Until Then, I Have Enough

Nothing is perfect here yet.  I have ideas and energy to give them shape.  But it takes time.  Time to plan, time to plant, time to turn the leaves and lawn clippings into compost, time to consider water in a dry land, time to let things fill in.  I want intriguing pathways and inviting places to sit – or at least places that would make you imagine we actually sit in the garden.  I want all the interest we’re supposed to have: evergreen structure for the barren winter; pops of color for the heralding of spring; interesting bark, variegated foliage, and shade from summer’s wrath; and heartbreaking, nostalgic color in autumn.  I want a sunny patch of fertile soil for the pleasure of contributing praise-worthy tomatoes to our dinner.  And I want a rock, half buried in the shadowy ground, covered in moss.

I think I will have these things someday.  Or, at least, I will have some of these things some days.  Until those days though, I will remember that I have enough.  I will remember that some day I will want nothing more than what I had today. 

The light from the setting sun gave me pause.  A bright, quiet moment to be savored.

The scent of jasmine, finally climbing the arbor with vigor, was intoxicating.

I live within driving distance of the Napa Valley, aka "Wine Country".  I was pleased to see grapes
already growing on this vine in the ground less than a month. 

Birdhouse and suet created at a birthday party . . . more for us than the birds.

It looks like she's running from the camera but she's really just chasing
her new dog, Gus.  Her laughter and his tiny yips fill the evening with
innocence and my heart with gratitude.

Godspeed, Little Buddy

I wrote this post for my Facebook friends initially but I wanted to share it here as well because my dog Zooey has been a frequent subject on this blog.  He was both a companion in the garden as well as a pest.  He kept me company while I moved pots around or pulled weeds.  He kept the squirrels and the cats at a safe distance from me and he always barked to tell me when the girls had come home.  I miss him like crazy.

****

It used to frustrate me that people would say, “you’ll know when the time comes” because, for a long time, I didn’t know if it was time to say goodbye to my little buddy, Zooey. I last wrote about him almost a full year ago. I noticed how much older he was. How it was getting harder for him to stand up. But I didn’t ever know when it was time to say goodbye. As the months passed I noticed a few other things were changing. He slept more during the day for one. He barked a little less too. But for the most part he still seemed like the Zooey I had always known. 

 

My family - when we were younger

Friday night I sat down next to him to brush his hair. Back by his tail I noticed some blood. I looked a little closer and saw that he had a bleeding sore the size of a silver dollar. I dabbed it with a paper towel until it was dry.

Saturday morning we went to gymnastics to watch our daughter. While sitting in the grandstands Suzanne told me that Zooey had cried all night. Suzanne’s known a lot longer than I have that it was time, but she was patiently, gracefully waiting for me to catch up.

We had taken separate cars. In the solitude of my drive home, I experienced something close to the “you will just know” moment I had been promised. I didn’t know if Zooey was ready (or if I was truly ready either), but I knew that I could no longer ignore his suffering or downplay it by thinking “it’s just old age” or “he still seems happy.” I couldn’t make him suffer just because I was afraid to make a decision.

When Suzanne came home later that day I told her I was ready. We cried. And we gave Zooey extra hugs and kisses. Suzanne called the vet for me and set up an appointment for Sunday afternoon.

We made eggs for him Sunday morning. Gave him ham at lunch. Fed him treats he didn’t need or ask for. I found him sleeping by the bed and I laid down beside him. I wished I could ask him what he wanted. I wished that I could tell him I would do whatever he wanted. And though we’d learned some of his language in the past 13 years, I never learned what “let me go” sounds like. I wish I had because I’m afraid that not knowing will haunt me.

 

Sleeping in a quiet place on his last day -
something that had become all too common for a dog that used to be in constant motion.

We tried explaining it to our daughter, who is not quite five yet. “Zooey is old and very sick so we are going to take him to the doctor and he won’t come home with us.” 

“Okay. But when will he come home?”

