Gardens and Grooming

The pups have had the use of my garden area as a play yard for the past couple of months, but today's play sessions were cut somewhat short. Mom, they soon learned, hasn't much patience for all their "help" when actual work needs to get done. It was funny at first; I marveled at the intelligence expressed by the twelve-week old Rio daughter who started digging every time I wielded a shovel and who grabbed and shook the clumps of grass and weeds as I hoed. I watched her sidelong...she was looking at me, looking at the task, then copying. She didn't know why, she didn't know the purpose, but she wanted to participate. I had to lean on my hoe and laugh. But about the fourth time she gamboled up and down the furrows as I kicked dirt over the corn seed, I had to scoop her up and send her packing. The howling that wafted from the kennel was quite mournful...she's going to be quite a character. The pup pictured is a son of Vixen & Ieuan.

Besides getting the corn planted and the potatoes cut and the manure spread, I raked out several garbage bags full of hair from the two molting horses and a half dozen of the shepherds before my arm gave out. Since the birds are already nesting, I like to leave some of the softest undercoat clinging to shrubs and bushes so their nestlings have a nice warm, soft start in life. From there I took to the mower and managed to cut about a third of the pastures and property before running out of gas; that's gasoline, but it pretty accurately portrays my overall state -- out of gas. Regardless of what the calendar says, Mother Nature has committed to bringing forth spring. And just as She sends squirrels spiraling barber-pole patterns on the oaks and maples and cardinals bashing against the windows, She dictates my steps. The warmth and sunshine pushes me into an unwinnable race to get my garden planted, all the dogs and horses groomed out, perennials that proved their fitness by surviving winter in their pots still beg to be planted, and, oh yeah, maybe I should pack?

Pack, as in prepare for two weeks of hiking the Highlands of Scotland. I leave Thursday, but even if I had every minute between now and then with nothing to do but prepare, I don't see how I'd manage. And I find myself coming up with multitudes of essential projects(it's not procrastinating if you're doing something truly useful and necessary, right?) as it becomes apparent that I've managed to schedule myself to be away during some of the best of what PA has to offer. The wisteria will bloom while I'm gone...I curse that vine all year long just so for one brief, glorious week (or so) I can breathe the cool grape-scented midnight air under those magnificent pendulous purple blossoms. And the lilacs, those delicate reminders of the bouquets my mother always placed in each room every spring...no wonder I'm ambivalent about leaving.

So, Scotland, what do you have for me to compensate for a two-year gap between filling my nose with the scent of lilacs and wisteria, and not being here to watch as these pups expand their world?