Gardening Dilemma

This year I have decided to skip planting a vegetable garden. By this time, mid-February, I would normally be moving my seedlings out of the back bedroom, where they have been under a grow light since December, and into the greenhouse in the back yard. But the garden was so bountiful last year, all the way into late October, that I am weary from harvesting, watering, fertilizing, and then trying to find a home for my overage. I gave so many peppers away last year, my neighbors began to ran inside when they saw me coming with a grocery sack in my hands. I still have frozen tomatoes in the freezer, Ziplocks full of frozen chopped peppers, and jars of canned peppers and salsa in the pantry. Last year, so many of my seedlings made plants that I took the extras to the feed store. The owner sold them in all within a week and gave me free bird seed and fertilizer in exchange. So this year, I need a break. However, it's kind of bothering me.

In six more weeks, we will be gone on our long-anticipated river cruise up the Danube. I don't want to leave a ready-to-harvest garden for the pet-sitter. And it will be one less thing for me to worry over on our vacation. Instead of wondering if there's been rain or if the weather has turned off hot, or if the auto watering system is still functioning, I can walk the streets of Vienna carefree. Last year while we were in Italy we had some of the hottest weather of the summer in Texas. It was over 100 several days, and when that happens, our west-facing backyard becomes a sauna. I think I can survive one year without a garden.

Besides, the garden also puts a damper on us heading down to the coast house whenever we want. Usually I feel compelled to rush back home after two or three days to check on the garden, to make sure some bug infestation hasn't begun, or that the wind hasn't blown over, or some other disaster hasn't befallen my plants. A garden can really be a pain in the neck to maintain.

But what fun to watch okra seeds sprout and push through the soil, or to spray each delicate tomato blossom in the quiet, dewy morning to help set fruit, and coming inside with a basket full of beans, peas, okra, peppers, and tomatoes really gives my mood a lift. We hardly need any store-bought vegetables when my garden is coming in. Does anything taste better than really fresh vegetables you picked just that morning.

Inevitably, though, no matter how few plants you grow, there comes a time when the harvest overpowers you, when two people cannot possibly eat all the bounty, and there you go, bagging up your overage, trying to find someone willing to do the clean-up required on homegrown produce. Maybe the first time or two, they're appreciative, but all my neighbors are just like us, couples with no kids. We have one bachelor who lives behind us. He never wants more than a handful of any one thing, and by the time I'm in give-away mode I want to get rid of sacks full.

Weeds are growing in my garden, big tall thistles that seem to be Round-up resistant. I pulled up a few this morning, and had to control the urge to toss in a handful of beans seeds. While I was weeding, I found an overlooked onion from the Fall and brought that inside to wash. I have some seed onions left from last year still. Onions are all but bulletproof. I could maybe just stick a few of them in the garden and forget them -- they will grow despite neglect.

It's going to be hard on me not to have a garden this year. I can tell already. I'm already wondering which boring tomato varieties the local garden center will have this year -- nothing like the heirloom varieties I nurse along on my heat mats in the back bedroom. It would be a last resort to buy plants from the garden center, but I might not be able to stand the gloom of looking out onto an empty garden all spring and summer. It's just the 21st of February. Maybe it's not too late!!!

Onward....

Pet Love & the Contract With Sorrow

Today I’m thinking about pets. I probably should be focusing on the promise of 2019 - the garden I’ll probably plant in a few weeks, the trip up the Danube in April, or the cataract surgery my darling will have in two days. But instead I’m thinking about pets.

It started this morning when I was in the doctor’s exam room waiting for her to finally show. They had a new calendar on the wall with beautiful pictures of farm animals. I was bored, had forgotten to bring a book. The March photo was of a border collie with intelligent, brown, soulful eyes that reminded me of Lulu, the part border/part shepherd rescue dog that stole my heart eleven years ago. We lost her last year and I miss her still. Lymphoma -- the scourge of well-loved, well-cared-for animals these days. My eyes were teary when the doctor came in, so I had to explain about the dog in the calendar, the one that looked a lot like Lulu.

In my life I have had many pets: nine dogs, five cats, a myriad of aquarium fish, a few turtles, and because of my children, a handful of hamsters and one cottontail that my boys saved from the jaws of another special dog, Little Missy Prissy Rae.

Missy was a hunting dog, the only purebred, registered animal I ever owned. She was sweet-tempered, had a “smart knot” on her head, and so fearless and focused when she got the scent of prey, mostly poor helpless things like tiny cottontails or frogs. She was affectionate, devoted, all the things a family dog should be. We loved her and cared for her -- well, I did that more than the rest. She and I had a special bond. It was me who had to make the decision to end her pain, when she began to develop tumors and stopped eating. I cried so hard I could barely write the check to the vet. When that canceled check came back in the bank statement, there were big tear blots that nearly obliterated my signature. Missy was a month shy of her 12^th birthday. I still have her AKC certificate in my keepsake box.