My heart was already broken. I was sad for myself and for Suzanne. Zooey has been with us since the first month of our marriage. But I wasn’t prepared for the sadness of a little girl not quite understanding what it means to say goodbye forever. 

I took this picture a month ago.  They were brother and sister in our family.

After we talked to the vet about the process and signed paperwork we told Bailey to say goodbye to Zooey and then I took her into the waiting room so Suzanne could have a few minutes with him. When she finished saying goodbye, she came out with tears in her eyes and I took her place in the room with Zooey. I rubbed his head as we waited for the doctor to come in. He laid there on the floor, oblivious to what was about to happen. I felt guilty that he didn’t know and that I couldn’t warn him or talk him through it.

As the vet pushed the anesthetic through the catheter, Zooey tried to kiss her. He was loving and calm and he tried to keep his head up like a brave boy. But then his eyes started to close. I told him that I loved him. I thanked him for being my buddy. And I just kept rubbing his head, hoping that he felt comforted. And then he put his head down between his paws and the doctor left me there in that room with Zooey’s body.

I slipped his collar off over his head, taking note of how he didn’t raise his chin to make it slip off easier. I ran my hand down his back, taking note of how he didn’t lean into my touch. I rubbed his ear and kissed his nose and he didn’t kiss me back. And the dog I had loved, I knew, was gone and wouldn’t be back.

We went to the vet as a family of four. And came back a family of three.

There are reminders of him everywhere. His dog bowl by the dining room table, his basket of toys by the fireplace, the hair he shed (which is everywhere). It’s what isn’t here though, that invokes the most poignant reminders. It’s what isn’t here that reminds me what is missing most. 

Zooey's tags: King of the Yard

I Love My Dog But . . .

A while back I wrote about how the end is drawing closer for my dog, Zooey.  We don't quite feel like it's his time to go, but in recognition of that approaching day we've been spoiling him in ways that we never wanted to do when he was younger. 

We've allowed him to eat more of the table scraps.  We scramble an extra egg for him on Saturday mornings.  And maybe he gets more bacon than is healthy for him.  I liken it to when my dad was dying from lung cancer and I caught him smoking a cigarette in the side yard out of sight.  It's not like that indulgence was really going to change the inevitable. 

He's also been getting bones more regularly. 

But not from me. 

My wife and daughter, who are both kind-hearted and thoughtful, were out shopping and my daughter wanted to get Zooey a bone and Mom agreed that it was a nice idea.  Who am I to argue with that kind of thoughtfulness?  It's just a thoughtfulness that wouldn't cross my mind anymore.  Look, I love my dog and I want him to be as happy as possible in his golden years, but he torments me with these bones.  

I took this picture 7 years ago.  He's been burying his bones in the yard for at least a decade.

A few nights ago when he thought we were sleeping I heard him sneak off to the living room where he left the bone.  I knew what he was up to and it wasn't a midnight snack.  Moments later I heard his nails clicking on the tile of the kitchen floor and then came the soft plodding on the hallway carpet.  He was getting ready to sneak outside with his bone.
Now one of the greatest (and simultaneously worst) tricks Zooey has is the ability to open our sliding glass door and let himself outside by using his snout to push the door handle.  This is great when we're not awake and he needs to relieve himself.  It's not so great when it's 25 degrees outside and we're suddenly awoken by a blast of arctic air. 

On this particular night he snuck back into our room and dropped the bone on the floor so he could get his snout in there to open the door.  At that point I thought to myself "On no he didn't!" and I got out of bed in a huff.  Zooey pretended he wasn't up to anything other than answering nature's call and he went outside without the bone.  "That's right, Mister.  There will be no burying of bones tonight."  While he was outside I hid the bone in the bathroom sink and got back into bed.  I thought I was outsmarting him. 

