Garden Notes, the Last Week of April
The Grackles love the water, they bathe in it with an excitement and ferocity. They jump and throw the droplets over their slick backs in waves with their wings. They all drink from the birdbath, a feat I can not understand. The water always seems filled with algae and bugs. Who knows what it does to their digestive system.
A mourning dove has a nest in the tree behind me. No doubt to be near the water. It has been calling out to someone, maybe a mate or a potential mate. Its late in the season to be finding someone but maybe there is another dove that needs a partner. I wonder how they find each other in a city so large.
Other birds are also chirping, adding to the sounds of the neighborhood. They chirp in loud bursts as if sharing some important gossip or news. They never seem to stop and just begin to chirp over each other. What they have to say is more important than pausing to hear a response. Maybe they are engaging in some type of group activity. Maybe the real sound is all of them together not one alone.
With all of the rain we have been having, the greenery is lush and vibrant. As if the plants are keen on reinventing their own version of the color. I cam outside yesterday to find that my tomatoes had grown almost a foot. This is my first year companion planting and my tomatoes are the best they have ever been. They like to lean on their neighbors for support and their stems gently weave themselves between the shoots of mint and lantana. They seem to be telling me that this is how they were meant to grow all along. The mint keeps the snails away and I have yet to loose a plant this year to pests.
My cantalope is eager to bloom and has put forth numerous flowers. I have been trimming them as the plant is too young to produce fruit. Its small leaves are half the size they will be and needs to spend more time growing. It expresses the impatience of a teenager ready to be independent. Its response to my trimming is to bloom more. As if it hopes I’ll miss one and it will be allowed to fruit. Ive been eating all the blooms and they have the most wonderful delicate flavor. It tastes like cantaloupe but whispy and quiet. Where the cantaloupe is sweet and vibrant the blooms are subtle and quiet. Each tasting a little different for just seconds until the flavor disappears. By the time you have swallowed it you question if it was even there.
The garden beds in the backyard have just a few hours of sun and will likely take months for the plants to grow. The squirrels are treating the beds like their own private grocery store, chewing and digging up anything they like. One morning I noticed nearly half my plants dug up or full of bite marks. They left the mangled remains of the stems in the dirt, letting me know that these were not to their liking. In an attempt to make peace I set out sunflower seeds for them. Two days later my homemade feeder was chewed to shreds and the seeds were all over the ground. My offerings seem to be unwanted and insufficient.
The mother squirrel who nests in the knot of the tree has already said goodbye to two babies this year. They left the nest when they were small, but stuck around on the same tree. One left first, the second baby stayed for a week longer. The babies are now the same size as the mom and hard to differentiate between each other. It feels like the number of squirrels in the neighborhood has doubled in the past month. They are crawling out of every bush and tree, in the roads and sidewalks. The hawks and owls must be getting fat this spring. With all the water, the squirrels and mice have so much to eat, there is plenty to go around.