And then there was Trouser, the cat who came into my life a decade later. He was my special pet, the one who loved me best and only. When I discovered him in the backyard, mewing and howling, he was a tiny, single handful of gray and white fluff, struggling, I believe, to find me, too. We became best friends, and went through a lot together: My halcyon days of living the writer’s life, on the road all the time, out promoting books, leaving behind my sweet Trouser to wait patiently for my return. He helped me survive my divorce, which nearly flattened me. Once when I was grieving for my lost 34-year marriage, my wasted years as I saw them then, Trouser came over to me and bit me gently on the leg - as if to say, “That’s enough of that nonsense. Get it together, you are embarrassing yourself.” So I laughed, dried my tears, and we soldiered on together.

Trouser and Lulu never loved each other. Once they saw the other one wasn’t leaving, they learned to live together in peace. Lulu had come with a tall man, and Trouser wasn’t happy with her attempts to pull me away. But he ended up liking the tall man well enough, and so we became a family - Wayne and Lulu, me and Trouser.

Shortly before his fourteenth birthday, Trouser got sick. Really sick. I hurried him to the vet’s office where he was diagnosed with lymphoma -- that scourge. The vet thought he probably wouldn’t make it two weeks. But our vet had a kind heart (what vet doesn’t?) and she described a treatment we could try. We tried it. And by golly it worked. In a couple of days he was chasing lizards again. And it lasted awhile, too, before it stopped working...and we were back in the vet’s office, and she was giving Trouser another treatment. And wow! he perked up again, just like the first time -- and then he slid back down again, a little sooner than before. And we carried on with this seesaw for another five months.

Then on September 25^th, 2011 -- a Sunday so as usual he and I were watching MASTERPIECE THEATER in the bedroom together -- I was holding him on my shoulder, flat against my chest, and I looked into his sad tired eyes, saw his misery, and asked myself who I was keeping him alive for -- him or me? I knew the answer and what I had to do. The vet had told me I would know when it was time. She was right. We spent a last long night together, with me holding him limp and thin in my arms.

The next morning, September 26^th, we took Trouser one final time to the vet. She agreed he was exhausted, would not get better again, and administered the power shot as I held him. It broke my heart. Someone wiser than I once wrote that we make a contract with sorrow when we bring a pet into our lives. Truer words were never written. I had him for 14 years, but it wasn’t long enough. It’s never long enough.

This would not be the only tragedy to come on that day. It was the same day Wayne’s only child died. His son. Forty-two years old. The aching sorrow of losing my pet, and the grief I felt in my sore heart, had to be put on hold. There were people who needed me to be strong for them, and so I shed a few little tears for my cat, then tended to the humans who needed me that day, and the days and weeks and months that followed.

In late December of that same year, I was alone one night with just Lulu for company, and my floodgates finally opened. I keened and sobbed for what seemed like hours, for my cat whom I had so dearly loved and so dearly missed. He had left an aching hollow in my heart. After a while, Lulu rose from her bed by the fireplace, came to me, and laid her head on my knee. She looked up at me with her chocolate eyes, and I got down on the floor. I told her I needed a hug and taught her how to do it. She wasn’t thrilled at first, probably thought I was trying to hold her down, but she had so much trust in me and before long, we were hugging in earnest. I really needed all the big black dog hugs she gave me, from that night forward.

I have a couple of friends who have just lost beloved pets. One a dog; the other, a cat.  I suppose that’s what has me thinking about all this today, after reading their sorrow-laden Facebook posts. I don’t know what it is about the love and loss we feel for these special friends, these family members that become so much a part of our mix. It must be the unconditional love they give so freely. Wayne likes to tell a joke that goes something like - "Lock your dog and your wife in the trunk of your car for 15 minutes. Then open it and see which one is happy to see you.” THAT is unconditional love.

When Lulu was 15 we got another cat. I had waited for four years after Trouser, and probably still wouldn’t have him if he hadn’t shown up one morning at the place where I worked, a frightened orange kitten. Anyway, he’s ours now -- Mr. Sam. He is unlike any of my other special fur babies, but he brings us so much joy and we are both glad he’s here. We’re older now, not as eager to get down on the floor to play (not nearly as much as he wants us to) for fear we might not get back up! I don’t look as Sam as a replacement pet -- I tried that once and it ended badly -- but I’m sure glad we had Sam when Lulu made her last trip to the vet, four days past her 17^th birthday. I believe she lived so long due in part to the TLC she got but mostly because of her great big happy heart. Afterwards, Sam searched the house for her, slept in her bed, smelled all her of her favorite spots. He still drinks from her water bowl. He loved her almost as much as we did.

Sam makes us laugh with all his silly antics, and although he isn’t yet as lovey-dovey as I am trying to make him, he’s getting there. So, no, he’s not a replacement pet. He is so completely different, but I wouldn’t trade him. As big of a pain as pets are -- with worrying over their health, or who will pet-sit when you have to leave,  or the hassle of taking them with you, and just all the other bother that comes along with them -- being without a pet, for me...well, that is just not an option.

Onward....