He spent the next 30 minutes wandering around our room sniffing the side tables, poking his head under the bed, sniffing my face, pacing in circles, wandering out into the hallway to have a look around, coming back in and sniffing the side tables again in . . . I'm sure he was perplexed.  I'm sure that if he could talk he would have been scratching his head and muttering "now, where did I dwop dat darn bone?" (He would have a bit of a speech impediment, we think.)  "I swear, I weft it wight here by duh swiding gwass door so I could sneak it out waiter." 

I'm not sure who won that battle of wits.  On the one hand, Zooey didn't take the bone and bury it outside.  On the other hand, I awoke the next day extra tired since someone kept me up with his sniffing, pacing, and crying. 

Perhaps because I was so tired from that night, I slept soundly the following night.  I can't tell you how things went down when the sun fell . . . but I can show you what the light of day revealed:

I sounded like Fred Flintstone when he got locked out of his house at night shouting "Wilmmmaaaaa".  Except, of course, I was crying "Zoooooooooeeeeeeeeyyy!"  It's so depressing to nurture these plants along only to have them ripped from their potted places.  And I don't know why, exactly, but it bothered me even more that he didn't even end up burying the bone in the hole he dug.  He just dumped the evidence in plain sight.  "Come on, man."  I told him.  "If you're going to destroy everything, at least have it mean something."  He just looked at me blankly.  While he laid on the couch.  And then he closed his eyes and went back to sleep.  After all, he'd had a late night; apparently.

Blankets and the TV remote and he's set for the day and ready for us to leave him alone.

I thought about throwing the bone away but I didn't for some reason.  Call it a momentary lapse of compassion.  I cleaned it off and gave it back to him.

This morning I awoke to a different crime scene and, once again, the bone wasn't buried there.  The difference this time though is that a complete search of the yard turned up nothing.  If I find it before he does, I'm sorry buddy, it's going in the trash this time.    

I Take Pictures

When I was a kid I asked for a camera for a birthday and I must have received one because I remember playing with it.  I have no idea what kind of camera it was but it took the standard Kodak film (probably 35 mm, right?).  Depending upon the film, you'd either get 24 or 36 pictures.  And when you took them you just looked through the view finder and trusted that what you were looking at would eventually show up on the film.

It was expensive.  First you had to pay a couple bucks for the film.  Then you had to pay a few bucks to have it developed.  Most of the time you got about 3 or 4 pictures that were worth taping to your wall or to the inside of your locker.  

Photography has certainly changed, but my success rates with taking pictures hasn't necessarily kept pace.  I'm more of a writer than a photographer.  I would like to take better pictures and hopefully some day I will have extra time to devote to that pursuit.  But for now, the quality of my pictures is pretty much dictated by luck and whatever random acts of kindness mother nature bestows upon me.

Having said that, I'd like to share a few photos that I've taken recently that I am more or less happy with.  These are the few that I wouldn't have thrown away if I'd paid for them to be developed.

This first one was taken yesterday evening.  Sometimes I take pictures of my garden just so I can refer back to them later on and remember what was in bloom at that time of year.  This one will remind me that the container-grown carrots still weren't ready to harvest, that the tulips were still hanging on, and that my four-legged buddy was looking old and sleepy.

I wouldn't be so presumptuous as to title a photo, but if I had to, I might call this "Happily Accidental" because I really thought I had dug up the iris rhizomes and tulip bulbs.  Apparently I missed a few.  I think I'll just let them stay as long as they insist on making things look good in spite of my efforts to eradicate them.

I find Japanese maples to be impossible to photograph well.  If you back up far enough to get the whole tree it seems like you miss some of the finer details that make them so special.  But if you get too close and focus on the leaves, you miss the awesome structure of the branches.  But the leaves are easier to photograph, especially this time of year, so here are some of my favorites of the moment:

Beni Schichihenge

Red Dragon by my iron chair

Katsura leaves

Otto's Dissectum

Murasaki Kiyohime

And here are a couple pictures that, when I look at, I find myself saying, "Man, flowers can be really cool."  

