GroHappy

A turtle in need . . .snap!

Last Sunday I turned out of my driveway and headed for Ann’s Place for some early morning penance in the form of weeding. While the lawn is beginning to come in nicely albeit slowly, the weed population continues to grow quickly and invasively like all weeds do. As I reached the bottom of the hill and made a left turn, I noticed out of the corner of my eye an orb-like shape on the road that was light on one side with markings and dark on the other. Like a bowl with a lid.

It didn’t register with me immediately but a few hundred yards down the road I thought it could perhaps be a turtle that was upside down in its shell. I kept driving for another 30 seconds or so before my conscious got the better of me and I turned around. Pulling up on the side of the street opposite the object, I realized that my initial hunch was correct. It was a turtle; a big one about a foot long and eight inches wide. Probably a snapper.

It has somehow been flipped over on its back and was just inside the white line marking the edge of the road. Perhaps it had tried to climb or down the embankment that was next to it. It lay helpless with a pool of urine draining away from it. I walked across the street to see how it was doing.

It was still alive.

I took it across the street and placed it gently on its bottom shell. After a few moments it looked and stared at me but was unwilling to extend either its head or legs outside its protective shell that rested on some brown and gray leaf mold. I waited for a few minutes to see if it would come out of its shell but it would not budge. It was time for me to leave and I hoped the turtle would soon saunter away.

While I was weeding, I though about the turtle and all the other creatures we inadvertently come across every day. I put a deer fence around the back yard area of Ann’s Place to ensure that the deer would not decimate the fledgling trees and shrubs as they had in the prior year. But it would not stop the bunnies, frogs, possums and other local residents from enjoying the sanctuary that we have created.

As I headed home I hoped that the turtle had recovered from its topsy-turvy experience. I slowly pulled my car back into the space it had stopped at a few hours ago. No sign of the turtle. A good thing.

Temporally foxy

A few weeks ago, my daughter Sarah yelled downstairs, “In the back there is a fox!” We went to the windows unable to see any sign of it, which was not surprising given how all the bushes and trees have filled in the back. We went upstairs and quickly spotted what my daughter did: a red fox prowling past our fence in the back yard (her photo is to the left.) It was nice sized being somewhere between our dog (a puli) and the cats. It was a curious sight as I had always believed foxes to be nocturnal. But I gave it little thought as I just enjoyed watching it from afar.

A little while later I caught sight of the fox again but this time it looked a little different, smaller with a ringed tail. It seemed strange to me but perhaps, I thought, I did not catch the right view of it before or perhaps my memory was a tad off. Then another fox came into the picture with a chipmunk in its mouth and made a bee line for our neighbor’s shed that is adjacent to our property.

The original fox brought the chipmunk over to the base of the shed and a tiny head popped out and grabbed the offering. In a few minutes three other little foxes (or kits) crawled out from under the shed and started to jump on each other and run around.

I suddenly realized that a den of foxes had taken up residence next door: a set of parents and four kits. It now made sense why my compost bin had been dug under and all the scraps taken away (foxes are omnivorous) and (perhaps) why the cats had taken to wanting to be inside at night rather than out as had been their habit. I started to find lots of fox scat around the back of the property and near the compost heaps.

For the next few days, early in the morning I watched from my office as the parents would bring food to the kits and let them occasionally play near the shed. One day a pair of squirrels was brought by and taken under the shed, on another day it seemed as a stream of chipmunks were being brought for breakfast. But as quickly as this family appeared, it vanished. My wife Juana said that foxes have multiple dens. Perhaps the proximity of our house was considered too dangerous as the kits became more curious. Perhaps our dog Daisy was considered too much a threat. But for more than two weeks we haven’t seen much of them.

This morning I saw one of the parents scavenging around the compost heap looks for scraps. The kits were not to be seen, however, as they were no doubt waiting for yet another meal from their parents. As I write this I see a fat squirrel sitting on a rock not 10 feet from the fox den. It is quietly eating a nut, seemingly oblivious to any threat. Perhaps this is the most obvious sign that the foxes have moved on for good.

Going home to New Jersey

Working at Green Chimneys is full of paradoxes. One of the biggest ones that I don’t understand is the rationale behind the rule that staff are not allowed to discuss the entire life cycle of animals, particularly when they die. On a farm, life and death is common. Animals get sick and die, chickens that lose the ability to lay eggs productively become tomorrow’s dinner, cows and pigs once they reach a certain age or weight are taken off to slaughter. 

