Mother Pucker


The first flowers in my garden. They’re called Star of Holland and are supposed to naturalize and spread for ground cover. Well at least the first ones that I planted. I’m getting pretty charged up about the garden, I’m completely disorganized about it, and I’ve got that 50 something memory going for me, so whatever comes up is big surprise. I did find my crumpled coffee stained map of what I put in last year, so I kind of have an idea. No clue about colors though I tried planting some crocuses right under the lawn last fall, it looks like the ones in front are going to come up, but a bushy tailed tree rat got the ones in the backyard. I’m thinking air rifle. It will give me good practice for when the revolution comes. But you don’t have to worry about me, I won’t eat any squirrel brains, I’ve read the articles about them spreading something like mad cow. My wife grew up poor, most of the meat they ate came from what her brothers shot. Squirrels, rabbits, gamebirds….I wonder if they ate the squirrel brains. That could explain a lot. Anyway, I hate squirrels and rabbits and I like flowers.

These crocuses come up every year under my gas meter. I’ve lived in this house for twelve years and I didn’t plant them. They’re on the southeast corner of the house and the sun reflecting off the block foundation must warm the soil up early. They’ve already come and gone. My house faces south so the backyard doesn’t get much good sun, everything is about two or three weeks behind back there.

9 thoughts on “

  1. stop me if i’ve told you this:  my in-laws’ neighbor is so gung-ho about his garden, you’d think the revolution was already here.  vegetables, mind you, not these prissy little flowers.  so anyway, he had this ongoing battle with a groundhog who kept eating his crop.  one day the thing is out there, munching away, and the guy goes nuts, gets his gun, and starts shooting into the garden.  something explodes.  “GOT HIM!” the guy yells (i don’t think this is what they meant by the term “victory garden”, but whatever) and goes running out into the yard to find… that the groundhog has escaped and he’s cruelly murdered one of his eggplants.

  2. evidence of spring. good to see. slightly dyslexic? of course. though I prefer to view it as a whole range of skill levels in different things (Canadians test for this, Americans usually not), visual consistency (do you know if a “p” is a “p” or might it be a “d” or a “b” or a “q”), letter recognition, the ability to switch easily between letter forms and typefaces, phonological awareness, word shape recognition skills, language assembly, the ability to construct sounds using typical English letter combinations, any/all can be strong or weak, weakness creating decoding issues (the alphabet is a complex code, numbers and music notation are much more reliable/easier). Decoding issues slow reading, when they’re bad they slow reading so much they stress short-term memory and people can’t remember the start of a sentence by the end, demolishing comprehension. In this country we want to think it’s “one thing,” but it’s not, so there are all kinds of problems needing all kinds of solutions. Try going to this page and downloading my “dyslexia empathy test.”

  3. beautiful beautiful beautiful flowers!!!! it makes it more of a surprise if you don’t know what, or where, its all going to grow! the top picture is priceless:)

  4. I too have lost any love I had for rabbits. They all must die. The rabbits and the squirrels managed to transplant about half of the bulbs I planted a couple years ago.

  5. Oh yes, flowers and things.  Hmph, we’re gonna miss the whole season, since we’ll be away for half of June and July.  Any good self-maintaining things out there to plant, I wonder?

  6. In my last attempt at gardening, I managed to keep a jalapeno plant alive for two years, it died this past winter.  I’ve learned my lesson.

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