I’m squirreling away gardening lessons, keeping bushy-tailed critters happy and fed

Winter 2012

Soon after we moved to Moscow, Idaho, I set up our bird feeders. Four golden-brown squirrels quickly laid claim to our yard. They divided the territory among them, with two leading raids on the backyard feeders and the other pair practicing acrobatics in the front-yard apple tree. For awhile, those four little rodents bulked up so much that I could hear small branches creaking when they shimmied up the trees. After I wised up and bought squirrel-proof feeders, they lost a bit of weight and increased their workouts, trying to outsmart me

As autumn set in, I worried about my bushy-tailed pals, and hung peanut-flavored suet cakes in metal cages from the trees. The squirrels stopped shaking their tiny fists at me, and bulked up again. The suet feeders also attracted small woodpeckers, as well as our regular feathered customers. But after the first big snowfall in November, I looked out the breakfast-nook window and noticed that the suet cake’s metal cage was missing. I put on my boots, tramped out to the front yard, and checked all around the apple tree. The squirrels had unhooked the holder before and left it on the ground, but this time, no suet cage lay anywhere in the yard. The falling snow had even hidden the squirrels’ tracks, so I couldn’t follow their trail.

Months later,after the snow melted, my husband finally found the metal suet holder. It lay near our back fence, empty, of course, at the base of the squirrels’ favorite apartment, a huge pine tree. We laughed at their craftiness, but I also squirreled away a lesson from those little bandits. They were thinking ahead. I had foiled them once with the dratted squirrel-proof bird feeders, and they weren’t going to be humiliated (or hungry) again.

Now, in the middle of winter’s dormant season, I,squirrel-like, have started thinking ahead and writing notes in my day-planner for the coming spring. The first note involved promoting one member of my garden staff and demoting another, effective immediately. The promotion went to Kaylee, our golden retriever, who became the official garden supervisor. During the past year, I noticed her managerial ability to delegate, while she lay under the nearest tree and closed her eyes to meditate.

I already had placed the third member of my staff, Benjamin BadKitten,on probation for snagging small finches at the birdbath in the front yard. I counseled him daily. He did not listen. So the demotion, unfortunately, landed on our Old English sheepdog, Winston Ragsdorf (aka Rags.) After his previous efforts, he could no longer be trusted without supervision. In our first autumn here, I left a pile of grape hyacinth bulbs unguarded while I went inside for water. When I came back, the grape hyacinths were gone, and Rags was lying in a patch of dirt, far from the bulb bed. When spring arrived, I realized he had made his own garden that day. Dozens of blue grape hyacinths bloomed in a ragged patch, away from the tulips and daffodils, where I’d planned to use them as accents. My sheepdog, who is as clever as he is cute, had hurriedly buried those little bulbs and lain across them to hide his crime.

When I make my gardens this year, I will trust some of my other instincts more fully, too. I will keep intact the springtime containers I planted of jewel-colored ranunculas, pansies and trailing annuals, and will not transplant them into a garden bed, where they will lose their drama and style. I will remember that June is not too late to plant peas here in northern Idaho. In our previous home near Seattle, I had to plant my pea patch in April, or they would mature too late and turn tasteless. Now I will take advantage of our growing season here, and we will enjoy fresh green peas this summer.

I will also listen to the warning chime in my head and plant tomatoes in raised garden beds, instead of in patio containers. Those raised beds will be secure behind a fence, far from the marauding tendencies of the two tomato-loving dogs on my garden staff.

In an opposite strategy from my squirrely friends, I will not hoard years-old seeds over the winter. When I blithely planted entire packets of ancient seeds last spring, I imagined lush flower beds, frothing with blooms. Instead, from the hundreds of seeds, I got only a few straggling perennials. Not even the hardy annual seeds could survive their years in the seed packet.

As winter continues, I'm taking care of my squirrel pals. I have bought cakes of their favorite suet and hung them again in green wire cages. This time, though, the little cages will be wrapped securely with wire around the tree branches that hold them. Every few days, I toss handfuls of unshelled, unsalted peanuts under the huge oak tree in our side yard, and watch the little guys sit up on their haunches as they meet for lunch.