That's all for now.  Thanks for indulging my little photo essay.  

Call Me Starbuck

“‘Vengeance on a dumb brute!’ cried Starbuck, 'that simply smote thee from blindest instinct!  Madness!  To be enraged with a dumb thing, Captain Ahab, seems blasphemous.’” 

-Herman Melville, Moby Dick; or The Whale

Hanging on with just one leg!

If you are paying attention, many of us garden bloggers are focusing on the squirrels in our lives.  The attention they are receiving from garden bloggers must have something to do with the leafless trees and how the nakedness of those trees reveals the dastardly deeds of the cute but annoying rodents in our yards. 

My issues with squirrels are nothing out of the ordinary.  Well, except this one squirrel that looked to be pregnant or cancerous.  For the most part, the squirrels in my yard are little more than bird feed stealing acrobats.  They are annoying in that regard but watching them try amuses me in spite of the frustrating consequences. 

I have another critter that has caused me more problems in the garden than any squirrel ever has: my beloved dog.

Recently, I went out to check my newly seeded containers.  I was hoping for signs of sprouting and instead discovered that an entire wine barrel had been ransacked.  Potting soil had been piled up with chaotic abandon on one side of the barrel, burrowed into on another . . . and I immediately blamed my dog. 

But the telltale evidence wasn't there.  There were no bones buried.  There were no stolen socks hidden for later.  I did not hear Ray LaMontagne singing "Trouble". 

 
Maybe it was those villanous squirrels!  Could they have been stealing my seeds?  Or were they burying their nuts in my potting soil?  Or do I fault birds looking for seeds?  I didn’t know who to blame or what to do about it.  I certainly wanted revenge though; swift, thoughtless, and unflinching revenge.

Revenge for what though, exactly?   

I am currently halfway through reading Moby Dick for my “Finer Things Club”.  I’m ashamed to admit that I somehow got through high school plus four years of college (where I earned a degree in English) and never managed to read this American classic.  While some of the book’s questions and answers still await me, I’ve read enough of it to know that one of its central themes is dealing with our desire for vengeance.  The quoted passage above reflects ship mate Starbuck's reaction to Captain Ahab when he finally tells the crew that they will travel to the ends of the earth to make the white whale pay for taking Ahab’s leg off without prior written consent to do so.  What is the point in seeking revenge against creatures who are simply acting according to blind instinct?  It really is madness.

Loitering with Intent to Harass, I'm sure.

So there will be no BB gun vigils and no scarecrows erected - not this year anyway.  There will only be hardware cloth, some heavy duty staples, some crossed fingers, and lots of hoping that some of those seeds will sprout and that my patience with life’s little challenges will grow as quickly as whatever lettuce is left to me. 

(P.S. For those of you with inquiring minds, the coffee company, Starbucks, was, in fact, named after the character in Moby Dick.  They thought it made a better name than the original suggestion of naming it after the ship in the book: the Pequod.  That's pronounced "Pee-quod" so they made the right decision, methinks.) 

My Dog is Getting Old

My dog, Zooey, is getting old.  I keep saying that to people.  “He’s getting old.”

When he was a younger dog and someone came to the front door he would jump up, run to the door, and bark like he was Lassie and Timmy was in a well.  The other night the UPS guy delivered a package and although Zooey really wanted to bark at him, he couldn’t get his hind legs off the tile floor fast enough.  His mind and spirit were willing but his body wasn’t.  That’s when I realized that when I say “he’s getting old” it is a subtle way of avoiding the truth.  The truth is: my dog is old.

Zooey at 5

I have always had dogs.  When I was a kid we had, at different times, good dogs, well-trained dogs, yappy dogs, rough dogs, and sweet dogs.  I loved them all in different ways and one or two of them meant the world to me.  But they were family dogs.  I had to share them with brothers and sisters and parents.

Zooey is my dog.  Although I have shared him with my wife, he has always been my buddy and her protector.



