A Garden Love Story

Time stood still in my garden today.  Time stood still while I paused to absorb a lesson of love and tolerance from two very different creatures thrown together by the whim of chance and the necessities of other lives.  My garden is a witness every day to a love that should not be, a love that few dare to speak of,  a Romeo and Juliet joining of souls so vastly different that they trivialize the Shakespearean plot.  Moose, my skinny garden predator, and Bella, the puppy replacing a daughter, are the picture of bliss in the brief moments they share.  No seconds are wasted marveling over their friendship, they know only the rapture of each other's company.

Cat and dog, as differently matched as the sun and moon, are yet alike in their huge hearts, their simple joy from the touch of another warm body.  Bella is a lover, happy to see anyone and everyone crossing her path.  Moose is more restrained, but just as desperate for attention as Bella is to provide it.  Many are those who live only in search of that one perfect love, exciting and exuberant,  joyfully unrestrained in the celebration of another's presence.  Bella and Moose are content in their forbidden love.

 

Moose waits continually by the front door, pacing patiently for Bella to visit the garden.  Millie, his former close companion, has been missing for some time now and hes increasingly lonely.  Bella paces the floors indoors, watching through the front and back windows for a glimpse of the other, begging to go outside as often as she can convince her master that she could possibly require a visit into nature.  Outside, they fly together, the cat swooping in to tease the dog, the dog using weight and leverage to pin and muzzle the cat.  Never is a claw or fang unsheathed, the weapons of the predators set aside for a cuddled eternity, as playful and tender and caring of the other as any other loving pair.  Finally, the impatient owner pulls them apart to encourage attention to the business at hand. 

My sainted mother often says "There's a fool for every fool", an expression she normally reserves for human couples who she perceives as individually flawed, but perfectly matched.  It surely applies here as well, the match between the ebullient puppy and the lonely cat, each filling a need in the other.  It's a lesson that this gardener needs to assimilate, a willingness to seek peace in the midst of diversity, an acceptance of different to support the beginnings of love. 

Cat-a-phoria

Yesterday was the day I've been waiting for, hoping and praying for, so long now.  Pure golden sunshine, a minor warm breeze, and 75ºF.  I attacked the garden at 8 a.m., determined to get a start on the Spring chores, to feel sweat on my arms and aching muscles again.  Determined to soak in the sunshine, to end up with red-tipped ears and rosy cheeks, melanoma be damned.

CatMint 'Nepeta cataria'

I was not the only creature on God's earth waiting for this day.  The Eastern Bluebirds are back and the Killdeer showed signs of nesting on their usual spot.  Moose, our Maine Coon cat, demonstrated his blissful enjoyment of the day by rolling over and over in the first bunch of catmint (Nepeta cataria) that I uncovered.  You can see it there next to the top of Moose's head.  Another clump is beneath him.  As I related before, I originally was thrilled to discover this native Kansan and I carefully nurtured it wherever it self-seeded.  These days I spend more time grubbing it out then preserving it, else I'd have a garden of white catnip and be overrun by most of the cats from neighboring Manhattan.  You can see in this picture how Moose was affected, his tongue hanging in drugged stupor. This picture isn't very flattering, but the silly boy deserves a few moments of Nirvana.  He's had a rough winter recovering from being the victim of a tug-of-war by two neighboring dogs back in November.

All in all a successful day for both of us.  I cleaned out the back patio bed, cut off all the ornamental grasses in the garden, reattached the lawn mower deck and leveled it, greased the tractor, crab-grass-prevented the buffalograss lawn, fertilized the sprouting daffodils and crocus, potted some left-over tulips bulbs I discovered in the garage, and mused about what I was going to move this year.  This morning I am sunburned indeed, a little bit sore, scratched up from tying up my 'American Pillar', and completely satisfied.

About 7:00 p.m. last night, the wind started howling out of the north, and this morning it is 30ºF and the wind is still threatening to lift the house from its foundations and send it rolling across the prairie.   I don't suppose I'll get much outside work done today although it it is tempting to enlist the wind on my side and just go out, tear out the brown remnants of perennials, and toss them into the air to let the wind dispose of them instead of having to drag them to the compost pile.  In the meantime, I'll leave you with the thought that those brash yellow crocuses that I wrote of just a few days ago look much better when joined by their blue and white cousins,.  Don't they?



  

Meet Moose and Millie

I'd like to take this pre-Christmas opportunity to introduce you to Miss Millie and her live-in companion Moose.  The pair has settled in nicely over the past month, so I suppose they're going to stay around long enough to let my readers in on their lives.  They are both about 7 months old now and I obtained them from a veterinary student who had promised their original owner that she would try to find a single home for them so that they could stay together.  

Moose

Moose is a Maine Coon cat and will likely be a pretty big boy when he's fully grown and muscled in.  He's withdrawn and calm, moving slowly and meowing quietly and sparsely.  His fur is incredibly long and soft, so Mrs. ProfessorRoush spends a lot of time holding him while the very jealous Millie climbs around her legs and shoulders and demands attention.  Despite his much larger stature, Moose is a pussycat (ouch), allowing Millie to have first chance at the soft food and ignoring her as much as he can.  It is Moose that's going to be my mouser; he's already left me two pack rat corpses to admire.  Unlike many rodents trophies, these happily presented rodents still had their heads and tails so I presume that he's not acquired any culinary interest yet in fresh, warm mouse meat.

Millie

Millie is a dainty tortoiseshell female, with a mischievous and restless nature.  If a cat ever needed Ritalin, Millie does.  She has a needy personality, constantly rubbing around our legs and making us worry about stepping on her while we walk to the barn.  She will play with a mechanized toy that Mrs. ProfessorRoush brought into the barn, but otherwise, she seems to merely exist to eat her weight in cat food and to aggravate the more stoic Moose.

I'm expecting big things from these two, hoping  that they'll keep the mice and moles away from the barn and garden, which, in turn, should decrease the number of snakes in the area as well.  Hopefully these two cats will leave the prairie birds alone and they'll stay around the donkeys at night for protection from the coyotes.

If you are wondering about their names and how they got more imaginative names than "Big Cat" and "Little Cat", it is because I named them myself instead of letting Mrs. ProfessorRoush and the kids have a say.  Millie just seemed like a "Mildred" and my theory in the seemingly random name is that she may be a reincarnated pioneer soul of the last century.  The other choice for naming Moose was "Bubba", and although he seems a little like a "Bubba", the aliteration of "Moose & Millie" was just too good for me to pass up.