Before the autumn rush begins: a mug of hot tea, a good book, and a shorn sheepdog

Last week I set up a small tea cupboard, with a little shelf and two drawers, in our kitchen. The drawers hold boxes of Irish breakfast, Darjeeling, English breakfast, cinnamon spice, rose hip, and jasmine teas, and the shelf is just right for a china sugar bowl and teacup-shaped spoon holder. As soon as the maple leaves began to fall and I felt the first real chill at twilight, I knew that, along with the coming holidays, tea-drinking season had arrived. The remains of a nasty chest cold gave me a reason to rest in the middle of an afternoon, reading and drinking hot tea from my favorite mug. (I have a cherished collection of English bone china cups and saucers, a legacy from my grandmother, but use stout pottery mugs for everyday tea drinking. The delicate cups come out only for fancy tea parties, when adult women can turn into little girls again.)

I sat in my red chair that day, set down my book for awhile and watched fat snowflakes falling in graceful swirls onto our lawn and gardens. The first snowfall in Moscow always brings a moment of pure joy for me. As a West Side transplant, I remember weeks of rain, gray and soggy days, and the wish – rarely granted – that we would have snow in Seattle for Thanksgiving. Or Christmas. Or maybe in January. The falling flakes last week were the perfect transition from the glorious colors and flaming sunsets of our Indian summer on the Palouse, to the crisp air and gusty winds that blew us straight into the heart of autumn. The weather's change seemed to happen overnight, and I felt doubly thankful that I'd planted all the spring tulips and daffodil bulbs weeks ago, under a sunny Idaho blue sky.

Before I leaped fully into the year's busiest season, I spent another recent afternoon turning our living room into Miss Sydney's House of Sheepdog Shearing. Rags, our elderly Old English sheepdog, was overdue for a grooming. His long, shaggy hair had grown tangled and matted over the summer, as his health deteriorated. My husband and I were not sure he would live into the autumn, and we didn't want to cause the needless anxiety that any sort of grooming triggers for him. Finally, though, I refilled the veterinarian's prescription for the tranquilizers he needs before a beauty session, and waited until the pills had calmed him. My husband grooms Rags with electric clippers, but I use only hairdresser's scissors, because that tool leaves more fur on the big guy – and winter is coming. Through more than four hours, I followed my large, groggy dog , snipping away, as he lay on his leather couch, then on the living room rug, and finally wedged himself into his favorite meditation spot – under the library table in our entryway. By twisting, contorting, kneeling, stretching and groaning (a lot), I reached every inch of Rags' fur while he lay, conked out, until he roused himself and sleepwalked to his next spot.

Our only problems arose when I accidentally nicked his ear – he yelped once, and I cried – and when he made a request I could not, in good conscience, agree to honor. He wanted me to leave the shaggy hair on top of his head long enough for a man-bun. As tactfully as possible, I convinced him that this unfortunate hair style is a fad (which cannot fade away quickly enough for moi.) His style, I reminded him, is classic (classic goofball, but no need to include the entire description.) Man-buns will soon go the way of the mullet (which I rather liked,)but floppy ears and shaggy hair falling over brown eyes, above a fat black nose, will never go out of style at our house.

Our cats are settling in for the cold months, too. I've laid small fleece rugs in front of the heat registers in the living room, so Benjamin BadKitten and Abigail Grump can keep their tails warm while they share family time with us. (Their rugs haven't gotten too much use, though. Benjamin prefers the soft security of my lap while I pet him, or the privacy of his flowered chair, while he plots his springtime coup d'etat to overthrow my chief garden staffer and return to power.)

 

Tessa the Vague, the current chief staffer, prefers to sleep on a small wool rug that's tucked behind the TV cabinet. Tess remains a loner by nature, although she's become social enough to track my movements indoors and lumber up onto the arm of my red chair at reading and tea-drinking time. A small calico cat, with vacant green eyes and a twitchy nature, who stares, unblinking, is not an ideal companion when I'm trying to enjoy my book and sip hot tea. But I pet her gently, and hope this season of cold and indoor time will help her deal with the transition that may be coming next spring out in the garden. I'm getting the clear message, tweaked by the relentless barrage of snark from my BadKitten, that Tessa the Vague is just flat-out not management material.

Coming to readers from high on a tabletop, it's autumn décor time

Something – a jumbled mass of glittered red, orange, and yellow silk leaves, tiny pilgrims, papier-mache' pumpkins, and a turkey-shaped candle – had exploded on top of the dining room table. And someone, a person who is neurotically afraid of heights, was standing, shrieking with fear, on top of that table, among the debris of autumn décor. She had glitter on her head, thumbtacks clutched in her fist, and the sure sense that she was going to pitch forward, hard, onto the tabletop, directly onto that stupid wax turkey. Only a reflexive reach upward, with her flatted palm on the ceiling to steady herself, saved her from a certain face-plant and possible broken bones.

