“Tell me one good thing about March,” he mumbles to no one as he rattles down an old aluminum ladder. The mumbling stops for the moment as he pulls the ladder away from the gutter and moves it down four or five feet so that he can rattle up the ladder again to remove more leaves.
“The month of expectations, my ass.”
Writer scoops the last of the fall leaves out of the gutters on the backside of the house he shares with Blue Eyes and Carly, the Portuguese Water Dog. He cleaned the gutters in November, but over the winter more leaves from neighbor’s trees landed in the gutters. The ladder is a loaner from his neighbor; it rattles and shakes each time he climbs it. Once up the ladder and once it stops shaking, he runs his hand through wet, cold, rotting leaves and throws the mess to the ground below him.
“Cheerful daffodils crushed by a foot of wet snow.”
He moves the ladder again, grunts and rattles up it again. The weather is beautiful, sunny, and close to 60 degrees with no wind. It would be fine with Writer if the weather just continued day-by-day to get warmer and warmer right on into summer. He would like a normal spring just like anywhere else in the world except in the foothills of Colorado.
“March is dreams of better things shattered by reality.”
It is typical of March in the foothills for there to be several days of warming weather followed by a blast of an arctic front rolling downhill from Montana and Wyoming dropping the temperature by 30 or 40 degrees. The snow coming from these storms can pile a foot or more of white cement on his driveway and sidewalks overnight.
He is removing leaves because the forecast for tomorrow night is for an arctic blast and snow. If he doesn’t clean the gutters, the snow will melt on the first sunny day after the storm. The runoff will overwhelm the jammed-up gutters and then freeze the following night, creating an ice dam.
Given bad luck, a lot of snow melting, and then freezing, the ice could weigh enough to cause the gutters to break away from the house and crash down into the yard. This happens in early spring. It typically doesn’t happen in winter because the water content of snow is lower, and the snow takes longer to melt and often blows off before an ice dam can become an issue.
He’s not watching the hill behind the house where a large, tired-looking female coyote circles several times to mat down the grass and then lies down to take a nap or maybe watch Writer, or maybe both.
“And the snow hits the warm concrete and melts and then freezes at night while more snow piles on top. Last year I slipped and my head glanced off a concrete step. Knocked myself out. Came to and saw blood on the snow, felt blood running down my neck and a bloody hand that came away from the wound. But no concussion and no damage to the sidewalk step, just a huge scab on the back of my head.”
The Creak House sits on a corner lot with an irrigation ditch behind it that is more or less a wildlife superhighway when it is not being used to move water to the flatlands. The ditch winds down from a reservoir in the mountains through the greenbelt several hundred yards away from the house and right into a North Boulder neighborhood called Wonderland Hills. When they first bought The Creak House it was a run-down rental in a great neighborhood. Before it was remodeled, the entire house creaked in the Boulder wind.
Deer, bear, mountain lion, fox, coyote, and other critters all use the ditch to get into the neighborhood. The ditch easement stretches down the ditch embankment into Writer’s backyard. While he owns the land, the ditch company can do as it pleases along the ditch. He planted modest landscaping on the embankment some years ago, but he feels no real responsibility to care for it and lets it go mostly wild as a buffer to his neighbors.
Through his inaction he has created a perfect place for a deer or coyote to lie down in the tall grass for a nap protected by bushes and volunteer trees.
And now more of a monologue than a rant, “And then there was a mountain lion in the tree last week. Thirty feet off the ground and asleep in the branches and then folks started gathering in the cul-de-sac. She wasn’t bothering anyone, probably taking a break from her yearling cubs. A ranger from Colorado Parks and Wildlife showed up, and made the helpful comment that it was ‘her turf, not ours.’ Some moron put the word out on the neighborhood website and more people showed up, littering the cul-de-sac. A veritable ‘Get off my lawn!’ moment.”
“March can just piss you off, but March prepares you for April, which can make you really mad.”
He has reached the end of a gutter and begins the clean up by rolling out the compost bin that, by mandate from the city, has been bear-proofed with two latches.
“These garbage cans are a dumb idea,” he mutters. “I walk out into the dimly lit garage with a full garbage bag in one hand. I have to put down the bag to release both latches on the can so I can lift the lid. Without fail, the garbage bag topples over, spilling garbage, and when I bend over to right the garbage bag and clean up the mess, the bear-proof lid falls down and snaps shut again.”
“Goddam it, will you stop mumbling so that I can get a nap?”
“Cady!”