Author Archives: Joan

Gardening

Knotweed Be Gone

Seven years ago we bought a charming bungalow built in 1900 and with it, unfortunately, a huge swarth of Japanese Knotweed. You can see how large in the photo above.

Knotweed, Reynoutria japonica, is an invasive and fast-growing weed from Asia that looks a little like bamboo but it ain’t. It grows quite tall and flowers, as we discovered the first year we lived here. It also doesn’t let much of anything else grow with it as its strong root system spreads horizontally. Thus, it can be destructive to building foundations. A little history: it was brought to the U.K. in the early 1800s before it came to the U.S.

I see knotweed growing along roads, rivers, well, lots of places. All the plant needs is a bit of disturbed soil and it takes root and spreads. That’s likely what happened when previous owners built an addition and garage in 1990, and just let the weed take over. Ugh. Thanks a lot.

Yes, I know beekeepers use the plant — my neighbor presented me with a bottle of knotweed honey as an amusing gift. The young stems allegedly taste like rhubarb. The same neighbor told me about a person who created flutes from the large dried stalks. I prefer to use the land for other purposes.

As I’m the person in our household that takes care of the land, I researched how to get rid of the damn stuff. So what are my options?

Learn to live with it. But, alas, knotweed is a greedy plant that wants to take over the world. 

Herbicide? No thanks. 

Cover with a tarp for five years? I tried that last year and gave up as the damn plants started spreading horizontally to escape. Besides, I don’t want to look at tarps on the ground that long.

Dig it up? Impossible to get every damn piece — knotweed doesn’t need much to grow — and besides where would I take the roots so they are not somebody else’s problem?

So, I am left with cutting the damn stuff. I figure if I keep doing it, knotweed will just give up. Or maybe I will.

I use an electric-powered weed whacker, a Stihl I’ve owned for many years that takes two electric cords, to cut the damn stuff down. (The cords are impractical but it’s what I have. We bought it when we lived in New Mexico and had different weeds to keep in control.) 

I began earlier this spring when the plants were about a foot tall. I wait about two weeks before the next cutting, which I accomplish in two days. In the photo above you can see my first day’s progress during this week’s cutting. I leave the ferns intact, and hope they will take over along with the grass seed I spread this spring. By the way, the lawn area is owned and maintained by the Catholic Church next door.

Even this blasted heat and humidity hasn’t stopped me. I dress appropriately, wear sunscreen, gloves, and a big hat, and get to work with my trusty machine. It’s a bit of a workout since the area is on a large hill, steeper near the house. Yesterday, I was soaking wet when I happily finished.

Unfortunately, the weed whacker is too noisy to listen to an audiobook. I tried. But I do a lot of thinking, some of it personal, most of it involves my writing. I believe I finally know who dunnit in the Isabel Long Mystery I am getting close to finishing. Throughout this series — Finding the Source is number eight — I solve the mystery along with my protagonist. 

And now, hopefully I will also solve the mystery about knotweed.

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Hilltown Postcards

Bad Neighbors

In my last Hilltown Postcard, I wrote about good neighbors. As promised, here is one about bad neighbors. The names have been changed for obvious reasons.

When we built our house and moved from one part of Worthington to another, we encountered a whole new group of neighbors. Just like in Ringville, we had good neighbors, many come to mind, but here we encountered a few bad ones. 

What constitutes a bad neighbor? Frankly, the things they do just make them unlikeable. It’s a good practice to just stay clear after you figure that out like the neighbor who went off the deep end.

George used to be a decent friend before he became our next-door neighbor. Like us, he bought a piece of land and built the house he owned. Hank even worked with him. But things went strange between us, really strange.

Once when Hank went to George’s house to borrow a tool, he claimed our kids were breaking into his house. He said they moved his furniture, but only enough that he would notice. George was certain it was happening because he stuck a blade of grass between the front door and jamb, and it was gone when he got home. Hank stormed home in disbelief.

Then one of our sons caught George glaring at him through the woods.

Hank went to see the town’s police chief, who told him George had complained about our kids many times, but he didn’t believe any of it. The problem was solved when he sold his house and good neighbors bought it.

As the former hilltown reporter for the Daily Hampshire Gazette, I covered a few neighborhood disputes brought to a town board to be resolved. Most often the dissent concerned barking and/or vicious dogs their owners didn’t properly restrain although there was a notorious hearing involving pigs I wrote about earlier.

I can think of two dog situations in our new neighborhood, including one mutt that made it risky to walk along that part of the road in case the animal was loose. I recall a neighbor on a walk once flagged down a car and jumped inside for a ride home when that awful dog got loose.