We got him at the pound when he was eight weeks old.  At the time, our marriage was about two weeks old.  He has almost literally been with us as long as there has been an “us”.

Zooey as a Puppy

I am reminded of another dog I loved.  Her name was Poco.  She lived a long life spanning the length of my elementary school days and into my college years.  When she died I wrote an essay called “Landmarks” for a class I was taking.  I was inspired to write the essay because her death, and more importantly her life, had provided me with landmarks by which I found my way.  These landmarks gave order to and created an understanding of the things that had shaped me.  She was there at the bedside when my father was dying of cancer and she was with me when we I started to heal.  She was the only one in the room with me when I watched the Red Sox lose the 1986 World Series.  She ran by me when I rode my bike and hiked in the woods.  She was the ever-present weight at the end of the bed.  She stayed up with me when I came home to do laundry.

And now with Zooey I see the pattern repeated.  He was with us in the beginning.  He saw us struggle and he offered his ears to scratch when we needed something soft to touch.  He gave us an excuse to go on walks so we could talk about our lives and figure out where we were going.  He did funny things and disgusting things that made us laugh and gag.

Both funny and disgusting.

He gave us something outside of ourselves to love and he loved us back.  We often said that having him was good practice for having kids.  Hopefully we learned from all the mistakes we made with him.  He has been with us through some really good years; years that were made better because he was a part of them.

Checking Out the New Thing

This is starting to feel like a eulogy to me and I don’t mean it to be.  I need to save some words for when the end comes.  But I recognize that I’m approaching a new landmark and I’m not sure how to get there or what to do when I’m there.  When I was a boy, I didn’t have to be the one to make the decision.  Mom called me in my Mac Hall dorm room to tell me that they had put Poco to sleep.  The burden was hers.  Now I am an adult and it’s going to have to be my decision.  I’m going to have to be the one to say that it is time.  It is “getting close to time”.  It might already be time.  I just don’t know if I’m ready or if I’ll ever be.

My Family

Growing Excuses Not Food



A must-read book about
our relationship with food.

In theory, I’m big on the whole “grow your own food” trend.  I passionately believe that doing so makes sense on so many levels.  It’s economical, it’s environmentally healthy, it’s a source of exercise, it provides the grower with a better sense and appreciation for what it takes to get food on the plate, and (for the Mad Max scenarios of my imagination) it will be what keeps us alive when the whole world goes to hell.  I follow Michael Pollan on Twitter, I have King Corn on my Netflix queue, and I refuse to support Monsanto so, you know, I totally get it. 

In practice, however, I’m basically a hypocrite.  It’s not that I don’t grow any of my own food; I do.  But it’s more of a novelty than a bona fide food source.  For example, I have a mature peach tree that produces more fruit all at once than we could ever hope to eat.  So for about 10 glorious digestively-regular days we have peach milkshakes, peach cobbler, and grilled peaches but that’s where it all ends.  We don’t can our extra peaches to extend our bounty and we don’t have any other trees that produce fruits or nuts for us to eat until December when the oranges are ripe so we'd probably develop scurvy should the world as we know it come to a screeching halt.  You can basically repeat this scenario for all the other things I grow.  A lot of my tomatoes end up in the compost bin.  Much of the lettuce I grow in the spring winds up there too.  I chewed on one single piece of broccoli (and spit it out) before I pulled up this year’s plants in favor of the warm season bell peppers I planted a couple months ago (and have yet to harvest).  I have every intention of increasing my homegrown food yield, but when it comes right down to it, I haven’t devoted the time and, more importantly, the garden space to doing it right. 

Part of the problem is that we just don’t eat enough fruits and vegetables in my household to make it worthwhile.  My three-and-a-half year old recently interrupted a conversation we were having about what we needed from the grocery store to note that "we eat a lot of potato chips".  The other part of the problem is that I’m still hung up on growing ornamentals and perennials in my yard.  I don’t want to apologize for that.  It’s just where I’m at in my evolution as a gardener.  But at the same time, I am apologizing for that because I disagree with myself philosophically and it’s about time I confessed before it ate me up inside.

