Tag: nature

Why I Hate Groundhogs

In a brief walk around my garden this morning, this is what I found:

Nibbled Tomato Plant
Devoured Spinach
Decimated Gladiolus
Ravaged Black Eyed Susans

But most upsetting of all is this –

Wounded Tetley

That flash of green is his foot wrapped in gauze. To be fair, the groundhog responsible for Tetley having to wear this mortifying cone is dead. He killed 3 in one week. Not the beast of a rodent lurking around here for years, but smaller ones. A 4th adolescent (at least) has been brazenly loping about, teasing my brave hunter who throws himself against the screen door to get at him.

Not a banner garden year, as you can see. Between the weeds and the critters and some scorching days, I’ve lost heart. Not quite given up but certainly disheartened. I drove by a community garden yesterday – all neatly penned-in and bursting with health. How does your garden grow?

Sunday Morning in the Neighborhood

What is it about Sundays? On my street, there is a divine tranquility, almost silence. Garage doors remain closed – no work today for my neighbors. Through the thick hedge, I can see the passing feet of the odd jogger or dogs and owner. No mowers, blowers or hedge clippers yet. Even the not-distant-enough highway sounds soothing — a steady whoosh rarely broken by the squeal or roar of a truck. It will be another hot one later but at 7:00 AM, the cool of night still lingers.

Across the street is a triangle of land owned by the city, overgrown with weeds. My neighbor has called to complain that it needs cutting because it’s hard to see if there is traffic when pulling out from Sterling Place. But from my window, it’s a field of Queen Anne’s Lace. Maybe I’ll don some boots (tick-terror) to cut a bouquet. Then I’ll water the tomatoes, pots of Petunias and herbs. We’ll kayak. But now, this hour of mine before the house and neighborhood really wakes, I savor the morning light, the kaleidoscope of greens, the quiet.

Welcome Summer

Like clock-work, the heat cranked up, the clouds inflated into magical shapes, and the fireflies began their silent summer fireworks. Oh — and much to our dog Tetley’s dismay,  distant neighbors also started prepping for the dread explosions of July 4th. And we’ve had our first wild, summer storm complete with house-shaking thunder. Poor Tetley. He dutifully dons his Thundershirt – but it only makes him look more stylish while barking and running furiously through the house on 3 legs. (although he is much better – pshaw on the surgery!)

High tide was 3 PM yesterday and we launched the kayak out of Calf Pasture beach – my first trip of the season. There was a steady wind pushing us out towards the islands. We let ourselves get blown from shore, lolling lazily on the heaving tide. After an hour or so, we paddled back. We barely spoke.  A meditation beneath the passing clouds on lapping waves. Bliss. 

Tag Sale

We need a new lawnmower and could also use some outdoor furniture. So yesterday, we went to tag sales. Fascinating, and at times, a little ghoulish walking through stranger’s homes, rifling through piles of a lifetime of belongings. Particularly weird are estate sales run by the off-spring. Standing by as strangers paw their parent’s belongings, I think they must hate us. Bargain-hunters inventorying beloved nick-nacks of their childhood cluttering every surface, sticky with years of grime. Assessing asses trying out dad’s favorite chair, haggling over the pyrex. The flotsam of the finished lives of someone they loved.

A red-flag to keep driving is the lemonade stand at the end of the drive. Surely a garage full of plastic toys and baby equipment follows. One driveway was full of divorce fall-out, the man practically giving away his remainders, apparently anxious to pack up his LandRover and be gone. I prefer the happier moving sale, often with the bonus of hearing about the planned adventure. The cheery couple with the stripped down house, laughing neighbors warming the still un-sold couch and chairs, are moving to Florida. We were too late for their lawn mower.

It’s the sales of dead parents stuff that sticks with me. Were people recently living in these claustrophobic homes? The musty rooms packed with old linens that should just be chucked. One house had a room of bizarre and unloved-looking dolls covering every inch of the floor – easily hundreds.  Once upon a time, each of these creatures was brought home as precious, but I wager by Monday, a dumpster will be full of hundreds of staring glass eyes and rigid limbs in a macabre mass burial.