But such realities are not to be reflected in our teachings. I once made the mistake in discussing with a GC staff member a scene in the Michael Moore movie, “Roger & Me,” where a poor resident of Flint, MI, was selling rabbits for “Pets or Meat.” A child nearby overheard our discussion and went into a massive crying fit. We eventually calmed down the child and I felt guilty about upsetting the boy. While many of the animals we have at Green Chimneys are viewed as pets and part of therapy, the other more final use is the true reason for the existence of most farms.

After some reflection, I started to feel sorry for all the children as they were being shielded from the reality of the human use of animals for food. After all its not tofu nuggets, mushroom burgers and veggyloaf that gets fed to the children in the cafeteria. And everyone loves cheese. Green Chimneys is far from a meat-free zone. Often, the more meat, the better.

The absurdity of this was revisited last week as I was having lunch with some colleagues. “”We don’t have room for all of them in the barn,” said one farm worker.

“I’m not sure what we will do with the carcass,” said another.

I quickly discovered that something killed one of the sheep the prior evening. There were no visible footprints or scat but the consensus was either a large dog or coyote of which there are many in the area, killed the sheep. Now that this predator knows that there are easy pickings, we needed to protect the flock. So instead of leaving them out in the fields, they will be brought in every evening to be protected.

“So how did the kids take it?” I asked.  I was given a sharp look and told that the children never will know.

“We tell them that it [the sheep] went home to a farm in New Jersey,”  said one of the farm hands. “That’s our standard line.”

“But the kids are getting smart,” said another. “They have figured out that anytime someone ‘goes home to New Jersey’ it means that they have died.”

This was really weird. Images of Jimmy Hoffa next to some dead ungulates sprang to mind. “OK horsey, if you won’t talk, it’s a concrete feed bag for you.”

But the biggest missed opportunity was our inability to create a positive and impactful lesson from this nasty event. Instead we are having to hide everything.

As I left the cafeteria, I started to think of Charlton Heston and Edger G. Robinson in the movie “Soylent Green.”  It’s a old science-fiction movie about a 2022 Earth that is overpopulated and barely able to feed itself. Soylent Green is one of the main food stuffs of the era and purportedly is made from plankton. Robinson, tired of life leaves a note for Heston stating that he is “going home,” a euphemism for assisted suicide.  Heston follows the body of his old friend through a processing sequence discovering the dark secret that “Soylent Green is people!”

I felt like following that train of thought by screaming, “Mutton is sheep!.” But I didn’t and went back to the garden less worried about the mixed message we send out to our children and more worried about covering up some tender vegetable seedlings as we were expecting a very cold evening.

Stalling out

We have started to settle into a new regime with new digs between a donkey and a camel. The stalls are rather spacious though the smell of dung lingers until acclimation sets in. Tables are set up and we have started to decorate. Our berths now are dedicated to "Man-O-Melon" and "Peabiscuit," our vegan view of equine champions. The children are still not sure why we are going to work where the mother-load of all fertilizer is manufactured.

"Why are we going to the stables, Mr. Keller? Are we picking up some plants? Do we get to see the horses?"

It has yet to sink in for many that we will not be working in the greenhouse for the foreseeable future at Green Chimneys, though as I mentioned in a prior post, our days working in the greenhouse were shrinking to begin with. But it has some real ramifications.

We have tons of cold weather crops like kale, azuma, broccoli, lettuce, peas, etc. that are being planted now. What we don't have are the warm weather flowers like marigolds and zinnias as well as vegetables such as tomatoes, peppers, melons, and basil. We think we can just start enough stuff so that we will have the basics for the garden but none of the extras that we have all become accustomed to.

But like locust, unexpected snow, hail and other natural disasters, the new one defined by OSHA is being dealt with. We have started to plant basil and parsley. We have heat mats and lamps set up in the tack room where seedlings grow among the equipment that gets pulled for the dozen plus horses that berth nearby.

As the day warmed up (and the local aroma became more pungent,) we transferred out activities outside. We spent the last week erecting more hoop houses and planted whatever cold weather crops we could. Things are being placed outside much earlier (and smaller) than in the past but we have little choice. It matters little, however, as the children enjoy being in the garden, getting their hands soiled and picking a stray carrot that was planted last fall.

