An assemblage of sensations

One of the first items on our to-do list for this summer was a shingling job that should have been done last summer. There are lots of household tasks that get postponed (adding to the overall maintenance deficit) because they are unpleasant or complicated, but this was just a case of time constraints and competing commitments. Installing wood shingles is actually a pretty zen task, requiring neither specialized skills nor significant exertion. (Right up my alley!) It’s not really carpentry – more like a craft project. It provides the kind of satisfaction that I imagine people get from weaving or knitting, gradually building up a structural fabric row by row. Part of what makes the finished product appealing is the texture. It’s not seamless; you can see (and feel) how it is put together.

I once spoke with an architect who said this form of cladding is pleasing to the eye because it creates depth, breaking up flat surfaces. He described it admiringly as “a loose assemblage of things.” With the irregular widths of individual shingles, there is a random quality; no two rows are identical. The effect is non-industrial, almost organic. Wood shingles could be seen as an example of biomimicry – design or technology inspired by some aspect of the natural world – because they are layered like fish scales or birds’ feathers. (Similarly, Velcro is said to have been inspired by the barbed spikes that are so effective in dispersing burdock seeds via animals’ fur – or our wool socks.) The irregular quality of wood shingles also means they lend themselves well to fudging. If the wall is not quite square (and none of ours are), you can do a few subtly lopsided rows, to get them to come out even at the top – and it won’t be noticeable.

There’s also the appealing smell of Eastern white cedar, which goes along with its rot resistance. And there’s the fact that it can be sourced semi-locally from New Brunswick or Quebec. (Thuja occidentalis is relatively rare in Nova Scotia.)

With the old shingles stripped off, and a few bundles of fragrant new ones purchased (at no small expense), I was ready to get started – but then I couldn’t find my chalk line reel. You can use a board to draw a pencil line, or even tack the board in place as a guide to keep your rows straight, but I’m a big fan of the chalk line. It’s an ancient technology – referenced by Homer in the eighth century BC, in his figurative description of an impasse in the long-running war between the Achaeans and the Trojans: “Tense as a chalk-line marks the cut of a ship timber, / drawn taut and true in a skilled shipwright’s hands – / some master craftsman trained in Athena’s school – / so tense the battle line was drawn, dead even….”

Mine are not the hands of a shipwright, but I appreciate being able to mark a nice straight line by snapping a string stretched between two points. A “chalk box” (as they are sometimes called) is a delightfully simple tool, with its cute little folding crank and its palm-pleasing teardrop shape. It can also serve as a plumb bob, suspended on the string to determine a vertical line, by virtue of gravity. (“Plumb” and “plummet” come from the Latin plumbum, referring to the dense and malleable metal we call lead, which was historically used as a “bob” or weight.) I decided to buy a new one, and was disappointed to find that the only kind available was a plastic model made in China – a cheap and ugly variation on the classic die-cast aluminum type. Feeling sour, I purchased it anyway, in order to get on with the job. But back at home, I again hunted for the old chalk reel, and eventually found it (in the loose assemblage of things that qualifies as my workshop) – which meant the unopened, wildly overpackaged knockoff could be returned for refund.

It is amazing to me how many common household items, including hand tools, are now made offshore – exclusively, in many cases. The corporate world values brands more than industrial infrastructure or skilled labour, and there is an assumption that whoever owns the intellectual property can easily contract someone else – usually in China – to actually make stuff. But you have to wonder – if for some reason this outsourcing option became uneconomical or unavailable, would we be capable of rebuilding our manufacturing capacity? Would we be able to tool up?

A recent run of stifling days was broken by a humdinger of a summer storm here. Awakened by a mighty crack, I vaguely realized that our house may have taken a lightning strike – but detecting no sign of fire, I went back to sleep. In the morning we found that several breakers in our electrical panel had been tripped. All of them could be reset except the one for the propane kitchen range – a model from perhaps 35 years ago, with a rudimentary digital clock (no oven timer) and electric ignition (no standing pilots), but lacking any sophisticated electronics.

Removing the back panel, we found a connection in the clock had been fried, leaving a bare wire that was causing the short. We capped the wire, plugged in the stove, and successfully reset the breaker. All good. I’m pretty sure that a newer and fancier model would have required a costly repair – a replacement motherboard or whatever. (Restoring the glowing red numerals is not a priority.)

We’re going to hang on to that old range, whose burners can easily be lit manually when the power is out. It offers a degree of self-reliance, as well as thermic capabilities that are celebrated by culinary snobs far and wide. However, I would not be averse to having an efficient induction cooktop for everyday use, at some point in the foreseeable future. Maybe someone will start manufacturing them in Trenton. (Maybe we’ll remember to unplug it during thunderstorms.)

The hot weather means the ants have mostly departed from our kitchen (marching two by two, etc.), only to be replaced by a plague of flies. As John Prine observed in “Angel from Montgomery,” it’s the buzzing that gets to you. This means it’s time to break out the fly strips! To me, these delicate, spiraling ribbons are as charming and cozy as the evergreen garlands that adorn the room at Christmas.

I vividly remember them suspended from the kitchen ceiling in my great-uncle’s farmhouse (which retained its mid-century character for decades, perhaps due to the absence of a woman’s touch).

This is another product that has changed very little over the years. The ones we buy locally, in a little four-pack box, are manufactured by a German company called Aeroxon, which first registered the patent in 1911. The design was developed by a confectioner named Theodor Kaiser – who had good reason to dislike flies, and good reason to believe that you can catch more of them with honey than with vinegar. The product’s key attributes were the attractant and adhesive substances on the ribbon, and the little eyelet used for fastening it to the ceiling. Around that time, there were several high-profile court cases involving murderers who poisoned their victims using arsenic extracted from fly paper – but Aeroxon took the non-toxic route. By the 1920s, the company was exporting millions of units, and running English advertisements for its “honey fly catcher,” using the enticing tagline: “With thumb tack!”

Branch plants were established in several countries, including one in Sherbrooke, Que., which opened in 1933 and operated until sometime in the ’60s. Sales declined in the 1950s as chemical pesticides like DDT became popular not only in agriculture, but for everyday use around the house. Only in the ’80s did Aeroxon begin to capitalize on the environmental merits of its products. In the ’90s, the company became a leader in producing pheromone traps to control moths that damage stored food. Now based in Waiblingen (near Stuttgart), it produces fly strips at a facility in the Czech Republic. The little domestic ones can be bought in boxes of 100, and a larger version is available for barns and stables. The company also makes sticky tape for wrapping around the trunk of fruit trees, and various other inexpensive traps for controlling insect pests.

This is not meant to be a product endorsement. I’m just attracted to the idea of mimicking the strategy used by carnivorous plants such as the Round-leaved sundew (Drosera rotundifolia). And I’m a bit caught up in the nostalgic sensations of summer: the atmospheric closeness, the moments of lethargy, then the urgent activity, the scratchiness of hay, the pungency of sweat, the dust and the grime, the dirt under your fingernails; the exquisite flavours of sun-warm cherry tomatoes, buttered corn, fresh strawberry-and-cilantro salsa; the hot days seemingly endless, and then rapidly shortening. DL