July
9, 2016
I
took a little walk around my flower garden this week, as I do many
mornings before I have my tea and toast, and paused to watch a
hummingbird. The tiny, iridescent green hummer flitted around the
lavender flowers of the catmint and the dark pink blooms on the bee
balm (monarda).Every spring and summer, when I choose new perennials
to add to my garden, I think about which plants might attract bees,
birds and butterflies. The hummingbirds are particularly attracted to
red, which is a lucky horticultural break for me. My gardens have
always featured a color palette that includes shades of red, purple,
and blue, with yellow and white accents. The busy little birds also
prefer tubular-shaped flowers, so I'm glad I've planted plenty of
columbine, foxgloves, penstemon, fuchsia and hollyhocks.
Butterflies
are partial to phlox and delphiniums-- longtime stars in my flower
beds – and sunflowers, asters, coreopsis, drought-tolerant blanket
flowers (gaillardia) and – this will not be a shocker – buddleia,
commonly known as butterfly bush. I love watching the beautiful black
and yellow, tiger swallowtail butterflies float gracefully through
the garden (and I don't want to hear any slanderous information about
the less pristine matter these lovely insects are also attracted to.)
My
husband Lee and I always hope to see honey bees in our yard every
spring, because we have small fruit trees that need pollinating. I've
planted perennials from the mint family, including oregano, flowering
salvia, lavender and catmint, to draw bees to our yard. Late this
summer, we'll probably need sturdy bushel baskets for our harvest of
Gravenstein apples, a few dozen Italian plums, and one Bosc pear. The
raspberry bushes, all of which were gifts from friends' gardens, have
needed daily picking lately – but our cherry harvest is down from
last year's bounty: three cherries in 2015; zero in 2016. (I blame
the crows. The neighborhood rabbit can't climb trees.))And the
blueberry bushes produced bupkis.(Still, compared to the previous
four years, our total fruit yield of apples, raspberries and one pear
should qualify us for commercial agriculture status.)The bees have
never let us down – beastly little caterpillars are the villains
when the apple crop goes bad.
Besides
being hummingbird-, butterfly- and bee-friendly, our front yard
garden also includes a leafy apple tree, from which I hang three
feeders. They hold a cafeteria of seeds for varieties of finches,
mourning and Eurasian collared doves, chickadees, sparrows and (not
very often) evening grosbeaks. The apple tree is my nemesis every
summer, when its tiny,tasteless apples drop like lime-green
hailstones onto my head and into the flower beds. But it's a haven
for the birds and for two cagey squirrels, who have become big-time
pros at extorting handfuls of peanuts from me every few days.
The
formerly fierce bird hunter, Benjamin BadKitten, has become more of a
homebody. My 10-year-old Maine coon cat suffered a painful and
mysterious leg injury months ago. He limped for several weeks, had
difficulty climbing onto his usual perches, and mewed pitifully
whenever he tried to jump onto my lap. He also developed a phobia
about going outside into the front yard, especially in daylight. I
think he was grazed by a car or truck, maybe a bicycle. He has no
lasting injury, except for slight stiffness and major hesitation
about crossing our street, for which I'm very thankful. That arrogant
cat used to saunter out into the middle of the street, sometimes
pausing for a sunbath, and expect passing vehicles to yield for him.
I'd rescued him more times than I want to remember, and am probably
lucky that I didn't join him in becoming an unwilling pavement
pancake.
BBK
had not brought a bird or mouse into our home since last year, and he
seldom even attempts a balletic grand jete' to snare a moth anymore.
But at midnight a few days, ago, one hour after I'd finished what I
thought was the final rewrite for this column, I heard loud,
squeaking cries coming from inside our house. I screamed for my
husband, and we both stared as Benjamin trotted toward the hallway,
carrying a baby bunny in his mouth. The next ten minutes remain a
blur, but I know the bunny escaped into Lee's home office. We shut
the door to keep my beast cat away, Lee went to the garden shed for
gloves, and I crawled under Lee's desk, where the little guy huddled
in a corner. I spoke softly to the bunny and thanked it for not being
a mouse. By the time I'd crawled out and Lee could kneel under the
desk, the bunny, unhurt, had sprinted to the office door and was
hopping around, looking for an escape route. While I stood guard over
our three cats, Lee gently cradled the bunny in his gloved hands and
carried it to a safe place outdoors, near where we think the mother
rabbit lives. My BadKitten remained incarcerated for the rest of the
night. Just when I thought he was mellowing....
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