My 64th Birthday

My "love slave", harvesting bamboo for me,
with Lucky at his side.

This is an account of my 64th birthday.  After waking up early and musing about my special day (2 posts back), here's what actually happened.

Talked to my Mom on the phone, of course, and received a few calls, texts or emails from friends (Vincent, Sheryl, Laura).  This on top of several Facebook well-wishers from my dog club.

Per my birthday request, John and I headed out to the woods adjacent to our property around 10 a.m., boots, gloves, machetes and lopers in hand, to harvest bamboo for my tee pee.  It was clear skies, still, and cool enough for long sleeves.  Not a single insect to bother us.  Energizing! Lucky came along, her very first off-leash walk-about in an unfenced area.  John was a bit trepidatious but I was confident she would stay with us, and she did.  Had to call her back into view several times, but she wasn't far away, just sniffing thru the tangled undergrowth. (Nathan, nobody is keeping the paths clear the way you used to do as a boy.) It was so thick with fallen trees, vines, and debris, we had to cut a winding path to the bamboo patch, lost it, and had to cut another path back home.  We were in the woods a good 2 hours.


Michele and Lucky, trimming bamboo

Finding straight poles was a challenge.  Most of the ones in this patch arch out, but we finally found a few 30' long pieces with 10' of straight somewhere in their length.  I set about shaving off the side chutes, with Lucky at my back.  My birthday is starting out GREAT!

We marked the path home by dropping lengths of bamboo all along the path.  When Jonathan gets here next Tuesday, John hopes to take him in there to clear the path, as Nathan did 25 years the ago. We used to harvest blackberries, I used to take my pre-schoolers out on short hikes, and I remember Garrett and I especially delighting in harvesting spiral vines to decorate our classroom with.  I don't know why the neighborhood boys don't go there now.  They are missing out.

Maxie on the tee pee

We came in, sat on the back patio to rest awhile and I took some photos for the blog of John and dogs enjoying our new lawn.  Inside, I finished binding the edges of the tee pee fabric with duck tape so it wouldn't ravel.  That took a few hours of bending over, and needing to rest now and then, I sat at my computer and wrote up my story on Laying Sod).  When I was finished with the binding, I spread the fabric out on the ground, set the poles in place, then John trimmed them to 9.5' with our skill saw.  

John checks it out for headroom. 
Oops, 6'4" Nathan might not fit.

We set it up, and here it is, in the raw.  So far, so good.  I still need to figure out how to fasten the door closed, rig up a bowl over the top to keep the rain from running down the poles, and paint some decorations on it.  But this is enough for today. Gotta go inside and rest up for dinner tonight.  My full tee pee story is scattered on some other pages. I'll pull them all together eventually, maybe.


Then John in his recliner, me on the red couch, we kicked back for a few hours and watched the last 3 episodes of Lie To Me, Season 2, streamed from Netflix.  Somewhat rested up, I changed my shoes, fixed my hair, threw on some makeup and jewelry, then John and I took off for Ichiban's Japanese Grill and Sushi Bar for 8 p.m.  "Dress is casual", Nathan had said, so I didn't even change my clothes from the hike in the woods.  I was so tired, I was incapable of putting on any kind of airs.  I was glad I didn't have to cook or do dishes, but not sure I could stay awake thru the dinner, much less be good company.

L to R: Audrey, Allison, Nathan, Me, and John
Notice all the bar chairs turned upside down. 
We were the last to leave.

At Ichiban, we met up with my son, his wife, and my sister-in-law for a scrumptious birthday meal, Nathan's treat.  These are my main "peeps", plus my grandson who couldn't come. Nathan did all the ordering. We drank chilled sake, had fried sushi, yes, fried sushi, and another kind wrapped in cucumber strips.  OMG, those were over-the-top delicious. We fought over those.  I tasted eel sauce for the first time.  The main platter had about 6 other kinds of sushi, which were also good but comparable to sushi you find other places. We ate, talked and laughed so long, we shut the place down.  I didn't realize until the last moment, as they were throwing us out, that I hadn't taken any pictures.  The waiter was kind enough to snap this one near the exit, in the bar, with all the chairs upturned so they could mop the floors.  Alas, I didn't get one of our food-laden table.  It was a sumptuous display!

