One Of Those Days...

[Al Agnew]

This morning Mary had a big honey-do job in mind for both of us to tackle, cleaning these really nastily prolific morning glories out of a flower bed next to the front steps of the house. Took a couple hours, and finished by going into town and buying a trunk-full of pine bark mulch to cover the cardboard we put down to discourage them from re-growing. Those things have a root system that goes halfway to China, so I'm not holding out much hope.

Since it was a very nice morning and there were some other things that needed to be done around the house, I decided it should be a "working in the yard" type of day, with maybe a bit of fishing in the evening. I cut out a bush that was blocking our view of the river from our favorite lounging spot in the yard, and unfortunately, I didn't walk away and tackle something else at that point.

Our lounging spot is underneath a big cottonwood that is growing right on the edge of the bank where it drops off from the yard down to the river. Most of our bank is underlain with more or less solid bedrock, so we don't have much of an erosion problem, but where the tree is, the bedrock appears to be lower, only a few feet of it showing above water level, and then some very loose and unconsolidated dirt/gravel/cobble atop it. It appears that at various times there has been some erosion there, because the tree's roots, and the roots of a smaller cottonwood a few feet away, are exposed along the edge of the bank. The former owners of the place, who were getting pretty old and probably weren't able to do bank stabilization right, had driven a couple of iron fence posts and three or four pieces of re-bar into the steep slope of the bank, threw a few treated planks against them, and piled a couple of hay bales into the space between the planks and the bank. It was like that when we bought the place, and it had held for the three years that we've owned it, but I noticed that the fence posts and re-bars were leaning more and more out toward the river.

I thought that I could go out onto the hay bales with my fence post driver and maybe straighten those posts and pound them a little deeper. But, when I did, the hay bales shifted, the fence posts leaned a lot more, and a minor landslide started. It was like the whole thing was just waiting for something to totally wreck it, and the something was me. So, what I thought would take 15 minutes and a little sweat was suddenly a major job, because I was watching the bank trickle away into the river a little bit at a time and I knew I needed to do something right away.

We also have a huge beaver problem. Any tree that isn't protected by wrapping it in fencing will get gnawed down, and although the big cottonwood was wrapped, the earlier erosion had exposed a big root, and the idiot beavers had tried to chew the tree down by attacking that root. I hadn't noticed this until I got down below the tree next to the river to study the new erosion problem and figure out how to attack it.

So now I not only had to do some earthwork, but also figure out how to protect the rest of that root, which was about 18 inches in diameter and had been chewed about a third of the way through.

Fortunately, the former owners had also left a bunch more steel fence posts, and quite a bit of fencing material. I thought I could drive in a few more fence posts and make a two step barrier, one step below the other one. Spread the very sturdy fencing material from around that root, along the lower row of fence posts, and attach it to the lower roots of the smaller cottonwood, re-do the planks, fill in behind them with the hay bales, then drive in another row of fence posts above, re-wrap the fencing around the trunk of the tree, up against that row of posts, and around the trunk of the other tree. Then fill in that upper area with cobbles from a pile of them I'd taken off an old flower bed, which was only a few feet away. Might not last forever, but it should suffice for a while until I could talk to my friend who does that sort of thing for a living and see how much it would cost to do it right. It shouldn't take too long to do what I wanted to do...

Well, driving the posts for the lower step went well. But then came putting up the fencing around that root. Now picture this...I'm precariously standing on a loose slope of dirt and gravel that's so steep I'm continually sliding down a few inches and having to step back up. I'm reaching around this root, which is like a tree trunk, trying to wrap the very stiff fencing around it. Things are going okay for a few seconds...and then something hits me in the face. OOUUCHH!! What the heck!? Whap, another one hits me, and then I realize that yellowjackets are piling out of a cavity in the root at face level and stinging the crap out of me. I stumble backwards, throwing the fencing aside and batting at my face as I half run, half fall down the slope to water's edge. Luckily the critters are satisfied at that point and don't pursue me, but I've got a sting on my lip, one on my cheek, and two on my forehead. And I suddenly realize I can't see worth a darn...my glasses are gone. I must have knocked them off my head while batting at the yellow jackets.

I walk up to the house to get my prescription sunglasses, so I can see again, and go back down to look for my glasses. Now, realize that I'm just a few feet from the river, which is about four feet deep with a vertical bank at that point, with high grass along the edge, thorny bushes beneath where I was attacked by the yellow jackets, and a very loose gravelly slope where I'd retreated. My glasses could be right next to the cavity, in the thorn bushes, in the tall grass, or buried in the loose slope...or in the river. I looked for about 15 minutes, and finally saw them, barely hanging in one of the thorn bushes right over the river. I had to get pretty close to the yellow jacket nest, hold onto another root, and lean out over the river to reach them. Amazingly, I succeeded in grabbing them without getting stung again or falling off into the water.

So now, except for my face feeling like it's on fire, I'm pretty happy as I stick the glasses into my shirt pocket and half-step, half-slide off the loose slope down to the tall grass...where there is a snag...which I trip over and tumble face first into what's luckily a patch of soft sand, burying my nose in the sand, then doing a rolling somersault into the river!

I clamber out of the water, feel for my glasses which are fortunately still in my pocket, feel for my sunglasses which are still on my head, feel for my cell phone, which is still in my pants pocket and wet, of course, by it's one of those that are more or less waterproof and it's still working, feel for my billfold, which is soaked but still there.

So I climb the bank, change clothes, and decide I'm not going to do another thing except sit in a lawn chair for the rest of the day.

[jdmidwest]

You didn't miss much, fish were not biting good today after that front.

[Jerry Rapp]

not that I can relate to a day like that, but that is a last page story for Outdoor Life that McGannis(?) would have loved. Thanks for the chuckles..........

[Mitch f]

Sounds like a real "Kodak" moment

I think I once read a list of the worst bee attack scenarios and both lists indicated that Yellow Jackets were the worst because of the quantity. About 10 years ago my father was bush hogging on our pasture and stepped off the tractor to kick a stump out of the way, immediately followed by my mom looking out the window out to see my 80 year old dad running across the pasture with his hat off swatting bees! scary! I think he got something like 30 hits.

Glasses are a pain in the butt.... however for your profession, the ability to see at macro focus is so crucial that I understand why you don't get LASIK. You could always get the one eye LASIK Like I had and take a few months for your brain to adjust, but once it's done there's no going back. In that case it may not be worth the risk.

[Old plug]

Garden work and weeding huh. Boy do I know something about that. I spend several hours a day everyday in the garden in season in the garden we have. It is all ornaments. I have a small hosta plant collection( by hosta collection standards anyway) that I really enjoy. It is one of the small attractions for some boaters on the Gravois Arm and I take a lot if pride in it. But it sometimes bugs me something awful to have to be in the yard watching watching other people fish.