I came home and looked around my house. Imagining someone filling their arms with books, heaving iron skillets off the wall, fingering my scarves, my clutter, I made a decision.  I don’t want to buried under a lot of shit no one really wants. I am cleaning and purging to make room for air and light. That’s really all I need. And a lawn mower.

Beloved Tetley

Tetley tore his ACL. Who knew dogs could do that? I am not even sure what this is except that it seems to happen to people who play sports. And these humans get surgery. The vet was keen to put Tetley under the knife. But surgery is not cheap. And Tetley is no longer a youngster. Nor does he seem like he is pain. In fact, within 2 weeks of injury he now walks slowly on 4 legs again, albeit with a bit of a limp. When he chases squirrels (he just can’t resist) he lifts it up and uses 3 legs. Tripod is his new nickname.

While I was concerned about having him cut open for any procedure at his age (about 10), I confess that it is mostly the money. Paying for such an operation would take too big of a chunk out of my very thin cushion of savings. Maybe if he were to die without it, I would shell it out… I think. Thankfully, this is not a question I have to ask myself now. But it did get me thinking about humans and their pets and the need, at some point, to let go.

Garden Drama

The peonies took a beating from last week’s rain. An explosion of densely packed petals, the exquisite blossoms already seem more weight than the stems can bear – but a clinging rain is definitely too much. Collapsed against each other like drunken buddies, pinks turn to rust and shatter. I managed to pick a few bunches for the house and to give to neighbors – a day or so of peony perfume, captured.

Yesterday the sun returned, bringing summer. Or so it seemed. The air heavy with humidity, the garden a jungle. It was a day to garden. Yanking at the bittersweet that threatens to strangle every growing thing in my yard, I felt like our house might get swallowed up by this invasive if I just let it go. I am only eliminating twisting sprouts – the network of grasping roots runs deep and stretches far like some alien creature lurking just beneath. So I stay vigilant, not willing to sacrifice my lilac, the blueberries, not even the mint also trying to swallow up my vegetable patches.

Or rather, the varmints’ vegetable patches.  So far, they’ve devoured the parsley and red basil plants, the cucumber seedlings I’d admired one day were gone the next. Ground hogs, rabbits, squirrel? I think they all join in the feast. They don’t bother the tomato plants – not yet. It’s early days – still time to get a better fence. But more likely, as in years past, I’ll surrender to sharing.

Another Anniversary

This is a fraught time of year for me. Vivid morning light, the new green of trees against an impossibly blue sky, porcelain beauty of the Dogwood blooms and the perfume of Lilac in the air are all stunning — but for me, all are triggers. Even before my mind, the cells of my body remember – my shoulders knot, my jaw clenches and my heart beats faster with an anxiety I can’t account for. During these last days of April, an echo begins like a breeze turning into a wind, as vivid and weighted as the light and branches. A darkness hovers even with all this light — leading up to May 1 when my husband ended his life. Even 8 years later.

A friend who has worked with me since that terrible time told me the other day that I was a different person before and after. The wound-up stress of this week reminded me of how I felt before: always wondering what bad thing would happen next. For years I stayed, feeding a hope that seemed impossibly locked away in the sad cage of my imagination – that my husband would get well and our life would be normal. Normal was all I wanted anymore – not extraordinary. My friend said, after his death, I just blossomed – became lighter and joyful. It almost feels wrong to write that – but it is the truth. I felt lighter. Of course there was anger, shock, sadness, anger, anger, and an awful grief — but also relief. His terrible, final act did free me from the awful life he had woven around us in his crazy drug quest. And with time, I felt joy again – joy I’d forgotten could exist. Still, each spring, an ember of sadness – once hope, is fanned by spring breezes and memories of the tortured soul I once loved.

Too Much Sun

Finally – rain! After more than a week of perfect sunny days, today the sky is heavy with the promise of more precipitation. Last night’s showers have left the air sweetly smelling of earth. I planted seeds for an array of garden greens the other day.  The soil was so sandy, I covered each patch lightly with mulch lest the whole lot get blown away. Verging on drought around here, we desperately need this rain.  And I am glad to be forced indoors to take care of neglected tasks.

