Spring, finally

It was such a long winter; it didn't seem like it would ever end. In so many recent years, the trees began blooming in February, the azaleas in March, and by April, it seemed to be summer. Not this year, though. The redbuds and tulip trees were first, maybe two weeks ago, followed by the cherry trees and Bradford pears. Last Sunday, walking to church, I noticed that the dogwood blossums were just starting to emerge but the trees - Bradford pears and everything else - really didn't have leaves. By Monday, they did. It was quite amazing, how suddenly everything started to be green. Even our ginkgo tree - which always seems to be the last tree on the block to break into leaf - is starting to get leaves.

At the sale a couple of weeks ago, I bought an apple tree from the Virginia Highlands group that is raising money to build a new park at Highland and St. Charles. It was bare root, and I didn't have time to plant it that day, so I wrapped the roots in a wet towel and left it on the driveway. It was cool and wet that day, so it seemed like it would probably be okay til I could get it in the ground, assuming it wasn't too long.

Iain and I planted it the next day. We dug a hole-that-seemed-to-be-bigger-than-it-needed-to-be in the back yard and mixed in some compost from the old site of the compost bin. (The new site has yet to yield compost, as it has been too cold for that particular magic to happen. Mostly we have a large quantity of garbage and paper, waiting for the weather to warm up.) We got the tree in the ground, and then we waited.

We may have to wait a couple years for apples, but like almost all the other trees, this is the week that our little apple tree broke alive with green leaves. Every day when I get home from work I go outside and look for new evidence of life, and there is a little more to see.

There also are stirrings on other fronts, after a long cold winter. Some of the vacant retail space in the neighborhood and beyond is starting to get occupied, store front by store front. The opening of a new discount furniture store at the site of the old Home Depot on Sidney Marcus completely filled the parking lot, and there's also a new furniture store at the former site of the pet supply store on Piedmont in the strip mall that was emptied Before the Crash to make way for something that to date has not been built.

Of course, one has to wonder how long it will take to absorb all the apartments and condos that Someone thought needed to be built in town. I drive by them and I see the buildings, mostly empty but with a few units looking occupied. (I was on my way to pick up Sarah at school and she called and asked where I was. Not far, I said, driving by the empty apartments on Piedmont. She asked, which ones?) Lights on timers and rented furniture, just so the place won't look so dismal, or are there really a few people living in these mostly empty buildings? What would it be like, living in a place meant for high density with no one there?

I have been slowly savoring Jane Jacobs' classic book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. She makes a powerful case for it being lots of people that make a city feel safe. At night, if there are people on the sidewalk and lots of coming and going from bars and theaters and restaurants and people just getting off the evening shift or on their way to the night shift, the neighborhood will feel safe, but the same street, without the people, won't. Green space for the most part does not contribute to safety because at night it becomes a sort of urban no fly zone that doesn't attract any people; there's no reason to be there, and and because of that, it doesn't feel safe. For an urban environment to feel safe, you need lots of people coming and going into the night - and you don't have that without high density and diversity of use. Diversity of use is facilitated by having diversity of building stock - old buildings with interesting spaces can provide inexpensive commercial space for galleries and small restaurants and interesting little shops. If there are too many new buildings, rents are too high for anything interesting and there is no reason for people to be there who don't have to be.

So we now have all these - mostly empty - work/live developments, with really boring-looking retail space (a lot of which is empty) and all those empty apartments and condos. I am so glad to see signs of life in the economy - like the leaves on the trees outside, it is so welcome after a really long winter - but you just have to wonder what's going to happen to all these developments. It wouldn't be so bad, having these large, boring structures around if they were actually full of people who might provide the population density to support something interesting, but they aren't. Without people?

At least if they were green space they would soak up some CO2.

Winter, continued

A month or so ago one of our neighbors commented that it had been a long time since I had posted anything. This surprised me. Not the part about it being a long time (I knew that) but the part about anyone noticing. Never having figured out how to tell if anyone is reading this, I assumed no one did. I stand corrected.