It was a "no gifts" party except for cards, because all my peeps know I don't want any more material things. But Audrey brought me a gift anyway.  It was wrapped but you could tell it was a book.  I rudely, adamently pronounced that there was only one book I wanted, and if this was by some mysterious means that book, (which it couldn't possibly be), I would lie down on the floor in shock.  Sure enough, it was Barbra Striesand's new book, My Passion For Design.  So I laid on the floor as promised, in shock . . . . . which shocked a few waiters and patrons.  That's the thing about Audrey.  She knows me so well.  Unbeknownst to me, she had also seen Oprah's interview with Barbra and Robert Redford a few nights back, and she knew I would want this book.

So that capped off the perfect birthday day.  Good food, good people, a bit of magic, shock and awe! But my friends say "Fry's birthday isn't over til she says it is."  So this morning I woke up and ate the leftovers, including the last two fried sushis, and thought about declaring that to be the official end to my very special day.  And so, perhaps it is . . . . . . . . . . . then again perhaps not.  I still have friends coming in (tonight), we're hosting an Indian dinner party tomorrow night for many old friends I haven't seen in months, a book to read, a blog to write, work to do, pictures to take, projects to finish, dogs to train, etc.  Every day I feel a bit renewed, reborn, and spoiled by my friends, family and all my many blessings.  Words being so powerful, visualization so life-shaping, I don't think I should ever let my birth day be over.   :-)

Upwards and onward,

Laying Sod

Michele leveling the dirt

I haven't told the story yet of us laying sod in the back yard.  So now, while resting up from my tee pee binding project, I have time to fiddle with the pics and blog about our new lawn.

On October 5 when the weather cooled a bit, John and I brought in 6 tons of fill dirt to raise the level of yard just off our patio steps, and replace the outdoor carpet I had used there for years to keep down the dust. Tree roots were growing all across the area and we were tripping over them at alarming rates.  We couldn't afford to cut the roots and risk killing the tree, so we just filled over them, then laid St Augustine sod over that.  This gave us a chance to raise and level the area, too, after nearly 30 years of it being sloped and uneven.  All good.  Backbreaking labor, though. 

Naylors, our local plant nursery/hardware store, sells fill dirt (a sand/clay mix they call "sandy loam") for $13 a scoop.  1 scoop fits in the back of John's truck and weighs about 1 ton.  We got 7 of those.  Trip to store, drive home, shovel it out.  Another trip to store, I spread the dirt while John goes for another load, then another, then another.  That took 1 day.  We tamped it down and let that settle a week while we recovered.  The next weekend, John picks up 1/2 pallet of St Augustine grass sod, we arrange the rectangles in tight alignment, then he goes for the other 1/2 pallet, same thing.  More hard labor, all in one day.



 Our first 1/2 pallet of sod, in John's trusty Toyota

Can I tell you how sore we were for 2 weeks?????????  Then it's water, water, water.  Every day for 30 minutes, for at least 2 weeks, then every other day for a month.

Costs including tax:
Fill dirt:  $13 x 7 = $99
1 pallet Sod:  $176

TOTAL:  $275.00

Not bad at all.  If we had hired the work professionally done, it would have been more like $750, so we, in effect, made $475 doing the labor ourselves.  Not a bad income but I would NOT want to lay sod for a living, no matter how well it paid!  If I ever do it again, I plan on having a big party, buying all the food, and have each guest lay just a few dozen pieces.  But maybe my friends are too smart to fall for that one.  A few would do all the work, the others would cheer and jeer.

6 weeks later, looks like we have a lawn!

6 weeks later, today, my birthday, the grass seems to be thriving.  Some of the blades are turning brown, but we hope that is because of the cooler weather, and when we water it, most of the brown turns green again.  Surprisingly, it is doing best under the patio cover with the filtered UV light.  It gets enough light, then.  But we must hand water because it never rains under there.  No problem as I have to hose off the steps every few weeks from the debris brought in from the dogs.

Lucky Lucy rolling in "her" grass

One thing I notice about sod, though.  When you first get it, the soil is very moist.  As the squares dry out they shrink a bit so no matter how closely you push and shove and wiggle to wedge the pieces tightly together, little cracks begin to form between them.  I need to take some more fill dirt and pour it into the cracks.  Meanwhile, Lucky thinks we laid all that sod for her.  I mean it, she acts like we gifted her with a plush carpet of grass to roll around in.  In this photo, you can just make out some of the rectangles and the spaces between them that I need to fill in.  They can  be felt underfoot better than seen.

Despite that, I'm feeling somewhat victorious about our sod project today, which is, in effect, like another birthday present. All is well in my world today.

Upwards and onward!