Another neighbor had a Doberman Pinscher he didn’t tie up and we didn’t trust, with good reason it turned out, because the dog turned on the daughter. The man shot the dog, then left the body in the woods because the ground was too frozen to bury it. Wild animals picked the carcass clean. I recognized the tufts of fur when our dog dragged the bones to our yard. Anyway, the man moved away soon after that happened.

I recall a few incidents that get your head shaking when what a person does in private goes public. Ranking as the absolute worst was the creep who got arrested for watching his teenage daughter while she showered. 

One time, we heard loud banging coming from a neighbor’s house. An ousted husband was repeatedly smashing the front end of his pickup against the door of a newly built garage. The cops were called.

Then there was the teenager who stole his mother’s car and crashed it in another part of town — an accident that badly injured him.

In another incident, a neighbor hooked up with the wrong people, thankfully very briefly.

One night Hank and I had finished watching the film, “Pulp Fiction,” when a state trooper knocked at the door and asked to use our phone since cell service was nearly nil in those days. It didn’t take much to get the trooper to say two men had gotten into a fight, and one guy, who happened to be a new friend of our neighbor Sandy, stabbed his buddy through the throat. The man had fled to the woods, and he was calling in dogs to find him. He would likely be going back to prison. He hadn’t been out that long. I believe he and Sandy might have been pen pals.

I thought for a moment I should tell the state trooper I was a reporter for the local newspaper, but I didn’t. I would instead pass the story to another reporter. The police dogs found the stabber hiding beneath the floorboards of a shed, and he was sentenced later to seven years after admitting in court he intended to kill his friend.

Sandy turned into a model neighbor, except for an occasional barking fit by one of her dogs, but they were harmless. Last I knew, she had a beautiful garden and worked hard at it.

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Hilltown Postcards

Good Neighbors

It’s been a little while but here’s a Hilltown Postcard.

It can be a game of chance when you live close enough to people that you can see their house. That certainly was the case when we moved to Worthington. We had good neighbors, bad neighbors and those who kept to themselves, except for a wave of the hand and a hello. And, of course, people came and went. Today I will write about a few good neighbors, specifically the ones we had in the Ringville section of town.

This was our second attempt at country living. I wrote about the first, in the middle of nowhere in central New Hampshire. We lasted less than a year even with helpful neighbors who took pity on the city folk with two kids renting a cabin for $35 a month that had no running water, electricity, or indoor plumbing, and only a woodstove for heat.

But when we moved from Boston to Worthington, Hank and I were in it for the long haul. By luck and help from newfound friends, we rented a crappy little house on a curve along Route 112 in Ringville. 

The first neighbor we met was Charlie Baker, who lived across the road from us in a farmhouse that had an open barn, a very large field, and a river behind it. The house was very close to the road, which was likely widened when it became a state highway. Our mailboxes were side-by-side, and both easy victims of a snowplow’s blade each winter.

Charlie was a friendly man who lived there with his young son, Chuck. His first piece of advice: We should keep the shades down or curtains closed when we undressed in the front bedroom because he could see us from across the road. Thanks, Charlie.

Over the years, Charlie let others use his land, in particular its grass for hay and to raise hogs for slaughtering. (I recall looking out the window to see a freshly killed hog hanging upside down from a tractor’s raised plow.) The land was also a bit of a playground for our kids. That was okay with Charlie.

It was a happy day when the Lippert family moved next door because our kids had playmates their ages. Alex was a doctor at the town’s health center. Regina also worked in the medical field. When the Lipperts were away, our kids would make sure the chickens were in their coop at night so they weren’t slaughtered by raccoons — a lesson our neighbors learned — and then let out in the morning. I consider the Lipperts, who like us moved away, friends still.

On the other side of our house were the Stroms, who also had children the same age as ours. Hank ended up driving Pat to the hospital when she went into labor with her daughter and Steve hadn’t made it home from work by then. When work was being done on their house because of a fire, we ran an electric cord from our house to theirs. In exchange, Steve plowed our driveway. 

I fondly remember visits to Marian Sanderson, the oldest person in our village. I don’t recall how it started, but the kids who weren’t school age and I went together. They didn’t mind since she always served them something sweet. I enjoyed listening to her stories about the town. She was also a big Red Sox fan, if I recall correctly. Unfortunately, one night she was injured when she fell and had to live with her daughter. I treasure the needlepoint piece she created that I used for a pillow I still have. 

Those were a few of our good neighbors in Worthington. Stay tuned for the bad ones. 

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Memoir

My Cheating Job

My first job was changing labels at a pants warehouse in New Bedford, Mass. When an order came in that required, say, a hundred pairs of men’s size 32 W 32 L and the warehouse only had sixty, the pickers would bring a stack of 30 W 30 L. Or 34 W 28 L. Or frankly, anything close enough.

I ripped off the old labels neatly and sewed the new ones with this nifty machine.

