The Bleak Cup

Soak the hoya, trim the lemon, and pull the shades down to spare the tender goldfish plant. There will be no celebrating, for we’ve lost the mystery plant.

Five days ago, I shared the story of the mystery plant start I found in a bucket of soil in a dark corner of my garage. Hoping I might nurse it along in a friendly cup of soil, at least long enough to see if it was friend or foe, I prepped a cup and planted the start inside.

Sadly, the plant withered and perished, leaving behind a bleak cup of nothing but moist dirt.

So lightly water the orchids. Place the lime in direct light. Give the cat palm an extra sip tonight.

The Mystery Plant

The Bleak Cup

—Mitchell Hegman

The Tin Cat

If someone or something is just trying to make a living and they are not directly doing harm to me in doing so, I extend them latitude. This includes mice.

I recently discovered that mice have taken to making something of a rodent condo in the warm, enclosed spaces of my outdoor hot tub. Obviously, I don’t want them there. They are messy, disease vectors, and they poop everywhere they go. But, at the same time, they are simply trying to make a living, and there is no direct harm to me.

My measure of giving them latitude is live-trapping them and then driving them down the road to release them. To that end, I purchased a new live trap called a Tin Cat. It is designed to capture more than one mouse once set. The very first time I used it, I was astonished at how well it worked.

I caught three.

I also like that the trap is fully enclosed. After each use, I can hose the inside clean without exposing myself to the mess the mice have left behind after release.

Good stuff, that.

I’m posting a photograph of the Tin Cat (open) next to a requisite Cold Smoke beer.

—Mitchell Hegman

That Other Thing

I have been without access to my sticky notes for three days now. I had no idea how difficult it would be.

—Mitchell Hegman

Wildlife Just Outside the Window

Desiree and I are staying in Three Forks while I am teaching classes in Bozeman. Our room is rather close to the edge of civilization. I am posting a photograph of the wildlife just outside our window. Several of these critters are eating the heads off the dandelions in the grass.

A Gopher Eating Dandelions

—Mitchell Hegman

Remembrance

We must remember that mountains sometimes tumble into the seas, sometimes horses pull too hard on the grass, and sometimes a person you dearly love fades away and perishes.

I was angry when Uyen passed, for there existed no beauty in it. Cancer had ravaged her from end to end, edge to center. The ability to walk gradually drained from her, then the ability to rise from bed. In the end, she could not raise an arm.

If only Thomas was right, that we might rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Instead came silence. Late snow had melted back into the raw earth, and the last honey bees finished their work on the flowering apple trees.

Ah, my sweet girl, I am not angry anymore. The bees and melting snows insist that life persists. We shall abide the rising of the light.

Today we remember Uyen Hegman, lost on this day in May of 2011.

Uyen talking with Dzao Women in Ta Phin Village, Vietnam, April 2009

Uyen and Helen December 1984

—Mitchell Hegman

The Mystery Plant

 Life will always try.

Yesterday, I opened a completely closed bucket of topsoil I had set aside in my garage a few weeks ago and discovered that a seed of some sort had germinated and started to grow inside.

The soil is from a local nursery and is of uncertain origin. The plant start potentially looks like it might be a Russian thistle, but it could also be some sort of evergreen. After indelicately unearthing the poor thing, I actually felt a little guilty.

The plant was trying its best. The least I could do was give it a chance. With that, I gathered up the skinny little thing, poked it into some soil in a cup, and gave it a dash of water. Hopefully, I can successfully save and nurture the plant so I might one day identify it and share a photograph of it alongside a Cold Smoke beer.

The Mystery Plant

Planted in a Cup

The Bucket

—Mitchell Hegman

Recycling Glass

The adult in me never survives a trip to recycle at our local trash transfer station. I’m fine (read properly adulting) while stuffing cardboard in the bins. And dropping off my aluminum and steel cans is just another humdrum activity that tips me in no particular direction.

And then there is the glass: recycling bottles and jars.

To recycle glass, you “deposit” your bottles and jars in a huge metal container. This is where the ten-year-old me pushes the mature me off the proverbial cliff and takes over.

Deposit is NOT the word I would use for what I do.

I’m a ten and intend to go full-on Viking raid with this mission. My goals are twofold. First, I need to make a big, noisy production out of throwing away my bottles. Secondly, the object is to break as much glass as possible as I fire my stuff into the receptacle.

Had this recycling system been in place when I was a kid, I would have thrived and become a full-on recycle warrior. As I told a woman carrying a tub of bottles toward the glass container as I left empty-handed yesterday, “Glass is the fun part of recycling.”

Glass Recycling Container 

—Mitchell Hegman