So there is lots of catching up to do. Here's a start.

Tom and I braved the after-Thanksgiving crowds to buy a new dishwasher. It turns itself off when the cycle is complete and has not threatened in any way to burn the house down, so we consider this a highly successful replacement.

The two big houses on the street that were on the market for so long have both sold and one has been occupied for a while; I'm not sure about the other one. I haven't yet met the new owners of either one. The weather has been cold and I have been busy - less time walking the dog or walking to the movie store or to the farmer's market or to Alon's - so I am not as up to speed on who is where as I used to be. Hopefully work will be better and the weather warmer soon! But it's good to not have empty houses on the street, so we are glad that these particular bits of residential real estate are off the market and providing a home for families.

But two houses are on the market - Amy has already moved to Grant Park, and a bigger place, and her house is for sale, as is another house up the street - new baby, need more space.

We had a snow day this month. The snow started falling on Friday afternoon, and by the time I got home from work, there was enough snow that the sleds were out, and the kids were converging on the hill at the church. It is a perfect place for sledding, with steep downward slopes that are away from the street. Iain went through a couple of changes of clothing before he came back, chilled and exhausted and exhilirated, the way 11 year old boys are after an hour of two of throwing snowballs with a group of other boys.

I heard on the national news either that evening or the following one that 49 of 50 states in the United States - all but Hawaii (which is a state, by the way) - had measurable snow that day. There was video of Mobile, Alabama, with less snow than Atlanta but children who were even more excited, and the inevitable report from Hartsfield-Jackson airport. That was the storm where the Washington, D.C., area got 30 inches of snow, and the talking points on global warming were revised to say that the storm proved that no such thing was happening.

The gravel is still on Cumberland Road from the ice storm that preceded the snow. The squirrels have learned to raid my suet feeder, and at least one of them has mastered jumping onto the window feeder. So the suet feeder is left empty, until Tom can find me a piece of sheet metal to protect it, and the window feeder is moved up higher.

Friends move out of the neighborhood; new people come. Kids on sleds. Squirrels on my birdfeeders. I'm looking forward to spring, this year more than usual. It's not been a good winter, with the economy, and the pandemic, and all the cold weather. It's time to start looking forward to warmer weather, spring planting, and nesting boxes for the birds. More time outside. Walk the dog. Meet the new neighbors. Plan a block party. The dishwasher still works, and winter won't go on forever.

A Long Overdue Update from Wessyngton Road

I have not written anything (or at least not anything that got completed to post here) for a while. Work has been very busy and Tom and I as well as the kids ended up spending a lot of time on the school play. But that finished up last weekend. We didn't go around the table yesterday and say what we were thankful for. If we had, I might have said I was thankful that the play was over.

Since I posted last we've had another block party. Fewer people than the one in the spring, I think, but some of the new neighbors were there, as well as one of the longtime neighbors who hadn't come before. There was music (thanks to Mark, Mathew, and Yoshi) and it was very nice. It was followed by rain (as has been almost everything this fall) so no worrying this time about the sidewalk chalk in the parking lot.

The leaves are now mostly down. Our ginkgo tree has lost most of its leaves, revealing a bird's nest, way up high. It's a medium-sized one, and looks to be made of grass rather than twigs. I don't know what kind of bird made it, but there were mockingbirds in the front yard during the summer - perhaps it was theirs. It certainly looks like a safe location - out of reach of cats and nosy humans - and I didn't even know it was there until a couple of weeks ago.

During the summer I wrote about the three caterpillars on the fennel by the mailbox. I kept looking for crysalises and never saw any. One by one, just when they got big enough, they disappeared. (I even took one into protective custody, but I wasn't sure it was eating, so I put it back outside.) I assume the birds got them. Although I wish we had the butterflies, I guess I can't begrudge the birds their dinner. But next summer I may definitely go the protective custody route.