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Sometimes the sizes weren’t even close. I remember an order of boys pants for a military PX down South. We scrambled to turn size 12 boys into size 8 and so on.

Because of that experience, I know better than to trust the label on an article of clothing. I have to try it on. You should, too.

Did I feel we were being dishonest? Of course. But I was 18 and waiting out that summer between high school graduation and my freshman year in college. I was going away from home for the first time, a big step for a shy girl. Every cent I made went in the bank.

My Dad called in a favor with the foreman, so I could get this job. I don’t recall how they knew each other but I do the Christmas tree the man gave our family one year. The tree’s needles all dropped within a couple of days and my mother took photos to record the experience.

I was paid minimum wage, which in those days was $1.60 an hour.

Once, New Bedford used to be a hub for textile mills. My mother’s parents, who came over the boat from Madeira, were weavers. So was my mother after her parents made her drop out of high school. By the time I came along, the textile mills had moved down South, where labor was cheaper. Now, they’re overseas. 

So, what was left were distribution warehouses. Among their biggest clients were military bases all over the U.S. This was during the Vietnam War.

The warehouse where I worked was situated across the then-polluted Acushnet River from my hometown of Fairhaven. The stairwell had an interesting assortment of profane grafitti like “Maria sucks dead Portagees.” I’ll spare you the coarser stuff.

The building didn’t have air-conditioning so it got hotter as the day progressed. Large fans kept the air moving in the area near them but they didn’t help much for the rest of the building.

My co-workers were for the most part lifers. A few were young like me, including a friend from high school who worked in the office, but they weren’t going to college. I was mindful of that so I did my job and tried to be as friendly as necessary. I met some interesting characters for sure.

And I scored my first pair of bellbottoms, gratis, of course.

I worked two summers at this warehouse. When I went to the unemployment office on the third, I was sent to another pants warehouse. This time I was a picker who filled orders and made ten cents an hour more because the owner liked me.

About the photo above: That’s me after I became indoctrinated into the alternative scene at college but I still went home for the summer to work in a warehouse.

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Memoir, Uncategorized

Father’s Day at the Mental Hospital

My grandfather was hauled off to a state mental hospital after he went after my grandmother with a hoe. The story goes my grandmother knocked him out with a bucket and thought he was dead. When the police came, he was taken away to one of the state mental hospitals that existed then. His diagnosis, I believe: clinical paranoia.

I didn’t see Vovô, as we kids called him, very often after that incident, but I recall visiting him at the hospital on Father’s Day. (Vovô was the grandfather on my mother’s side of the family, which included two sisters.)

On that day, my father drove our family to the hospital. My uncle brought his, which included my aunt and two cousins, plus my grandmother. One time, another aunt, my mother’s youngest sister, came.

The family brought Vovô a carton of cigarettes and made a picnic of the visit on the hospital grounds, with food, croquet, and a game of Wiffle Ball. Vovô insisted on taking us kids to the canteen for Hoodsie Cups ice cream and to introduce us to his friends. I felt half-afraid and half-curious by the experience.

By the way, the photo above is a family portrait my mother took on one of those visits. Vovô wears the suit. My grandmother, Vovó, sits on the bench holding my brother. I was only 12 and the girl on the far left.

Let me tell you a little about Vovô. He came over on the boat from Madeira when he was young and married my grandmother, who came from the same island, here. They worked in the textile mills of New Bedford, Massachusetts. A hard worker, during the Depression he bought a home in the small town of Acushnet, where the family grew and raised much of their food, plus took in boarders. He and my grandmother took English lessons and converted to a Protestant religion. Vovô made his two oldest daughters drop out of high school so they could work in the textile mills or watch the house when he and my grandmother were at work.

I don’t recall Vovô being a warm man. But then again, I imagine it was a huge adjustment emigrating to a new country and one so different than the Portuguese island where he once lived. One of my cousins told me recently our grandfather was bullied by his co-workers.

Vovô spent the last years of his life at Taunton State Hospital. He made a life for himself there. He had a job working in the laundry and even a girlfriend, whom we kids met one Father’s Day. She waited beside a tree on the grounds to meet us. My grandmother refused to divorce him.

He tried coming home once but that didn’t last long.

Vovô died while he watched a movie at the hospital. The lights came on and he was already gone. I went to the wake but not the funeral. I was a teenager then.

Years later, I worked and lived in a psychiatric halfway house, which took in patients from state and private hospitals. At that time, Massachusetts was closing its hospitals and placing people in such places. The staff was untrained and inexperienced. We were supposed to be role models and helpful roommates, I suppose. That experience inspired a novel I wrote, The Swanson Shuffle, but have yet to publish.

The halfway house’s staff had a ring of keys that unlocked every ward in the closest hospital, Foxborough State, so we could come and go freely. When I did, I thought of my grandfather and how he got used to living in one.

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