My garden staff takes a vague turn– Does trouble lie ahead?

I'm ready to flap a half-wave at our long summer of heat, drought and savage fires, and welcome autumn, but we still have another month to go. The shriveled state of my own vegetable and flower gardens is not important when people's beloved homes, possessions and land lie scorched and blackened, and smoke hangs over north Idaho like a dirty shroud, turning the setting sun an eerie red. Maybe the Garden Goddess will show some mercy and send us milder days, cooler nights and – should I even risk the jinx? – rain. We don't need just a few minutes of rainfall from a burst thundercloud, but some good, long soakings.

I've cut way back on watering this month, knowing my perennial flowers will have the winter to rest and rebloom next spring. I've surrendered my hopes for the broccoli, asparagus and sugar snap peas, and donated the final (I hope) picking of zucchini to a local food bank. Only the beans and the spindly but spunky tomato plants are still getting regular water. This week I've found one ripening cherry tomato and more than six green ones hanging on in the shadow of their bed mates, the water-hogging sunflower plants. Lately my garden time has focused on dead-heading flower stalks and offering orientation sessions to my new chief garden staffer.

Tessa the Vague, a 14-year-old peach, white and gray calico cat who makes Winnie the Pooh, a “bear of little brain,” look like a Rhodes scholar, earned the job by showing astonishing initiative. This sweet-natured feline needed three years to understand and process the complex workings of the cat door, but once she figured it out, Tessa's world expanded. Now it includes our backyard, the side yard with its raised vegetable beds, and the front yard flower gardens. She, who used to cower under the bed for days, now is often the last of our three cats to come inside after dark. She turns up her nose at the indoor cat box and pees in the outdoor dirt, because she is rugged cat of action, with an important job and many responsibilities. The fact that she has no idea what a “job” is– and would tremble if she understood the implication of “responsibilities” – is fine with me, her immediate supervisor and personnel manager.

I listened to readers who emailed me or posted comments on my Impetuous Gardener blog and hired Tessa the Vague (even though, technically, she didn't actually apply to be my new chief garden staffer.) I chose her because she showed real moxie (without, of course, having a clue what she was doing) and, most important, because she is not Benjamin BadKitten. While her predecessor, who is still-pouting, entered daily napping/meditating/snoring triathlons over the summer, Tess often wandered out to the garden where I was working. She kept her distance from me – unlike BBK, who tended to set up camp on my lap – and observed me with a steady, unblinking stare, which could be interpreted as “I will learn deep green truths from you, mistress of the garden.” The more accurate message is “Have we met? Do you happen to know where I was going? Or why I was going there? Is there a map?”

I'm not sure I would even have considered Tessa as garden staff material until my friend Bill Payne of Moscow, a longtime reader and major fan of Him Who Must not Be Named, suggested it. He thought my BadKitten might benefit from being relieved of his duties, at least temporarily, while I gave Tessa a shot at the big time. When I broached this idea in a column, many of you agreed . And now, here we are, me with a new chief staffer whose elevator doesn't go all the way to the top floor,as my grandma used to say.

And what about Benjamin? He is, as he promised, spending more time with his best buddy, Rags, our frail Old English sheepdog. In fact, Ben is showing so much patience and compassion that he modestly suggested I describe him as the Mother Teresa of neutered male Maine coon cats. Already, though, I'm seeing ominous signs of passive-aggressive response after I followed through on my threat to demote him, as a reader predicted: “I would suggest that Benjamin BadKitten be retained here on a provisional status (rather like probation) this year,” Cathy Willmes wrote. “He should be informed that qualified applicants are standing by to fill his shoes (or paws,) should he slack off on his duties. This way, he can preserve his important dignity – and, if demoted, who knows what really bad behavior could ensue?”

Already, in the first week of Tessa's new tenure, Benjamin has taken over her favorite sleeping spot in the living room. Twice he pooped in the blueberry bed, squeezing his abdominal girth through the decorative wires of the small fence I set up to keep varmints out. I've been taking special care of those blueberry bushes all summer, and my favorite varmint knows it. When I suggested to my new chief staffer that she patrol the blueberry bed for BBK sightings, Tessa blinked at me. “Who is this BadKitten of which you speak? Is there a photo?” They have lived together for ten years. I feel a headache coming on.