Moss and the Family Manse

When I first moved here, I was amazed not only by the moss-covered trees and ground, but also by the moss-covered roofs. They looked so charming and brought to mind Hawthorne’s Mosses from an Old Manse, a book I have never actually read, but remember clearly from a childhood playing the card-game ‘Authors.’ A moss-covered manse (as he called it) seemed mysterious, filled with strange possibilities.

Once I began working on the abandoned house quilt series, however, moss-covered roofs began to seem all too obvious: once the moss sufficiently covered the roof, the water seeped into the very structure of the house and it began to slump, even if only ever so slightly. Moss was not mysterious: it was rot.

So today, in this lovely month of Junuary, the summer solstice almost upon us, I was more than a little surprised to look up and see that our roof is absolutely paved with moss. We have never had so much moss on the roof. The roof is essentially covered with asphalt shingles, but now every shingle has a tiny green carpet upon it, a emerald green carpet of extraordinary beauty with respect to color and texture, but nevertheless an absolutely devastating sight. How did this happen? Normally, the roof gets cleaned regularly (happily, it has no very big slope) and, as there are zinc strips along the ridge line to slow the moss down, the cleaning can be done pretty much by sweeping the roof with a broom on a dry day. But the endless rains of this spring and summer have provided no time for the roof and its mosses to dry out and be swept. Thus, it felt, as I saw it fully today, like we were facing ruin.

But it is not that bad, really. Roofs are, however, a serious problem up here. In Southern California, one could not help but feel very sorry for roofers. On those endlessly hot and sunny days, to be working on a roof seemed like one of life’s serious punishments. Up here, the other way. For six months of the year, it’s hard to find a day nice enough to work on the roof, although there are some deeply-committed roofers who get up there in any weather. But for the most part, we’re more inclined to tarpaulins, particularly blue ones. It sometimes seems to me that one is not a true resident of Point Roberts until you’ve had a blue tarp somewhere on your roof for at least a year.

We have one, but it is small, over a leaky skylight. The blueness of the tarp gives the room it’s over an even darker cast on those days when there is enough sun to make a difference. Our neighbor’s house, pictured above, is much more seriously tarped. He had a large tree branch fall down and partly through his roof and has had a very big blue tarp since then. He has part of a new roof, which gets worked on a little at a time, as the rainless days allow. It’s not the best thing to look at, out the window of my kitchen, but at least he has no moss.