask us. A couple decorative Citronella candles in Ball jars, a doily thing Cory had, and the table was set. We celebrated by grilling up a few brats, cracking a cold Rainier and pouring a glass of white from Lyle's own Syncline Wine Cellars.

A good outdoor space is like another room of the house; a great outdoor space is like the best room of the house. And it doesn't take a lot of furniture or frills to get that great space, sometimes a single, simple piece can do the trick. Just remember to lift with your knees.

Garden Update: It's Alive!

It's been two weeks since Planting Day 2015 here on our hill in Lyle, Washington, and in our garden the seeds have taken root and sprouted our first leaves of the season. Every box is showing signs of life, some stronger than others, but all in all it seems we're off to a solid start.

The corn is on the rise, standing a couple inches above the topsoil already. We planted the corn in the box at the northwest corner of the garden. Because of the direction our yard faces - ever-so-slightly northeast - and the slope of our hill, this was the best spot to sew it to ensure it wouldn't spend too much of the day casting shadows over the other crops in its box. There were eight kernels planted, and all eight have sprouted. Provided they survive the summer and the wind up here, and if last year's crop in Portland is any indicator, we can expect 2 or 3 good ears per stalk, roughly a couple dozen all told.

One of those crops we're careful not to overshadow with the corn is the zucchini planted right next to it. We only planted a few seeds this year - last year things got, well, let's just say "out of hand" - and all three are above earth and thriving. Cory loves zucchini, and I, Perry, love Cory so tolerate zucchini. She makes it easy on me by sauteing it in olive oil and butter and dusting it with grated Parmesan. Cheese solves everything. 






In the southeast-most bed where the lettuce-Mesclun mix dominates, it's the green beans that have jumped out to an early lead, with all 12 plants sprouted. We'll thin them down in another couple weeks, trellis them soon after that. The lettuce and Mesclun are showing signs of life, and the jalapenos that sit in the other available quadrant are slow starters but it's still early. The heat hits Lyle at the end of this week - three 90+ days are projected - so we expect that to kick the reticent peppers into overdrive.

Heck, things are growing so good out there, even the three grape vines we planted at the beginning of the season and had all but given up for dead have sprung to life and are each displaying leaves. We're going to give these guys the season to see how they do, but our suspicion is the clay quality of our native soil here on the hill might not be the best for them. Next year's micro-vineyard might have to be in a long and slender raised bed.

But the real star of the garden thus far is without a doubt our potato box. Now granted, the potatoes went in the dirt about a week before the rest of the garden, but despite that they're still leaps and bounds ahead of the other crops. Each of the nine plants is already standing between 3 and 6 inches high, and the idea of all those ripe little white, yellow, and purple potatoes waiting in the dirt has us salivating. Conventional wisdom says potatoes need about 10 weeks before they're ready to harvest, depending on the date of your last frost. Ours was mid-April, so the potatoes went in the first of May, meaning our spuds should be ready around mid-July. Another method some folks use to determine when to harvest is to wait until you see flowers, because it means the plant has shifted its priorities from developing the tuber to developing seeds. We're going with whichever happens first, because that's the shortest path between us and taters.

The cherry trees shorn bald by the wind are still pretty much leafless, but there are fresh chutes all over them, so the roots are at least finding purchase and giving it a go. In another couple of weeks, once the 3 remaining garden boxes are built and the gravel has gone down and the fence has gone up, we'll plant another pair of trees - peach perhaps this time - and see how they fair. Until then we're in a waiting game, waiting and watering and weeding, and hoping the wind doesn't blow it all away.

So that's our garden as of Memorial Day. But that's not all we got up to over the holiday weekend. Check back over the next few days for posts about our most recent Saturday Morning Hike, and the picnic table that nearly broke Perry's back.

Good gardening!

Saturday Morning Hike: Labyrinth/Li'l Maui Loop Base

Some weeks are tougher than others, and some weekends are busier than others, but no matter how much we have going on or whatever's in the background of our lives, Cory and I like to take time together, even if it's only half an hour, to get out and hike one of the area's many, many, many trails. Seriously, there are an impressive 100+ trail heads in the Columbia Gorge - according to the wonderfully-useful and forgivably-punned guide Curious Gorge - leaving us in no short supply of dusty trails to escape down. Saturday mornings are usually our best shot, and so far we've been out on a different trail every weekend the weather has allowed, which has been most. That said, I don't want to give the wrong impression of we Hortons as surefooted mountain goats; we're as used to hiking as we are to waking up to turkey calls, so it's not like we're scaling rock faces or even spending hours at a time on the trail. Mostly we're taking spirited strolls, pushing ourselves a little more each weekend, working towards the bigger, more skilled excursions.

This weekend, with only a little time to spare, we went out to a trail that's been on our list from the beginning, as we drive by it most everyday. Officially it's known as the Labyrinth/Li'l Maui Loop. There are two access points to the trail, both off Washington State Highway 14 east of Bingen, and we went with the first one we came across driving west out of Lyle, right around mile marker 70 beside the rich cobalt waters of Rowland Lake, a popular fishing spot freshly stocked for the season with rainbow trout big as your arm, or so folks say.

Rowland Lake as seen from the trail head

The first stretch of the trail - from either access point - is an abandoned paved road, its asphalt cracked by patches of weeds and its shoulders lined with piles of fallen rock, clutches of bright orange wildflowers, and more dill than you can shake a bushel of cucumbers at. On one side there's a sheer wall of craggy stone twenty, thirty feet high, while on the other side there's the narrow gray stripe of highway and the much wider, much more vibrant Columbia River, and Oregon beyond.

The road climbs unimpeded for a few hundred yards then narrows to a slender path through larger collections of discarded rock - or "ripe rattlesnake grounds" as I refer to them in a voice trying but failing to mask a fearful vibrato, to which Cory typically rolls her eyes and pushes me onward - that winds a short way and deposits you beside a small if unexpected waterfall maybe fifteen, twenty feet high. The water it deposited in the small pool below was crystal clear and inviting, even on a moderately warm day, and the mist it sprayed caught the light just so, painting the air with a trembling rainbow. It was freaking beautiful, and worth the flouncy description I gave it, plus some.

From there the road crosses another patch of open terrain before running through a cut in the rocks directly beyond which is the trail head that splits into either branch of the Labyrinth/ Li'l Maui Loop. The Labyrinth, which is the split to the right, runs a more wooded if direct course to the top of the vista, while the Li'l Maui branch on the left is more of a switchback through grassy fields and slopes of wildflowers. All told the loop goes for five miles, more than we had time for on this outing, but gauging the climb as we continued down the road, definite plans for a longer excursion were forged.








All in all, it was a brief but pulse-spurring hike, not too hot and not too breezy, and most important, it provided us with the change of perspective that's central to any reinvigoration. Sometimes it's the smallest things that make the biggest difference, I guess. Til next time.