The time has come, the blogger said,
to talk of many things:
of whole-house fans and garter snakes,
of cabbages and kings[1],
of why the sea is boiling hot[2]
and whether pigs have wings[3]
Today I was returning from the office when I paused to admire my happy little herb garden. It's always a bit of a mystery which plants will come back, but it generally does pretty well. This year, I thought to myself, the marjoregano[4] is thriving so hard it's trying to take over the yard[5], the tarragon is standing up tall and proud, the sage is huge and covered in purple flowers, and the lavender is lovely even though I thought it might have died over the winter. I was standing right next to the lavender thinking these thoughts when I noticed a quiver at my feet. Or perhaps a shiver. OR PERHAPS A SLITHER???
There was a garter snake in my herb garden. It tried to hide in the tarragon, but I shook the tarragon leaves and it hopped over the bricks and escaped to the hosta bed. WELL, THAT WAS UNEXPECTED, I said to myself with a certain emphasis.
We used to have a neighbor across the street whose house had a bounteous garter snake population. In fact, a mama garter snake had apparently nested under her porch, and vast quantities[6] of stripey little snakelets would come slithering out into her yard. Now you guys, I was pretty deep into my earthy-crunchy phase at the time but my brand of "we are gentle with living things" did not extend to NESTS of SERPENTS under my PORCH. This mom, though, took earthy-crunchy to a new level. "They're a sign of a healthy ecosystem," she said chidingly one day when I raised the issue. Okay, then! I mean, so are killer whales! Maybe I should found a killer whale sanctuary under my porch then?
I doubt she would have found the killer whale comparison persuasive.
So here's my first question for you: where do garter snakes (especially those right down by your own personal feet) fall on your personal scale of shriek-inducing? Are you fascinated and grateful for your healthy ecosystem? Or are you thinking it's a shame you have to set the herb garden on fire now? Do tell.
Here is my second question for you: has anyone ever installed a window-mounted whole-house fan? When I was a girl in West Virginia, my father put a whole-house fan in our attic and it was magic. On summer evenings he would open the windows at each end of the house and switch on the fan, and in minutes all the lovely cool evening air would come pouring in. We didn't need an air conditioner. Gladlyville is hotter and stickier than my childhood home in the mountains, though, and I think we have less of a temperature gradient from midday to evening here in the flatlands -- it's hot at noon and it's still pretty hot at 7pm. But I think every year about a whole-house fan, because our AC doesn't do a great job cooling the upstairs. The installation seems like a total pain, which has always kept me from moving beyond the thinking stage. Just today, though, I learned that there are whole-house fans that can go in a window. We have a nice big window upstairs which could be just the right spot for such a thing. Anybody ever tried it? Any tips or tricks or cautions for me to consider?
This is my first crack at HTML footnotes and Safari won't let me preview them to see if they work. So I am just going to throw them up untested, because I'm wild and reckless like that. It's kind of a jungle over here in Gladlyville, man: snakes on the loose and renegade footnotes, all in one temeritous post.
[1] We don't actually have to talk about those, though comments are open if you have thoughts on matters brassical or monarchical.
[2] Because the Koch brothers seem to have bought themselves a government, that's why.
[3] That would be a no on the pigs having wings.
[4] Marjoram and oregano look a lot alike. We don't know which one actually came back.
[5] It's another poem: thriving so hard...take over the yard. Perhaps I will become a poetry blogger! (I can hear my husband saying, "Don't quit your day job, Jamie."
[6] Well, no, I don't know exactly how many. But can we agree that more than, say, two[7] is a quantity vaster than one might wish to host under one's porch?
[7] Or perhaps one. Or, you know, zero.
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