Never trust a plant

Our neighbor Ernesto was cruising along the drive in typical dust-raising speed when he spotted me and hit the breaks, spitting gravel. I couldn't hear what he was saying, but he pointed to our wood pile.

My wood pile. I take some perverse pride in it since I salvaged, hauled and stacked the logs myself.

It is a lovely wood pile, I thought as I walked toward him...stacked by yours truly....maybe he wants some of it...

"Do you need some wood?" I asked. There's not a lot, but I'm feeling generous....

"No!" He looked kind of horrified, like I'd just offered him nuclear waste.

"No, I just wanted to tell you that the wood's covered in poison ivy. If you burn it, the poison ivy will get in your lungs. You'll end up in the hospital."

I peered at the tendrils of gnarled vines wrapped around the logs. How did he know it was poison ivy? How could he be so sure?

Let me back up a few decades here.

Long ago me 'n Poison Ivy struck an agreement. It would leave me alone and I wouldn't brag about my ivy-resistant powers. And for much of life, I've cavorted in poison ivy. I played hide and seek in its leafy patches and bedded down in it at sleep-away camp. Wove garland crowns out of poison ivy and danced in the moonlight....

There was always a trade off of course. From birth, mosquitoes have devoured me to the bone. Still, that old adage "leaves of 3, let it be" was meaningless. Poison ivy was my friend.

Til I turned the ripe old age of 30, and nature and age bestowed some memorable gifts: my first wrinkles around my eyes, my first gray hairs... and poison ivy re-neged on our deal.

"That's poison ivy!" Martin practically crowed as I manically scratched the bubbly red patch on my arm.

"Impossible! I must've been attacked by a mosquito colony. I don't get poison ivy."

"Well, you do now."

And wouldn't you know it, my powers failed right when we moved to the farm. Where poison ivy grows thick and plentiful by the bushel. Around here you could harvest it, string it together, and it would encircle the earth twice.

But without those Calamine lessons of childhood, I am powerless at identifying the plant. Much to Martin's dismay. "How can you not know poison ivy?" he asks incredulously. You'd think I'd just announced that my hobbies are flag burning and painting swastikas.

"I dunno. Everything's leafy and green around here! I don't understand how you see it so easily!"

Martin tests me constantly. "What that? What's that?" I lob out random plant names.

"Honeysuckle? pachysandra? boxelder?"

"No! Leaves of three...how many times do I tell you this?" He gets pissed about this. "Comeon, you've got kids now!"

Like that denotes some kind of responsibility.

But just about the time that Martin's going blow his stack, I feign sudden understanding. Not because I recognize the plant, but because Martin has a tell: "what's that?" When I hear that, I know that that's "it."

"Oh, that's poison ivy," I say knowingly. He looks momentarily relieved. When he's gone, I go back to plunging through leaves of three, four and five to pick berries. I hope my secret powers return soon.

And truthfully, no one's perfect. Even the great Poison Ivy Hunter stumbles. Last year while I was at a softball game, Martin called frantically because Hadley the Barbarian had eaten poison ivy.

Fortunately, babies are not susceptible or don't develop a reaction until they're older. And for now, I'm gambling that the kids will be like me -- immune. They don't have a choice. I can't identify the damn stuff anyway.

my former BFF, now frenemy

Project Mouse House

If the couple who previously owned our farm suddenly reappeared, they'd find the house they left 8 years ago. Aside from finishing the cellar, we haven't painted a wall, replaced a drape, a window shade, a square of wallpaper. The little wooden frog they forgot, suspended over the kitchen window, is still airborne -- dust covered but ever-present. The only changes in their absence: spidery cracks in the plaster and peeling wall paper.

So you'd think that after 8 years we'd spruce up the place and give it some personal touches.

Nope. We're renovating the Mouse House.

In its former life, the Mouse House was a milk parlor -- a concrete block and tin-roofed structure adjoining the main barn, used for cooling and storing milk (I think. Any dairy farmers out there, correct me if I'm wrong). By all estimates the barn, milk parlor and silo were built around 1920.

By the '70s with its dairy days behind it, the barn was converted for horses and the parlor stripped of milking equipment and turned into an apartment. By the time we came around, it was a boys' club, outfitted with a poker table, a few taxidermy-challenged animals, a basket full of shotgun shells and a rusted fridge stocked with ketchup and a case of Bud.

Though the previous owners only used it for poker, it did have its share of full-time residents. Birds nested in the oven and exhaust fan, and rodents bedded down in the walls and rafters. We immediately called it the Mouse House.

In those rookie months of ownership, we were blissfully clueless about the many farm repairs and what they'd cost. We gutted the Mouse House with great gusto and hatched grandiose plans for an apartment with a bedroom addition and a deck.

Then reality set in.

The Mouse House was long-listed behind more pressing projects like installing a new fence, patching the roof on the house, replacing the rotten bilco doors and pie-in-the-sky dreams of central air conditioning. But this spring, the Mouse House project was paroled with Martin's determination that the building must become his new home office. (I think he's in search of a new "man cave" ever since I commandeered his office in the cellar. )

The Mouse House is shoe-box tiny so we're figuring out how to squeeze in a galley kitchen, outfit the bathroom, enlarge the windows and build an affordable deck.

Fortunately, we're visionaries -- or moderately naive. Personally, I see the renovation as a boost in property value. And after years of flipping through real estate flyers and wandering through open houses, I think this lovely dwelling boasts some amenities that would thrill any homeowner, including:

insulation...look how warm we'll be in the winter

Greenery. Some turn up their noses at poison ivy, but I think house plants breathe life into a room.

Wall decor. Just the other day, I was pondering: what IS the best way to clean an udder?

Look, our first house guest...

What I'm saying here is critters, be warned. You are on notice of eviction. And we'll have to find a new home for our toxic chemicals, axes, and other hazmats and bludgeoning tools.

It's difficult to imagine this place rodent-free and sans poison ivy. But who knows, if it winds up as nice as Martin claims it'll be, I just might have to move in there....

The man, the vision