By the time her husband, having heard her banshee wail, reached the dining room, she had crawled off the tabletop and was standing shakily on the floor. What happened? her husband asked. When she explained, he simply regarded her for a moment before observing, “You know, sweetheart, any story that starts out with, “Well, I was standing on top of the dining room table...' never ends well.”

I never get glitter on my head or mess about with fat, wax turkeys (except Benjamin BadKitten)when I'm in my garden. Last week I decided to decorate our front porch and the inside of our house for autumn. Before I braved the dining room, I set up a fall display on the porch, with odd-shaped and uniquely colored gourds, pumpkins, dried corn, and silk leaves. Inside, our living room mantel looked fallishly festive, with my collection of wooden folk art set among miniature bouquets of silk flowers, all in autumn colors. I can reach the top of the mantel to decorate it. I don't even need a step-stool. But the next stop on the décor train was the dining room and its tall picture window.

Every fall, and again during Christmas, I attach seasonal garlands of leaves and flowers above that window. The garlands are long, stiff and unwieldy, and I am short, small, and not getting any younger. Every year, during the hanging of the garlands, I find my seasonal spirit severely tested. Last week, the dining room table seemed the ideal solution: It was the right height and wide enough to accommodate my balletic, garland-wrangling moves.

I maneuvered myself onto the table, reminded myself not to look down, and secured one end of the first garland to the drapery rod above the window. Just as the second garland settled into place, the first one slipped to the floor. (Imaginative readers may add their own colorful soundtrack to the next three attempts.)Maybe the Garden Goddess sensed my panic and floated inside to the rescue, because I finally managed to anchor both of those ornery sets of leaves, strands and flowers above the window – and then looked down. At least my tabletop panic attack happened after the garlands went up, because, nearly a week later, I'm still not jazzed about another ascent. When I considered the long, wide, L-shaped set of windows in our breakfast nook, I decided they could remain undecorated. I have stood on our kitchen table. Maybe, in late November, I might be willing to scale its heights to hang Christmas garlands above it. Maybe.

To forget the indoor décor drama, I spent a recent afternoon outside in our front yard, at Mini Leaf Mountain and Big Honker Leaf Mountain, the two mounds of oak and maple leaves my husband and I raked for our two young grandsons to jump into. Leaf Mountain Day has been a tradition at our house for three years, ever since our daughter, son-in-law and children moved to Moscow. A huge black maple tree stands in glory at a corner of our yard, and a sugar maple and towering oak tree blaze with color in our side yard.

The little boys, especially the eight-year-old, leaped and somersaulted into Big Honker, giggling, shouting and sending flurries of dry leaves fluttering onto their heads in the October sunshine. Our littler guy, age six, had to retire early from Mini Leaf Mountain and come inside with me for Band-aids, lemonade and cookies, after a sharp chunk of clay soil lodged in his rubber boot and tore a mean scratch in his leg. So both boys ended up decorating my beloved dollhouse for Halloween. They seemed skeptical at first, as if this might not be manly work, until they spied the miniature jack-o-lanterns, with scary, gross, disgusting faces, and they fell to with great enthusiasm.

When their dad had to leave early, we dealt with a dilemma. The little guy's sore leg made it impossible for him to wear his boots to walk home, I couldn't carry him for five blocks, and we have no child safety seats in our car. So I thought fast, and we ended up marching in our own pre-Halloween parade,with the eight-year-old on his scooter, and me pushing the six-year-old in my trusty green gardening wheelbarrow. We met several of my friends along the parade route, and each of them laughed. I could have told them that rolling my grandson home in a wheelbarrow beats the fear of falling from the top of the dining room table any day.

For all his self-conceit, Benjamin BadKitten knows how to be a loyal friend

I had a chat with Benjamin BadKitten last Sunday, after a friend at church told me an endearing story about her cat, Gabriella. The day before, my friend wore wool slacks and a fleece top to cut back overgrown brush on her property. When she finished, she found an entire brigade of burrs had attached themselves to the wool and fleece. She changed clothes and began the tedious task of removing the burrs by hand. Soon Gabriella jumped onto the burr-surgery table and volunteered to help. My friend worried that her cat would either shred the clothes or eat the burrs, but, instead, the loyal and intelligent Gabriella carefully used the tips of her claws to dislodge the clinging burrs from the fabric. (She might had had a less noble motive, too: One-upping the black puppy that recently joined the household.) I thought this story – minus the puppy motive – might be an inspiration to my own intelligent BadKitten, who seldom uses his powers for good around our house or garden.