Condemned to garden

Last Thursday, as I walked toward the greenhouse I noticed something strange: police tape. The greenhouse was roped off like some crime scene for CSI or NCIS. Upon further inspection I noticed a letter taped to the door: Certification of Posting, OSHA Notification of Alleged Hazards.

I quickly found Tracy who filled me in. OSHA had come by to inspect the greenhouse on Monday and apparently found a number of things wrong with it that were so bad the greenhouse could no longer be used by Tracy and the students in her classes. She had three hours to remove everything from the area including tools, storage containers, dozens of flats of seedlings, mature summer plants, a propagation table, etc. It must have been a crazy day.

By the time I got to her she was coping with this latest SNAFU in the  way all good gardeners do: with quiet irony and acceptance. She had no idea when we would be able to re-inhabit the greenhouse.

This couldn’t have come at a worse time for us as we are just beginning to get out the cold weather vegetables to harden off and start to seed the warm weather ones.

“We’ll be able to plant just enough to fill the Children’s Garden,” said Tracy. “But no more.”

In past years we have had lots of extra seedlings to give and sell to staff, visiting parents and contribute to the associated farm stand. There was also plenty left over if we had a bad bout of damping off or visiting vermin (both of which have happened this winter.) So now there is little room left for error or bad weather/luck.

The gardening program is now scattered to the four corners of Green Chimneys. Some seedlings are in the tack room, others are over at a neighboring farm, some are in the staff room for the farm. Our composting worms are taking residency in the livestock barn. We started off the hardening process even more quickly than typical by putting many flats in hot beds that Tracy had built out of rotting bales of straw and horse manure. She had been starting some early greens in the hot bed but that experiment died with our access to the greenhouse.  And my work area for my kids is being moved to an empty stall in the horse barn. Perhaps I will get a bag of oats and maybe a carrot if I do a good job?

So for the foreseeable future, we will be working outside unless the weather is quite horrible. In a certain way, this has become a forcing function for us to be outside and garden.

It had been a pretty raw day with a gray sky and temps hovering just around 40 degrees. But given the choice to be hanging with (and smelling) a dozen-plus horses in my own stall or be outside it was a no-brainer.

“Come on Ben, we need to reinstall these hoop houses.”

“But Mr. Keller, we took them down last week.”

“I know but we have had to make a change in plans because we need to warm up the soil faster than we thought we needed to last week. I’m sorry but this is what we need to do.”

Because it was cold, we actually worked a lot faster than we have on previous outings when the weather was more in tune with the idea of gardening. In about 15 minutes we worked ourselves into a good zone of warmth as we quickly put the hoops into the ground and then attached the Agribon row covers with clips.

My next charges weeded rows, mulched hostas, and built a boarder by the front gates out of rocks we found in the nearby woods. A few carrots that were planted last fall were proffered as a reward for a job well done; they were small but sweet to the palate. No one seemed to mind that we didn’t have a greenhouse anymore. We were outside, condemned to garden.

Freezing a feeding possum

One of the battles that gardeners have with wildlife is over compost. We see our piles as a way to transform plant waste into nutritious compost that will help the next generation of plants grow and be healthy. Wildlife often sees compost piles as a 24/7 diner where they can sample the latest seasonal fare.

I used to be very laissez-faire about the construction of my pile. Some pieces of old fence, some 2-by-2 posts hammered into the soil surrounded by some extra chicken wire, old shipping pallets, etc. have all been used. The trouble with these constructions, however, is that during certain times of the year, my pile would not grow regardless of how much stuff I put in. In the summer I would see corn cobs that had been placed inside the pile the night before, emerge scattered around the back yard the morning after. In the fall, the remains of a pumpkin has its seeds scattered around the outside of the pile. And in the winter, little footprints and pieces of an apple core make a trail into the woods.  The panoply of creatures dining in my yard fill a big list: Crows, wild turkeys, groundhogs, squirrels, raccoons, possums, deer, chipmunks, etc., etc., etc.

So a few years ago I bit the bullet and purchased a proper wire compost bin from Gardner’s Supply, which also included a top to keep the creatures out. And after I figured out an easy way to keep the top shut (and most creatures out), I was in compost city. My production of compost tripled in the last year and my plants this past summer responded to the extra nutrients with fantastic growth and harvests.