Most of the construction seems to be done on the street, which hopefully will take care of the ongoing silt problems and the mysterious water that always seems to be running in the gutter. One day (it might have been Veteran's Day) there was so much water coming down the street we were sure a water line must be broken and called the city. The woman who answered the phone said that since it was a nice day, everyone except for her was out enjoying the day and noticing leaks and calling them in.

And then, yesterday was Thanksgiving. I did almost all the shopping on Wednesday, but still had to go to a second store to get pie crusts and butternut squash. Tom cooked the turkey outside in the smoker, and as always it was very good. The condition of the bird was monitored continually by telemetry like it was an ICU patient. The girls made pies and Iain and Caroline made the green bean casserole. Susan got here in time to help mash the potatoes and we ended up not needing the second loaf of bread.

Enough people were expected that we thought everyone would not fit around our dining room table, even with all the extra leaves inserted, so this year we had a kids' table in the living room. Besides the five of us and Susan, there were six more people over the course of the day. Fred came with Max and Emma, and Angela came without Doris, who came later with a box of chocolates. Mark ended up having to work, but came by for a little while in the evening. The kids played Apples to Apples for many hours, and the adults talked and drank, punctuated by intermittent dishwashing (see below). The food was passable and the company excellent. And we were able to find space in the refrigerator for all the leftovers without a major refrigerator-cleaning effort. The dog spent most of the day on the leash and only was able to get to one food item on the table (a stick of butter). The consensus was that I should just throw away the part with the teeth marks in it, so that's what I did.

The major excitement of the day was unrelated to food preparation and occurred before any of our guests arrived. I was getting plates out for setting the tables and at that point noticed that the dishwasher (which had been started many hours before) was still running. This was because the heating element had failed to shut off and was in the process of melting all the plastic inside of the dishwasher, including parts of the dishwasher itself. This was not good. And, to make it worse, it won't turn off.

I told the kids to go find Tom. They said he is walking the dog. When he got back a few minutes later the lower partially melted rack full of extremely hot dishes is in the middle of the kitchen floor. He threw the circuit breaker and with that it finally turns off. There was melted black plastic from the dishwasher's upper gasket on the dinner plates, but I was able to get it off and we did not have to use paper plates. We did though have to wash lots of dishes yesterday.

Sometime yesterday someone asked if we were going shopping today. Tom said possibly for a dishwasher. What kind? Well, he said, something other than a GE Monogram.

After the last of the guests left, I went upstairs and collapsed and Tom finished the dishes. This morning I took the second loaf of bread out of the bread machine and used part of the butter that didn't have teeth marks in it. On this day after Thanksgiving, I am thankful for a husband who knows how to stop rogue appliances, children who can amuse themselves playing games that require a substantial amount of general knowledge, food on the table, friends who come and share the day, and the roof over our heads, in spite of the dishwasher that left to its own devices would have burned the house down.

Good News from the Front Yard

It has been an August ritual for years, looking for the caterpillers, banded in yellow, green, and black. We would find them on the fennel that grows in Kathy and Steve's yard. There were so many of them. We would keep them in jars, with fennel, and watch them eat and grow, and then become still in a comma shape, attached to a stem. Somehow, magically, they would be transformed into a little green compact case, smaller than the caterpiller seems to have been. Days would go by, and then after a week or two, a butterfly would emerge, wings crumpled and damp. It takes a while for the wings to dry, and it until they do, the butterfly cannot fly. Once it could fly, we would release it in Kathy and Steve's yard, and watch it fly away.

These are black swallowtail butterflies. They are two or three inches across, mostly black, with iridescent blue and yellow and just a bit of red. And this summer, and last summer, I have seen not a single one.

I have seen a few yellow sulphur butterlies, and a few eastern swallowtails - those are the ones that are yellow and black striped. Within the last week I've seen three, more than I've seen for the rest of the summer combined. Yesterday I saw an orange butterfly fluttering above the azaleas in front of our house; I'm not sure what kind it was, but I know it wasn't a black swallowtail.