You see, for years I’ve found excuses not to become a more self-sufficient link in the food chain and my excuses are growing (unlike my neglected butternut squash). 

My friend, Brian, took me along on a fact-finding trip to a bee shop a while ago.  He was interested in starting his own hive and I was curious about the whole thing too.  Who doesn’t love honey?  And more bees in the yard would be great for my plants.  Besides, bees need a little help with that colony collapse disorder, right? 


I could stretch my dollar by also using one of these suits to play paint ball in.  If I played paint ball.


Well, in spite of being gung ho about it all initially, I found ample reasons not to pursue bee keeping myself.  First, my wife is allergic to bee stings; a fact that, by itself, should have precluded me from even thinking about keeping bees.  Plus, I’d be signing up for regular trips to Walgreens to restock EpiPens and after the first ER visit I have a feeling that my Queen Bee would make me look for a hive/apartment of my own.  Second, it’s not exactly cheap getting set up as a beekeeper.  It could easily run a couple hundred bucks after you get the robotic looking netted-hat contraption, a smoker, the wood boxes for the hive, the bees, and the equipment to extract the honey from the honey combs.  And really, it seems like a whole lot of effort for just a little bit of honey.  And that's the real reason.  I don't have the time or the energy to do it right.  So I chose instead to spend $10-$15 a year to buy local honey and support those dedicated farmers who’ve already got the set up and depend upon customers like you and me to keep them in business. 

Not sure exactly what the message was,
but this was part of "Chalk It Up"
in downtown Sacramento last week.

"Besides," I told myself, "I’d rather have chickens."  Which was a convenient thing to tell myself, because I already knew that Sacramento County prohibited keeping chickens unless you had a lot that was at least 10,000 square feet (which most homeowners in this area don't even begin to get close to).  Oh, and one minor financial consideration: in case you did have a 10,000 square foot lot, you still had to submit an application along with a non-refundable $4,500 application fee.  Yes, that’s four-thousand-five-hundred United States dollars.  And just because you applied did not mean you would be given approval.  So you could either fund your Roth IRA for a year or apply for the privilege of keeping a couple chickens.  Clearly, Sacramento’s City Council was just egging us on to follow the old adage “it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.” 

Undaunted but uncommitted, I researched the quietest chicken breeds (Black Australorps, apparently) and some covert coops designed to look like garbage cans and herb gardens so nosy neighbors wouldn’t have enough audio visual evidence to turn me into the chicken coppers.  I was really into the idea and thought it would be great.  Free, nutritious eggs and an ongoing source of manure for the garden?  Plus they would make fun pets for my daughter.  How awesome would that be?   

But I never followed through with it.  I told myself it was because I didn’t want to break the law.  And now, in my revisionist historian ways, I’m telling myself it was also because of my wife’s debilitating ornithophobia, but we all know my sympathy for that has its limitations.  The truth is probably closer to the fact that I don’t want to add taking care of chickens to my list of things to do right now.  Not without a good place to keep them.  Not with an aggressive shepherd-mix dog that would harass them non-stop.  Not with dreams of going on vacation and not wanting to ask my neighbors to water the plants, take in the mail, turn on the porch light, get the dog water, AND feed the darn chickens. 

So last week when the City Council finally came to their senses and lifted the backyard ban on chickens I knew that it wasn’t going to change anything for me.  I’m really, really thankful that people in my county can now pay just 1% of the former application fee to keep up to three chickens.  They have to pay $15 upfront and then $10 for each hen – no roosters allowed!  Still, in spite of the drastic reduction, $45 in up front costs for a few chickens, not to mention the cost of the coop and the feed, reduces the economic benefit when a dozen eggs is only $1.89 right now.  Even if you consume a dozen eggs a week, half the annual money you'd save by having chickens of your own would be lost due to the fees.