I did miss seeing the occasional wild turkey and its babies come round the pile looking for food, but I told myself that it was worth it. Until today.

As it has been a cold fall, we have been burning wood at a rapid pace and if the weather continues as is, we will be out of wood within a month. So I thought today was a good day to get out and make my back and shoulders sore by splitting logs to replenish the pile. As I was walking out the back gate, the compost heap was to my right as was a possum. Upside down. Very frozen. Very dead.

Poking it a few times to see if I was mistaken, it was motionless as its tail was wedged in a corner of the compost bin while its little paws were gripping the mesh and its mouth clamped on a wire. It must have been looking for food last night and upon climbing down from the top got its tail caught and was unable to move. It froze to death.

My daughter Sarah came out and took a few pictures of it before I went to split wood. As I was swinging my maul, I kept thinking about the possum, its search for food and bad luck last night.

Groundhog Day

As I ranted before, I had a disagreement with one of our friendly groundhogs. He thought it was fine to eat through my gate and garden whereas I thought differently. There was no way to stop it from entering my grounds because for every hole I filled with rocks and dirt, another was dug. Unless you are going to bury steel mesh a foot under the ground, it is impossible to keep the little beasts out.

Now my wife, whom I love dearly and is one of the most gentle persons I have ever met, says that if I had a gun I would be able to rid ourselves of this vermin. “There it goes! If you had a gun you could kill it.” She made the same assertion nearly a decade ago when a rat was discovered under our bed that I called Templeton (after the rat in “Charlotte’s Web.”) Now I am flattered that my wife believes that my skill with a gun is on par with those of Martin Riggs (of “Lethal Weapon” fame) and Buffalo Bill. Unfortunately my experience with such weaponry ends with my trusty Daisy BB gun that was used during my misspent youth to dispatch old models of ships, planes and other broken Revell gear in my parents’ basement.

So wanting to deal with this in a gentler and kinder way as well as not shoot my eye out, I decided to purchase a Havahart trap. This is a trap that is supposed to capture an animal in a nice way letting you release it in an area where it can romp and live free among all of the other wonderful creatures we have on this earth. Quite frankly, I don’t give a crap about how happily ever after lives this creature. I just want it out of my garden.

My first attempt at trapping was comical as I put the trap on a flat surface (as recommended) and put in bananas and carrots. In less than a day the trap was knocked around and turned over as my friendly oversized rodent decided to knock it around rather than enter a den of culinary pleasure. I needed to create a more stable positioning for the trap.

My next try wedged it against a fence on one side, a fence post on the back and a heavy log on the other side. It felt good and sturdy and did not move easily. Time to wait.

This morning I got up and went out for the paper and took a glance toward the trap. It appeared that the door had fallen. It had and peering inside I had struck pay dirt. Or rather groundhog.

Carrots, bananas, banana peels all gone. A fat groundhog trying to break out right there. I gently picked up the cage making sure that my hands were no where near the sharp claws that could shred my flesh in an instant. At first it jumped around appearing angry but soon settled down and just sat in the cage watching me.

I began to feel sorry for it but that emotion quickly evaporated as I passed my gate with its chewed up bottom and put the cage in the car. As I drove it off to a nature preserve over 5 miles away I thought about the imperfect relationship we have with animals. We like to see them, but not too many. We want them to be near, but not too close. In the case of groundhogs, one is too many.

Upon arriving at my destination, I placed the cage on the ground and opened it. The groundhog sped out, looked around and waddled down the road from which we came. He ran a bit, looked up and continued. Soon it ran into the woods out of sight. I hoped it did not remember the way home.

I want his family dead, his house burnt to the ground

“What?!
   They got the whole shipment.

l want that son-of-a-bitch dead!
   We're trying to locate...

What am l, alone in this world? 
Did l ask you what you're tryin' to do? 
l want you to get this %$#@ where he
breathes! l want Eliot Ness dead!
                 
l want his family dead,
his house burnt to the ground!”

Robert DeNiro, as Al Capone in The Untouchables, upon being told that Eliot Ness captured a large shipment of liquor.

Now this blog is supposed to be about horticultural therapy and about the soothing effects of working with plants. And as I attempt to become a less pushy, Type A person and more of a gardening Zen master, I have been reasonably successful (I think) in letting most things just roll off my back like water off a duck. Aphids on the roses; a little horticultural spray. Birds starting to eat the berries; net them. Weeds back in a patch; bend down and pull them. It’s all fine and part of the gardening experience.