So I was happy, on Saturday, to find them eating my fennel. I have tried in a half-hearted way to get fennel in our yard over the years, but I was so worried last year, when there were no caterpillers at all next door in Kathy and Steve's yard, that this year I finally did it. It's not very big but it's healthy and green and not yet gone to seed, and on it there are three caterpillers. One is about an inch and a half long, one about an inch and a quarter, and one about three-quarters of an inch. Yesterday intermittently I checked on them, and sometimes I couldn't find one or the other of them, but as of yesterday evening they were all there. (Anyone driving by our house would wonder about the woman sitting on the driveway, staring at the plant.)



Last year, I wondered if it was the drought, and it does seem that their reappearance coincides with more rain this summer. But I'm glad they are back, and if they prefer, they can even eat my parsley.

Morningside's Best

Morningside is an old neighborhood, dating back to the 1920s if not before, but Wessyngton Road is much newer - connecting North Highland and Cumberland Road, it is straight and much wider than other Morningside streets that are not major thoroughfares. The official descriptions of the property on this street calls this the F.P. Smith Estate subdivision. I don't know who F.P. Smith was, but I am assuming that sometime after World War II the property was sold for development and you can't develop it without a street - so Wessyngton Road was built, and the houses started to appear. The lots are only 50 feet wide and the older houses on the street are (by current standards) small ranch houses nearly devoid of the architectural charm of the older Morningside neighborhoods. (We also have no sidewalks on our street, except along the apartments, at the corner of Wessyngton and Highland, and in front of two of the newly built houses across from the church. I assume that this is because the street was built in the Era of the Automobile.)

Our house was built in 1950. When I bought it in the late 1980s, it had a funny cupola sort of thing on the roof that accommodated an attic fan. The fan was nice, but (along with many of the other houses on street) it didn't look anything like the classic Morningside houses. That's the reason I could afford it at the time - I couldn't believe I could find a house in this neighborhood that I could afford, and of course it was because this wasn't one of those Morningside streets with the big old houses.

We put a second floor on our house in 1998 which not only meant we did not have to give away a couple of our three children, but also that the house looked more like it belonged in the neighborhood than it had previously. (Kudos to Ben Dooley, the architect, who did the magic in design, and Fernando Reyes, who at that time lived across the street, who was our builder.)

Iain and I were walking the dog the other evening and I picked up a flyer for a house on the street that is for sale. The flyer is advertising an "adorable home on one of Morningside's best streets." I was stunned by this. Not the "adorable home" part - it may well be extremely adorable - but the "one of Morningside's best streets" part. Presumably this was written by a real estate agent who actually knows something about Atlanta real estate, and I don't know who in their right mind would characterize Wessyngton Road as "one of Morningside's best streets" from the real estate point of view (unless of course they are thinking "buy a relatively affordable 1950s ranch house and knock it down and build a Large House that is Architecturally Different from Adjacent Houses," but that is too depressing to contemplate.)

There are plenty of wonderful things about our location - proximity to both Highland Walk and Virginia-Highlands commercial areas, so we can walk to both Alon's and San Francisco Coffee, and we are in the district of Morningside Elementary School, a public school with high test scores, even though it is chronically infested with head lice - but plenty of other streets in Morningside can say the same thing, and might not be wide enough that the cars cutting through assume the speed limit must be 50 mph. (Our neighbor Tim tried to get a speed bump but no luck. Tom and Dan had proposed pot holes to slow the cars down. Really big ones. You get the picture.) Little ranch houses, no sidewalks, and a real estate agent says this is "one of Morningside's best streets"?

