Our mailbox got beat up. Was it whacked by a teenager and a baseball bat or hit by a plow? Since we didn’t see it happen, it’s a guess. What we know it that it got mashed. Not just ours, but our neighbors and other people on the same route. The ground is still pretty hard, making putting in a new post difficult, but the post office refused to deliver mail without a mailbox.
Yet somehow, the mailbox got repaired. Not replaced, but fixed. Along with our neighbor across the street. Owen didn’t do it. I asked and he said no, he hadn’t repaired it, so either the neighbor did a secret repair … or the plow driver took responsibility and did it … or the post office did it … or some stranger did it. We are still going to need to do a proper repair. It’s not an expensive repair, mind you. $20 for a post and another $22 for a post box.
Voila! Ready for mail for at least another decade or two, depending on snowfall, plow, teenagers and garbage trucks who also have been known to back into mailboxes.
I’m betting on the guy across the street and the next time we see him, we’ll have to ask. We aren’t exactly friends, but we aren’t exactly not friends. We are the kind of “over the hedge” friends you become in New England. He gives us extra tomatoes (he grows beautiful tomatoes) and we are always very happy to get them.
We have watched his children grow from little kids to college graduates. I remember when our children (our grandchild, actually) took the same school buses. Time has flown!
And now another summer is lurking a few months in the future. It’s only March so it’s still cold but it will get warmer. Eventually, it will be spring, then summer. Before we have time to blink, winter will be back.
It seems to me the summer is when you race like mad to try and get everything done because there is very little time between the end of winter and winter’s return.
Weather is changing. Autumn is shorter. Summer is shorter and winter lasts longer. There is more rain, more ice, less snow. I don’t know what it means because New England is the kind of environment for erratic weather. Now it’s more erratic, but because it has always been strange. it is more strange, but what does it mean?
I’m sure it means something, but I’m not enough of a scientist to be able to tease the threads apart and make the right deductions. I simply know for the past two years, autumn has gone missing and we’ve had more rain and ice, less snow and more wind than I’ve ever seen. Which for New England IS unusual.
Categories: #Photography, #Squirrel, Blackstone Valley, climate change, New England, Weather, Wildlife, Winter
Applause to whoever was kind enough to fix your downed mailbox. The snowplow driver took ours out last year and there was a temporary fix by our daughter and then when the ground thawed we went through the whole process of digging, concrete mixing, and purchasing a new box and pole.
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Owen is waiting for the thaw so he can do the bucket, the concrete, the pole, the box. It isn’t expensive. Buying everything NEW locally it costs under $50 (and I already bought new decals which hopefully will actually STICK this time!). It takes a while for the ground to fully defrost and it’s pretty rough ground anyway — all rocks and roots. But pretty soon.
I think we’ll see a lot of thawing THIS week (please)! And then I’ve got to get it together for me annual chopping of the roses. I think I may be more balanced this year than last. For some reason, the hydrangeas have taken off this year, so that should be interesting, too. Can I cut them back hard too? Never had hydrangeas come in so heavily before!
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Glad you have someone to help with the mailbox. They hydrangeas depend upon the type and if they set blooms on the branches last year. I have some mop heads that I can cut down to the ground, but I have others that if I cut them back they won’t bloom for a couple of years.
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Oops. Meant rhododendrons, not hydrangeas. These are the slow-growing old-fashioned ones that grow single flowers. this bush came with the house, but it got enormous last year after I cut back the roses. Now the roses and the rhodos are entwined in quite a tangle — and they did it in a single year. Those barbed-wire roses grow FAST. It’s a pretty lethal thicket in there.
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Curious – the mystery mailbox repair. The seasons have certainly changed- winter longer as you said, summer shorter….
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Mostly, Autumn is now VERY short and I miss that. I’m used to there not being much spring. That’s always been true here, but autumn used to last at least three to six weeks and I loved it!
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We have two weeks of Autumn and two weeks of Spring these days. Glad your mailbox got fixed … is that the Squirrel-Who-Lived? 🙂
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One of several. I’m pretty sure that’s from a hawk’s talons.
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How strange (and wonderful) that your boxes got ‘repaired’…. Some kind of Karma? Regret? Kindness?
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My son thinks it may be a repair by the plow which hit them. Guilt? Or the neighbor just being a nice guy.
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Still some nice surprises in life!!
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I’m still surprised and it’s several days later!
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Mystery still unsolved? Must be whoever knocked them down came and repaired them.
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That is one of two theories.
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That is my son’s theory. I think it was the post office. I remember her murmuring that ALL the downed boxes (there were four or five and were all on the same route) so I think she had suspicions of who had done it.
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The mystery of the repaired mail box.
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Never imagined it. Now if someone would take my head to the hospital for me. Sigh.
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Good, a unsolved damage is replaced by unsolved repair and kindness. Restores your faith in humanity !
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Major surprise. It has been a LONG time since anyone around here surprised us!
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Great 👍
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It does. Every now and again, I find the edges of my driveway trimmed and I never know who did it. They never tell me.
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How nice.
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It’s really strange because I really WOULD like to know!
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Yes one does. And thank them.
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Yes, exactly.
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😊👍
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It is a surprise when someone decides to take responsibility for their mistake or just randomly decides to do do a good deed. There should be more of it.
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I totally agree!
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If we bump into the cross-the-road neighbor, we’ll ask. If it wasn’t him, it was either the plow guy or the post office. Or some unnamed kindly neighbor of unknown origin.
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