But I swear to God, if I ever find those . . . Calm down.

I usually don’t start out a post like this but we were burgled last night by a team of ruthless invaders and they cleaned us out. I just want to get an axe like Jack Nicholson in The Shining . . .

OK, calm down, where to begin.

A few weeks ago my wife and I were looking out the window during breakfast saw a mother groundhog and five fat little babies eating grasses in my next door neighbor’s lawn. They were really cute playing around and chomping down breakfast as were we. We were having one of those Kodak/Taster’s Choice nature moments. After they scurried away, we didn’t think much of them. After all they were on the other side of the street.

Now because of the large amounts of deer we have in Ridgefield, we have a large fence around our property that we keep closed. I have an additional fence around my vegetable garden to keep out rabbits and the like, as they can burrow under our fence. Unfortunately over the past month, I haven’t been as diligent in keeping the door shut to the vegetable garden as I should have and over the last week or so I noticed a few chewed leaves on a small sunflower that was making its way up.

No problem, some squirrel or bug.

Then I noticed the lettuce was nibbled. I figured that the slugs were making their yearly march so I put down some tuna fish cans of beer and sprinkled iron phosphate on the soil. In retrospect, however, I now remember that there were no slug trails around these tasty greens. Hummm.

Then the day before yesterday my squash plants were a bit trampled on with some of the leaves munched upon. I figured that my lax security had created an opportunity for some animal. I needed to keep the gate shut.

And so I did and there were no problems. Until this morning.

When I went out for the paper, I noticed a bunch of sticks and shavings at the bottom of the garden gate. Upon closer investigation, I found that those weren’t sticks, it was the bottom of the gate, or what was left of it. Either last night or early this morning, something came and chewed through my garden gate. Reading up on what type of creatures would do this and could do this, only one fit the bill: The groundhog.

Only a groundhog with its razor sharp claws and fast growing teeth could do this type of damage. A raccoon could easily climb over the fence as could a possum. Bunnies don’t eat through a wooden gate. Moles, rats and voles could easily slip though the spaces in the fence.

Nope it’s got to be a groundhog. And a brood of babies.

Upon gaining entrance to the garden it was a smorgasbord of delight for them. All you can eat. And they did.

“Mommy. Can I have seconds?”

“Sure darling, help your self.”

“I love these peas.”

“This organic broccoli is awesome.”

“Now children, don’t gulp your food. There is plenty more.”

I hate groundhogs. I want them dead. I want. . .OK, take a deep breadth. Continue.

Lettuce, kale, cauliflower, peas, sunflowers, broccoli and radishes. Gone. Half of my squash plants. Gone. My greens were just ready for their summer harvest. Gone. A second crop of broccoli was due in and the kale was ready to make either chips or for stir fry. Forget about that. This was going to be the year! Not now.

So now it is time to replant for a late summer and fall harvest and hope that these relatives of Punxsutawney Phil can be kept out of the garden so they don’t get my tomatoes as my plants are filled with flowers and a few tiny tomatoes. They stayed away from the leaves of potatoes and tomatoes as well as the herbs. They didn’t touch any of the garlic or the carnivorous plants that were out of the greenhouse.  There is some hope.

So I need to repair the gate and put up some more mesh to keep them out. Wish me luck.

A golf course is not a garden

I took Wednesday off to play golf with my son-in-law Alan. He also had the day off and the weather was turning to the better from being forecast as the worst so we figured it would be a good way to hang out together and have some fun. While I used to be an avid golfer in my youth, familial responsibilities as well as a new found love for gardening transferred my spare time over the years from putting on the greens to growing the greens.

Though November in New England can be raw, it was a splendid day with temperatures in the mid 50s, little wind and partly sunny skies. There were few people on the course so we could take our time without the pressure of others. And given my "military-like" golf game of left-right-left-right across the fairways, around the woods, in the sand, etc., I got to see much of the course. And what I saw was disquieting.

My recollections of golfing were of outings that provided a good amount of exercise while surrounded by nature. The exercise part was still the case (perhaps even more so) as I huffed and puffed my way up and down hills, bag on shoulder. The nature part was different as my memories of golf courses were of landscapes of green and full of life. And while that recollection is true, its context is vastly different to me today.