But of course, the real estate agent is right - it's just that what makes Wessyngton one of Morningside's best streets is not captured in any statistic that anyone can look up in a table somewhere. There is a tradition here - I am not sure what to call it, but for lack of a better term I will call in neighborliness - that one doesn't expect to find in a city. Years ago, people who don't live here any more hosted parties and invited me, and I got to know people I otherwise might not have met. The social committee baton has been passed, and now there are several of us who pick the dates and send the emails, but we didn't start it - it was here already. Morningside Presbyterian Church has been a wonderful neighbor and has let us hold block parties in their parking lot, but there are also baby showers and going away parties. If you met someone at a block party, you might stop and talk when you're out walking the dog, and then, if you see someone you don't know carrying a flatscreen TV out of their house, you might call 911. There's the informal network of flat tire repair, pest control, and plumbing help. The race car bed went from one side of the street to the other and back, from Max to Iain to Benjamin.

So that's the story. Even with the speeding cars barrelling down the hill toward Cumberland Road and no sidewalks, it is a great street.

But it's not the houses, it's the people in them.

Fireworks!

Sometime before July 4th, Caroline went with her friend Sally on an expedition to Alabama to buy fireworks. She came back and said that there had been a raffle while she was there and she had won $100 worth of fireworks. Tom said, what was second prize - $200 worth? She did survive the 4th without injury.

One day last week I was driving home from work and ended up behind a long line of cars on Lenox Road, stopped for a train. In front of me was a white Volvo station wagon (you know, the kind of car people drive who really care a lot about safety) with Dekalb County plates. There were three people in the car. Then I see the passenger in the front seat stick an arm out the window, and he was holding something bright, like it was on fire. It was a sparkler.

At the intersection of Johnson Road and East Rock Springs, I ended up alongside the car at a red light. There were three boys in it - they looked like high school kids. I thought about rolling down the window and ask if they had anything more incendiary that sparklers they were thinking about lighting in the car, but I didn't.

What I Thought I Knew

We have been talking about trees at our house - planting them, and talking other people into planting them. Tom had wanted to invite someone from Trees Atlanta or the Georgia Urban Forest Council to come to our last block party but we never got around to doing it. Last year I didn't go to the Trees Atlanta workshop on how to plan a neighborhood tree-planting event because it was during the Great Atlanta Gasoline Shortage, but maybe Tom or I can make it to the one at the end of the month.

I notice the trees mostly when I'm walking, and I thought I had noticed over the years most of what there was to notice about the trees on the street. The tall pines, the tulip poplars, the mulberry trees, the maples (Japanese and otherwise), and of course the oak trees - the tall, towering oaks that shade the yards and houses and asphalt of our street better than another other trees on the block. We've been gradually losing the oak trees - they are old, and city living is hard on trees, with heat and pavement and drought. We lost one in our yard, years ago, and the huge, wonderful oak tree in Angela's yard was removed a while ago. Someone once told me (in reference to another wonderful oak tree in the neighborhood) that you can't put a price on a tree like that, but it's very valuable.

I thought I knew the trees on our street - I walk by them with the dog or the kids, or on my way to the Farmers Market on Saturday morning. I walk by them all the time and I thought I knew Everything that was Important to Know. I had thought about putting together a guide to the trees of Wessyngton Road, or a website, or something - when you define the boundaries to just our street, you think you can know everything that matters. And I don't just walk by - I do look, and I thought I saw.

A couple of weeks ago, I noticed for the first time a small oak tree a few feet from the curb (I say small - small compared to the full size ones. This tree is taller than I am.) I think it is a water oak. I told Tom that Angela had planted a tree, and for the next week or so fretted that the dry hot weather was bad for a newly planted tree.

I finally saw Angela and she said no, that it had been there for a long time, that she had just cleared out the rest of the bed so now the tree was there by itself.

We think we know the places and people that we see all the time, but maybe we don't know them as well as we think we do. It's easy to assume that we know things that in fact we don't.

It's been raining since yesterday evening. The rain will be good for the trees. But as far as the human part of the urban ecosystem is concerned, we can't rely on the weather - we have to attend to that ourselves.