Moore Costa Rica Thoughts: 5/1/11

Spring just sort of tip-toed in, quietly, without fanfare this year. As though it didn’t want to offend Winter by taking over in a sudden, pushy fashion.

Green Grass...Spring Ice on the trees !!!

It allowed Winter a most gradual exit. Co-existing for the longest time, Spring timidly, finally, laid claim to most days while very often giving up its hold on nights, conceding the struggle to its forerunner, letting the mercury slip back down into the low forties and occasional thirties.

Asheville’s minor league baseball team appeared on schedule, flashing their subtle signals around the playing field. Though hard for outsiders to interpret them, it seems certain that some of those arm pats, top-of-head touches, finger-to-nose moves were meant to tell Spring it was time to show up. But Spring failed to heed the call, and most of the night games were played with fans shivering even while wrapped in blankets.

Spring Flowers at Last

Rhododendron in the "back yard"

Coaxed by sunny, albeit sometimes chilly days, blossoms of purple, pink, white, and yellow slowly adorned the trees and bushes that nourished them. Bare limbs of trees large and small greened quickly, almost suddenly, and at last, by Mother’s Day, it appeared Spring’s late arrival had finally occurred.

Our Dreaded Driveway...to be avoided in Winter!

Of course, Spring has its traditions, one of which is cleaning house and home, top to bottom, inside and out. It’s the “out” part of that equation that has presented the greatest challenge for us this year. Surrounded by 2.5 acres of wooded mountainside, our little homestead here in South Asheville has typically been left “au naturale”. Absent grass, the forest floor has been left covered with leaves, blackberry bushes and tree limbs resting wherever nature put them.

Geri "down in front"

However, with plans to put this property on the market, we decided it might be best to call in a “grounds crew” and clean up several years’ worth of the stuff discarded by nature. While one could hardly call it landscaping, we did engage the services of a small landscaping crew whose efforts over the span of a couple of weeks did make the ground almost visible as it slopes away from the front of our house WAY down to our mailbox on the street below.

Of course, working with plants or anything that grows, is a form of entertainment for Geri. Even though ravaged by poison ivy, neither she nor the Mexicans working along side of her, were to be deterred. Thorny bushes, invasive vines and volunteer trees too numerous to count were uprooted and removed. And, slowly but surely, there appeared clearings where heretofore had been growth of near jungle density. The result: there is now room to place a realtor sign which may even be visible to passers-by.