Instead of a beautiful varied environment, I saw a dull monoculture. The woods from which the course is carved out has many different trees, but they provide a simple and boring backdrop to a consistent green carpet.  In the spring there would be few flowers to view as the dominant trees (oaks, maples, ashes, hickory, tulip and black birch) give wonderful displays of color in the fall but little the rest of the year. And now there is little undergrowth as fall dormancy combined with an active deer population keep the forest floor bare.

So as I looked for my balls in the woods and nearly every place on the course except the fairway, I also searched for interesting signs of life: I didn't find much. On one hole there was a small clump of white birch, which stood out from everything else. On another there was a wild cherry that I spotted that I'm sure is spectacular in the spring. And perhaps there will be skunk cabbage, arrowroot, and lilies in the swamps and ponds that dot the course.

Strangely there were few creatures around. In years past I recall ducks, swans and geese that would populate the area but on Wednesday it was strangely silent. The deer were no doubt dining at nearby houses, which have better pickings than where I was. The frogs, I hope, were dormant sleeping in the mud.

The grass is lush but artificial considering the time of year. The horticultural steroid of nitrogen keeps the ground green and alive, but at a price.  I think of my own little lawn that is just coming into its own without the benefit of fertilizer or excessive care and consider the difference. It already has the opportunistic weeds of clover and crabgrass making a home, which as far as I am concerned is great. Some patches are struggling to get 1 inch of grass while others are already thick and 4 inches high. The golf lawn, on the other hand, has no room or time for such diversity as its purpose is to provide a consistent and flawless platform from which to swing a golf club. My lawn's purpose is to stop erosion and provide a home for all the little creatures that want to live near my house.

As I walked the course with Alan and chatting I couldn’t help but think about how to change the course. The easiest thing would be to replace or supplement the trees on the fairway with more visually interesting plants: white and paper birches, variegated and American holly, crabapple, viburnum, American hornbeam, persimmon, dogwoods, willow, poplar, butterfly bush, and sweet gum. The tee areas could be planted with herbs and bulbs and low bushes that have a good three-season display. And all of these things could be deer proof or at least resistant, which means no rhododendrons or azaleas. The possibilities are endless.

Regardless, Alan and I had a great time and he won our household version of the Ryder Cup for England, which meant beers were on me. As we sipped a pint looking out at the fairway late in the day I couldn’t help but feel a bit melancholy for my former impression of golf courses and my youth when my drives were straight and my garden knowledge incomplete.

Dance with me

As we cannot often see what is occurring, the night is a quiet period for the senses and much of observable nature. But a simple light can illuminate and even create extreme circumstances. Last evening as my wife and I were heading for bed, the motion detector on the second floor eave clicked on a pair of security lights. When this happens you see little, as a cat or other nocturnal creature trips the circuit and has already scurried away.

A light on a summer evening typically attracts a few nondescript moths, mosquitoes and a big June bug or two. These evening denizens do little save hang onto the screen with their limbs, seemingly seeking egress. But tonight’s gathering is different. Initially a few tiny whitish bugs hover around the light. But within 30 seconds they metamorphose into a swarm of thousands attending a rave. They are mad like crazy teens dancing with abandon and without purpose in a composite pattern reminiscent of a white-on-black Jackson Pollock painting. The light reflects off their bodies creating a continuous  record of their dance steps.

Each bug leaves a light trail as it spirals between the lights somehow avoiding collision with its peers as they avoid each other. Perspective and distance changes the pattern as would a view of a Master’s painting. Up close the details and shape of each little bug and associated movement can be seen; far away, a gyrating pattern of spherical forms and intensities moves between the two lights.

A few are tired, resting on the screen and find a few holes that should have been patched. I quickly shut the window trapping my iridescent little friends between the screen and glass, now unable to rejoin their frenzied companions.

We try an experiment and turn off the light for a minute and then back on. Just like before, the adolescents regroup in the light and reengage in their dance. But what is this dance? Is is some type of mating behavior? Is it because they have just hatched and never seen light before? Are these the excessive bugs out for a good time now that many of our local bats have died off and are no longer consuming thousands of insects every night? Why are they here?

We can’t answer these questions so we shut off the light and head for bed leaving the dancers to find another venue to regroup, replay, redance.