Of course, once those Mad Max scenarios come to pass, those chickens are going to be worth their weight in gold.

*For a really great chicken related blog, check out Scratch and Peck.  And do yourself a favor.  Start reading from the very first blog entry.  

Photo Bombing

Photo Bombing.  If you look in the Urban Dictionary there are two definitions; only one of them is fit to quote on my PG-13 blog.  The quotable definition describes photo bombing as "the fine art of ruining other people's photos."

Back in the 90s, before I knew what it was called, I enjoyed photo bombing.  My forte was getting into pictures being taken for the college yearbook.  Among others, I was featured in the International Club photo, dorm photos for dorms I didn't live in, and (shown below) the Pre Med Club.  I was an English major in college.  The closest I got to pre med was rooming with a biology major.

I suppose I got over my desire to photo bomb because I stopped doing it at some point.  Besides, digital cameras have removed the cost factor in taking multiple pictures so today's photo bombers have a harder time permanently sabotaging a photo shoot.  These days I limit my photographic high-jinks to things like getting my picture taken while riding the painted cows in Boston or by hopping on chained-up bikes in Sacramento and pretending that I'm flying down the road.  Immature?  You betcha.  But it's usually worth a few laughs.

Picture quality may have been
compromised by Sam Adams.

Like many gardeners and bloggers, I have developed an affinity for being on the other side of the shot too.  Everyone knows that the right picture says a thousand words but, time permitting, it's in my nature to add a thousand more of my own just to be sure.  When I don't have time to write a thousand words about a single plant or a particularly magical gloaming, I turn to my camera to capture the moment.  Most of my pictures are just ordinary amateurish images that I have taken just so I can look back in a year and see how much a tree has grown.  Sometimes, like in the early spring picture below, I take a photo of my daughter as she seems to grow and change faster than anything else.

In case it didn't jump right out at you, take another look at the background of this picture.  Yep, that would be my dog photo "bombing" this picture.

If he could talk, I'm pretty sure he'd dismiss my remonstration by saying he learned it from watching me . . .

Bleeping Squirrels!

I didn't use to mind squirrels.  In my mind they were just harmless little animals that looked like they were having a great time chasing each other and showing off their stunt man-like ability to jump from trees to rooftops to fences.  Oh, sure, there was a time in college when I was convinced that the squirrels on campus were absolutely targeting me with pine cones but I confess to having had a perverse enjoyment of that.  It was like having a daily obstacle course on my way to class.  Okay, maybe "daily" is overstating it, but whenever I went to class it was like an obstacle course. 

Then I got a dog and everything changed.

For the last decade I have more or less adopted my dog's innate hatred of squirrels.  Nothing about the nature of squirrels has changed in those years, of course, but their presence in my yard has resulted in a nearly endless concert of barking and destruction.  When a dog sees a squirrel, it wants to kill.  And when that dog lives with a gardener, what ends up dead is usually just the plant that was going to bloom in a few days had it not been snapped in half by a 90-pound canine on a blood-thirsty crusade.  And I have blamed the squirrels for this. 

But lately my dog has been slowing down.  His hips just don't work like they used to.  He will still attempt to gore a squirrel if he has already been up and walking for a while, but more often then not, he will simply issue a few protesting barks and then lay his head back down as if to say "to hell with it."  It's sad that he is slowing down because it makes it hard to put off thoughts about what comes next for him.  But if I'm honest, the less aggressive personality is kind of a nice change.