Today ends a blissful vacation week, mostly spent running my daughter around to look at colleges. I’ve lost track of the days and abandoned my usual schedule. But when I stayed up too late some nights, I just crawled back to bed for an extra hour in the morning if I needed more snooze. I puttered, read, wrote, drove and drove and drove, and wandered around college campuses in all their spring glory. Each day was mine to plan according to needs and desires of me and mine.

I’m melancholy about going back to work – as much as I like my job. And I fantasize about what it would be like not working. That is, not working because I have enough money. (The scenario of losing my job and being unemployed and broke is, of course, not the fantasy.) I fuel this dream by occasionally buying lottery tickets. But perhaps the sweetness would fade, grow dry and dusty like too many sunny days… do you think?

Chicken? Falcon? …Turkey

I’ve thought of calling this blog: Walking the Dog because it’s often where I get my inspiration. Our little neighborhood jaunts together are often the closest I come to meditating. I am mostly internally focused but still aware of the seasons, the little changes day-to-day in the trees, the garden, the woods along my walk. Sometimes, Tetley and I have real adventures like the other night when we encountered a neighbor also walking her dog — and what appeared to be, a chicken. 

It wasn’t really her chicken – so not for the first, nor last time, we got ‘the box’. The box for water, food, the shirt no one wants and the promise of a night in our breezeway. The more we looked at this little guy, the less we thought it a chicken – or any domestic bird. As it fluffed its wings and strutted about on very talon-like feet, we decided it must be a raptor. Except it was awfully friendly.

It particularly liked hanging out on shoes – although I think if it could have climbed into my lap it would have. We called a 24 hour wildlife hotline and the guy said, put it back. So we carried the little bundle of feathers back across the street to the neighbor’s newly mulched patch of a few yards, set it down and quickly walked away. The thing followed us, practically tripping me as I crossed the street. Street. That’s where we found it. Not the woods. Cat-hunting ground. So of course, we did not leave it.

The next morning, still thinking it was a little falcon baby, (we fed it dry dog food moistened with warm water – it ate it) I brought it out and it picked at the grass. I hoped it might try and fly away back to mommy. I kept my eye on the sky looking for the amazing hawk (or whatever it is) I often see in the trees and circling the sky around here. Only airplanes and robins soared by. Finally, shortly after 9 AM, Wildlife in Crisis, a volunteer run organization in Weston that maintains a “nurture center” called me back and said, “It’s probably a wild turkey.” He dismissed our falcon identification because raptors wouldn’t be walking. And this thing was like a puppy under my feet.

So, it’s there now, with other baby turkeys, a full grown deer laying on a stretcher because of a birth defect that left its feet all mangled. (it was expected to live for only a few weeks and instead, has lived as this strange invalid for years. Ah, the power of love) Also perched around the small room are sea gulls, a spectacular wood duck, teeny cages of hummingbirds. And this was just in the reception area – there are other buildings housing other creatures. I’d actually been there a few years ago with an injured sea gull stuck in the B&N parking lot. Such patients are accepted with little fan-fare by this serious crew of volunteers and donations are encouraged.

A Different Color

We are painting the exterior of our house for the first time in the 15 years I have lived here. Actually, to be clear, Rob is painting. While he climbs the ladder, I stand guard and hand him buckets, drenching the roller in the Rookwood-Jade as needed. Like the musician he is, he has composed the entire job to be done, in his head. And dancer-like, he moves around the house, stretching his long arms in fluid movements. The peak is done, and this part, just visible over the hedge, makes it already look like a different house. The happy house it is.

I wonder why we didn’t do this sooner? Apart from the fact that the paint had worn off so much of the aluminum siding (yes, we are painting aluminum siding) that sometimes, the reflection of the sun was blinding, our home begged a new look. For many of the years I lived here, these walls defined a space of pain and sadness. Behind these walls I worried, I railed, I yelled and finally, I grieved about my husband’s addiction, his suicide. Living that way became so a part of me that I fear proclaiming the sweet serenity of now, might jinx it.

But as the shabby-white becomes a meditative green, the house seems to fuse with the landscape –  the lush hedge, the maples and oaks.  Spring is emerging like a profound exhale, and our sweet abode breathes deeply too.

Follow

Get every new post on this blog delivered to your Inbox.

Join other followers:

%d bloggers like this: