museumr tool.
It’s been a fun month at SPC.
Oh, Dear Dog
We spend a lot of time in and out of the house. The screen door flaps a lot during the day, the windows are always open, the gates rattle back and forth on their hinges.
Since our lot isn’t entirely fenced in, and since we live on a fairly busy road (with the school across the street and with Spring’s arrival and the landscaping trucks convoying in and out of the neighborhood’s enclave) I spend a ton of energy herding children and dog about the commons, keeping everyone away from the street.
Today, however, I was chatting it up in the backyard with Alis when we both tensed to the sound of screetching brakes and heard that most awful sound which sometimes follows: the loud THUD of a broken something. And as that awful sound echoed in my frozen moment, another sound reoriented me, which was the visceral, unmistakable yelping of our beloved dog, Seti.
It didn’t immediately register, the disgust I now feel at the person who accelerated and drove away down our road, leaving his or her immorality on the pavement. Initially, my brain took footnotes: Driver has continued driving down road. Sounds like a truck, possibly a white 4×4. I’ve seen a hundred of those today. Seti looks allright. His hindquarters, something is wrong with his hind legs, etc. But I’m sitting in my bed now, looking over at our lucky dog who escaped death once more (twice this year he has been hit by a car) and who is sleeping soundly through his trauma. I’m wondering how a person can be so selfish. What did they think I’d do? All I would have liked was an apology, an acknowledgement.
People can be so disappointing.
He is okay tonight, asleep in his cardboard box atop a discarded king-sized comforter. If I crouch beside him, his pupils function, taking in my expression and gestures. He sits motionless, licking his lips occasionally, his way of acknowledging my sympathy. And then he’ll lay his head back down. I run my hands along his back, searching for a growl or grimace, but nothing. Just a few cuts on his feet, black tiremarks on his beefy hindquarters, ten intact toes. A short, tucked-under tail. I worry about internal bleeding, embolism. But otherwise, I think he’s okay.
Mean, mean hit and run driver. Have fun with your bad karma.
women’s work
We seize every minute of good mood, sunshine and willingness and harness it all into gardening. There’s an endless array of tasks at hand, some require priority, such as cleaning old terracotta pots and preparing them anew for GASP! tomatoes!!!! I’m thrilled about this, Damon thinks I’m nuts about the tomato, but there’s no tastier nutritional powerhouse during the summer. It holds the torch all season long (to pass it on to the pumpkin in early Fall).
You clean pots because you want to believe the pots contain no more potential pathogens from the previous season(s), fungal and otherwise. Honestly, I’m just following advice and resting assured that they at least look groomed and cared for. We used a bucket of water and a few drops of earth-happy dish suds, but you could clean away lime stains with vinegar, I hear.
You can’t clean out the pocket gophers. You arrive from the nursery with armfuls of tender perennials and, just beyond their leafy silhouettes, you see a tiny brown skullcap slip back into the perforated topsoil. There’s a little mound of dirt, and a golf ball-sized hole beside it. If nothing else, amusement for the dog.
Of course, with little rain and many tender young plants, watering is necessary. Only, the minute I walk back from the faucet with the hose in my hand, Chas feels the most urgent need to water, too. And what a help this would be! If only he would water the plants, and not the gopher holes.
In the meantime, the compost can be tilled. It smells sweet and almost-ripe, like I remember from childhood, climbing atop our tremendous heap. Earthworms, here and there, slipping out of unearthed mines as we plunge the shovel into their dark network. We could always use more. Every day, I bring a bowlful of kitchen scraps: coffee pellets, eggshells, mango peel, bananaskins…
Then, suddenly, it’s time to wash hands and redress, shovel cheekfuls of leftover lunch into hungry, grubby mouths, and rush to karate. “YOI!” when I’d rather be saying”Namaste.”
Namaste.