So with the dog slowing down, the squirrels have been amping up.  Apparently, word has spread throughout the neighborhood's Squirrel Syndicate that it is now safe enough to venture into my yard to glean the fallen bird feeder seeds or scrounge for whatever else squirrels like to eat.  They come by so much now that it's getting to the point where I actually recognize some of them; this one in particular:

I have had several close encounters with this particular squirrel including one startling episode in which I embarrassed myself in front of several passing motorists.  I pride myself on being a protective father and I was trying to live up to that role while walking my daughter home from the park when the squirrel in question surprised me by running along the fenceline that bordered the sidewalk . . . right about eye level for me.  I won't say I screamed, exactly, but a decidedly non-manly noise did escape my throat and, for the benefit of the drivers with their windows rolled up, the noise was accompanied by a less than courageous looking juke move that did not involve shielding my ward.

Um, anyway, you might be wondering how I know that it's this one squirrel and not one of the dozens or hundreds of look-alikes belonging to the Syndicate.  And if you're not wondering that, please start wondering about it so you don't waste your time focusing on the paragraph above.  The reason I know it was this squirrel is easy.  Check this out:

See that bulge in it's stomach/chest area?  It looks like a camel's hump on the wrong side.  Here's another view:

Eating a stick?  What for?

Is it pregnant or is that some kind of tumor?  Hoping that it was pregnant, I typed in "pregnant squirrel" and did a Google Image search.  Judging from what popped up in the search results, I have definitively concluded that my squirrel is probably not pregnant as this is what a pregnant squirrel is apparently supposed to look like:

This freaks me out.  On many levels.

So it looks like my backyard squirrel has a large tumor growing on its chest.  Since I started by saying that for the better part of the last 10 years I have adopted a hatred of squirrels it wouldn't be entirely genuine if I claimed to be totally broken up about my squirrel's condition.  But I can honestly say that on some level I think that it's too bad.  I know it's a "circle of life" thing and terrible things are happening all around the world every day.  But like all things, when trouble comes to your own backyard, it makes it feel more real and you wish there was something you could do to make it better. 

OMD! (Oh My Dog!)

Even after he was caught red-pawed, he rests with a clear conscience.

It's not unusual for me to wake up in the morning to find that the sliding glass door that leads from the bedroom to the patio is wide open. 

My family dog and garden companion/nemisis figured out long ago that he could unlock the door with his nose and then push open the door if he really needed to get outside to hunt a squirrel playing on the fence or to bark at the mail man (who, by the way, is a man so I'm not being sexist in this case). 

This "talent" my dog has means that we have awoken to many surprise discoveries.  One morning many years ago we awoke to the sound of our dog gnawing quite loudly on the (mostly) decomposed skull of a deer.  On the gross-out meter, that ranked pretty high.  Much higher than today's treasure which was simply a rolled up pair of my socks that had been buried in the yard somewhere.

Annoying yes, but it could have been worse.  It could have been Chip or Dale or even Alvin, Simon or Theodore.

I have been reading "Plant-Driven Design: Creating Gardens that Honor Plants, Place, and Spirit" by Scott and Lauren Ogden.  While some of the book's blunt opinions may rankle those of us that tend to collect certain types of plants, there was at least one section of the book that resonated with me.  That would be the part where they note how difficult it is to grow a garden with multiple dogs.  While I only have one dog, I think he does the damage of two so I quote this section knowing that the spirit of the quote applies to my experiences precisely: 

". . . [Dogs] often develop pack behavior, establishing regularly patrolled routes that become promptly evident in paths worn through beds and lawns, and torn and broken limbs marking trails through shrubbery.  Plant-rich gardens can't easily develop alongside such rambunctious animals; excluding them from areas with intensive, vulnerable plantings is usually the best course."  

I agree.  My garden would be much better off if I could exclude my dog from specific areas, but my yard is small already and given that I can't even keep him inside our own house, I don't even bother trying to restrict his boundaries within the backyard fence.  I have waived the white flag and surrendered to the fact that as long as I have a dog living here I will also have an imperfect garden. 

The good news is that today's damage wasn't permanent.  The picture below shows where the X on my dog's treasure map was.  It's annoying and it delays the inevitable filling in of this newly renovated patch of earth, but I will survive and my garden will live to see a better day.  My socks, on the other hand . . .