“What's your point?” Benjamin flattened his ears and yawned, because I had awakened him from his post-lunch nap. My point, I said patiently, is that some cats actually think about their people's needs and feelings, instead of practically drowning in the pond of their own narcissism. My ten-year-old BadKitten stretched and lifted his chin so I could pet him. “I think about your needs and feelings. I am a very sensitive kitten. Many times a day I think that you need to feed me and freshen the water in my bowl, and you need to put my favorite fleece blanket at the foot of your bed so I can be warm when I meditate there. And I think about how you must be feeling lonely without a small, fluffy Maine coon cat to pet and praise, so I leap gracefully onto your lap.” Benjamin is decidedly fluffy, but he passed “small” several dozen depot stops ago. I have to admit he's right about leaping gracefully, though. He's still athletic, quick, and light on his paws, even if he's carrying much more of a tummy than he used to.

I sighed. Remember Lizzy? I asked. The best adult cat I've ever had was a long-haired “pure-bred, championship silver Persian,” as she preferred to think of herself. Actually, she had more than a bit of white and butterscotch fur mingling with the silver, and, unlike a true Persian cat's squashed-looking face, Lizzy had a classic profile. Smart and vocal, that cat was on my wavelength for all the years that she lived. Even though she had much of the self-centeredness for which cats are stereotyped, she could also be remarkably intuitive. On the day, many years ago, when my mail included not one but two rejection letters from New York publishers, I sat, sobbing, on the floor of my writing room. Lizzy padded up to me, climbed onto my lap, and gently patted my cheek with her paw. She stayed with me while my tears gradually stopped and I told her about all my insecurities as a writer.

You, I reminded Benjamin, never pat my cheek when I cry. You use my jeans as a climbing post – while I'm wearing them – and shinny up my leg so I'll pick you up and pet you. But then I paused and considered him, the Peter Pan of cats, who will always remain a BadKitten. When Lizzy was dying, I held her in my arms, because I couldn't bear to think of her being alone as her life ebbed away. Benjamin and Tessa the Vague kept vigil with Lizzy and me. The two cats sat close together, a few feet from where I knelt on the floor with Lizzy, silently – and, I thought, respectfully – waiting through the long night until only the spirit of my beloved cat remained. (Even Tessa, who normally seems to lack candlepower, behaved with dignity and innate animal wisdom during Lizzy's last hours.)

Now, here in Moscow, Benjamin keeps a different vigil with his best buddy, our Old English sheepdog, Rags, who lives in twilight. Our good dog, elderly, blind and frail, is always the one Benjamin greets first when he enters the living room. My husband and I don't know how many more weeks Rags will be with us. He seems to grow a little more feeble and confused each day. We are certain that Benjamin is a comforting presence to Rags. For Ben's blend of compassion and his “What? He's my buddy” naturalness, I can forgive my cat his many (many, many) transgressions. Lizzy was the queen of adult cats. But Benjamin, who would try to remove a burr only if it attached itself to his ample backside, will always be the best little BadKitten that ever there was.

Taking the path from swirling leaves and mulched gardens to cozy indoor projects

Our autumn, with its glorious colors, swirling leaves and mild weather, has been a gift from the Garden Goddess so far. We can take down our gardens during sunny afternoons, instead of having to bundle up in fleece and gloves to cut down the last of the Canterbury bells or the final heads of broccoli. (Not that I would have any personal experience with broccoli – or any other vegetable plants – producing into October. Mine wimped out in August.) This weekend I'll spread a rich composting mulch over the perennial beds, to give them an extra layer of protection from the chill that could come soon. As I also consider adding an extra blanket to the beds in our house, my thoughts and to-do lists now turn away from the flower and vegetable gardens, toward domestic plans indoors. It's time to decorate our home and front porch for autumn and put a lighted pumpkin in the window for the trick-or-treaters who ring our doorbell on Halloween night.

Next (and soon) I'll finish writing the script for this year's Christmas pageant, featuring the children and teenagers of my church and wider community. Time to schedule rehearsals and feel my smile widen every time the cast gathers, giggling, asking questions, running lines, and adding their own sparkle to the dialogue I've written to reflect each actor's special gifts. On a parallel track, I'll start my holiday lists, beginning with Thanksgiving. Last year, our two adult children took over all the cooking for our family's turkey dinner, because they wanted me to rest after very minor skin cancer surgery. Our son and daughter divided the cooking and created a marvelous meal that combined family favorites with some new recipes. This year our daughter will host again, but I'm also reclaiming my apron, because we Italian mamas have a hard time remaining seated – or staying out of the kitchen – for very long.

Autumn is a quicksilver season. Its maple and oak trees can glow with beauty one day, and a fierce wind can leave them standing, stark and bare, the next. Our menagerie is celebrating the season by bringing mementos inside for my husband and me to enjoy (or vacuum away.) Rags, our Old English sheepdog, habitually carries in clumps of dry leaves that cling to his big paws, and he often sports a small, red or gold maple leaf on his nose or dangling from a shaggy ear. All three cats, Tessa the Vague, Abigail Grump, and the one and only Benjamin BadKitten, track in bits of mulch, leaves, and, unfortunately, an occasional mouse or bird. Abigail's favorite place to observe the autumn world is in a small, compost-filled planter on our patio. She looks like a black and white hen, setting her eggs, with her paws tucked beneath her. It won't be long, I remind myself, that our furry family members will be housebound, braving the cold outdoors only for personal hygiene. And I will smile at them as I sit in my favorite chair, with my book on my lap and a mug of hot tea beside me.

While my memory's fresh, I'll make my do-and-don't lists for 2016 vegetable and flower gardens

I might have exaggerated a wee bit in a recent blog post, when I wrote that I had ordered and received six billion tulip and daffodil bulbs. The actual total was closer to six hundred – nearly all of which I planted during a three-day weekend, in 16 hours of gardening. My husband put in nearly as many hours, rototilling the new bulb gardens, mixing compost into our raised vegetable beds, and planting two shrubs in the backyard. (I know: we are the poster couple for romantic weekend getaways – to the compost pile, garden shed and the Church of Dirt and Flowers.) As I inched along the planting beds on my creaking knees, mentally designing color combinations for grouping the bulbs, my mantra was Think Springtime. I pictured the new tulips and daffodils joining their veteran bulb buddies to create blooming waves of red, purple, orange, yellow, pink, and white petals bordering the perennial beds in our front yard. [Note: I have ordered tulip, daffodil and other spring-flowering bulbs from VanBourgondien (dutchbulbs.com) and Breck's (brecks.com) for years, and appreciate the fat, healthy bulbs I receive at planting time.]

Now most of our flower beds are ready for autumn blankets of compost – except for the sunflower garden outside my office window. As I write, finches and chickadees are hanging upside-down from the tall stalks, harvesting the last of the seeds from flower heads nearly bald from the little birds' unrelenting appetites. I love this unexpected bonus of garden joy so much that, next spring, I'll move the tomato bed elsewhere and plant only sunflowers (for the birds) and hollyhocks (for the bees) below my window.

During my recent bulb-planting-palooza, I had company in the garden. Abigail, our chickadee-sushi-loving cat, and chief staffer Tessa the Vague, our calico – whose already limited battery power grows dimmer every day – each took a turn as my supervisor. Abby complained that the noise from Lee's rototiller in the side yard was giving her a migraine (and scaring off her luncheon plans.) Tessa wandered about, startling at every oak leaf that crunched under her paws, until she finally settled in the middle of the narrow bed I was planting. I didn't disturb her, because her safe touchdown in an actual garden site is a rare event. She napped for awhile, and then rolled around awkwardly in the newly composted patch before beginning her long, complex trek to find the cat door. Meanwhile, Benjamin BadKitten, the deposed chief, did not set even one fat paw in the garden with me all weekend. He was too busy doing research, he explained with a snooty lift of his nose. Halloween is coming, and he was calculating the algorithm required to stuff my chief garden staffer into a pumpkin.

We impetuous gardeners cannot count on memory alone to remember our plans for next year's plantings. In my decades of gardening, I wonder how many fabulously brilliant ideas I lost between the blue and gold of October's skies and the pink and green of May's gardens. No matter how certain I was that I would remember exactly the changes I'd make, some of those bright thought-bubbles floated away before I'd even filled the Christmas stockings. Many of my family members and friends rely on their smart phones for keeping schedules and lists. I, the geezer who still has an aol.com email address (it's so ancient, it's now retro-hip,) use a paper-and-pen weekly planner. Every week during take-down-the-garden month, usually October, I note which varieties of seeds tanked and which triumphed. (Guess which column has the most entries.) I always buy next year's planner early, so I have it in autumn, and I can make my to-do lists on the calendar pages for next April, May and June.

On my 2016 list, I'll write these three items in big letters at the top:

• Don't cave to cheap thrills and set more than one zucchini plant in the raised bed. Remember you're the only one who will eat the Zs, and that you don't eat much sweet stuff like zucchini bread. Remember the nightly dinners of baked, roasted and sauteed zukes, egged, floured and herbed, in hopes of revving up their blandness? Remember that the blandness never really disappeared?
• Plant the tomatoes in big, individual pots and set them on the sunny, south-facing patio. A few years ago, they grew well in their patio pots and tasted sweet and juicy. (We would have enjoyed many more tomatoes that summer, but our late, beloved golden retriever, Kaylee, stole them off the vines, even after we wrapped the plants in plastic netting. That dog loved her 'matoes.)
• Do not plant any more bulbs. At all. Anywhere. Do not gaze out onto the backyard shrubbery beds and imagine how well the taller shrubs would set off flowering clusters of tulips, daffodils and grape hyacinths along the length of the fence. Imagine, instead, how much hard labor those beds would need to become bulb-ready. There's bad dirt out there, and it would need digging, amending, fertilizing, rototilling, and more digging before you could sink to your aching knees (which will be a full year older and creakier) and start planting six billion more bulbs. But...can't you just see those gorgeous parrot tulips,pink and yellow angeliques, deep red couleur cardinals, the giant trumpet daffodils…?Stop that right now. Smack yourself on the forehead. Do not plant any more bulbs. Anywhere. At all.

What will be on your own “do or don't” lists for next year's garden?

I knew I was living up to my impetuous reputation the day the tulip bulbs arrived

I've been breaking in a new pair of walking shoes this week – red suede. I'd thought about buying blue suede shoes, but then I should be walkin' in Memphis, instead of in Moscow. I came home one morning from a brisk turn around our neighborhood in time to see the letter carrier delivering a box to our front porch. If I needed a reminder that The Impetuous Gardener is an accurate name for my column, that box was all the evidence required. I felt the first twinge of alarm at the size of the carton and its many air holes. But, I assured myself, tulip and daffodil bulbs take up space, and there's probably a lot of packing material inside to protect them from damage during shipping. I stooped to pick up the box, couldn't lift it even an inch off the ground, and felt the little twinge morph fast into full-blown panic.

 

I bet that carton weighed more than Rags, my Old English sheepdog, and the pudgy Benjamin BadKitten combined. How many tulips and daffodils had I ordered? Did my husband and I commandeer --and plow – part of the neighbors' yard, to compete with the West Side tulip fields in northern Washington state? My immediate worry was how to lug that monster bulb box from the front porch all the way to the patio at the back of the house. (Pride and embarrassment stopped me from waiting until my husband came home to act as tulip transporter.)

I am a small person but possess a great deal of determination. After propping open the front and patio doors, I gulped extra air, flexed nonexistent muscles, and hefted that box as far as my hip. After huffing out a couple of brief, colorful phrases, I staggered through the living and dining rooms to the patio door. The Garden Goddess must have protected me from taking a header down the two steps from the dining room to the patio, because I certainly couldn't see around the carton to check my footing. I plunked the box onto the patio table and then opened it, to find every square inch stuffed with mesh bags of bulbs. I had ordered approximately six billion tulips in jewel and pastel colors, a “super sack” of naturalizing daffodils, and blue, purple and yellow crocuses to celebrate the arrival of spring.

Our gardens already include bulb beds, which I started digging when we moved to Moscow five years ago. This summer I added a flower bed in our front yard and imagined its winding paths framed with tulips and daffodils next April and May. I love creating beauty, in our home and in our yard. If seeing bright-petaled flowers brings passersby as much joy as the sight brings me, my own happiness multiplies. During the gardening months, I include a budget item for buying plants and bulbs – and got a great deal on the tulips and daffs I ordered. Now I have to imagine where the heck to plant the 12 billion bulbs in that box. I see many hours of spading soil in my immediate future, and my husband has offered to spend much of this weekend with our rototiller.

 

While I'm digging, I'm not sure I can count on my garden staffer to keep me company. Unfortunately, Tessa the Vague needs a bit more orientation: If she wants to go out to the patio, she waits for me to open the dining room door. (She also knows how to use the cat door, a major milestone, but that leads to the front yard.) Recently, when Tessa and I were in the laundry room, I opened its door, which also leads to the patio, and waited for Tessa to go outside. She paused at the threshold, studied the patio, and looked up at me with total confusion in her wide, vacant green eyes. From the door, she could see all the familiar landmarks on the patio, but the perspective was different. My chief garden executive believed I was trying to send her to Mars, and skittered away.