Amy in the Garden

There is a lot of humor in my garden.

It’s always the animals that make me laugh. (Thank goodness. Imagine if I was one of those people that sits in gardens, rocking back and forth, and chuckling about bio-mass. That would be weird.) The chipmunks in the garden was an unhappy surprise, but I did think their choice of the drainpipe as a hideout was a clever, funny choice. My version of the Hole In The Wall Gang: the Pipe In The Hill Gang?

I was surprised and amused when I had my feet up on the porch railing one afternoon, overlooking the garden and viewing my day’s work framed between my fuzzy pink socks — and a hummingbird zoomed up, looking hopefully at my pink socks, and then zoomed away. The hummingbird was surprised, and I bet he’d have called it an unhappy surprise. No nectar here. Sorry little guy.

I was not surprised to see the chipmunks congregate beneath my bird-feeder and fill their pouches with the spilled seed. But I was surprised to see them wrestle each other for the privilege, with their cheek pouches full. They looked ridiculous.

But the best and funniest surprise of the season, so far, has been the guardian owl, placed by our neighbors, as we were both plagued with rabbits. The owl is made out of some type of pressed styrofoam. It is a thin shell, painted to look like a horned owl, ferociously glaring down at my cherry tomatoes. I was reading out by the garden the other afternoon, and heard the cheery tapping of a woodpecker. I looked at our house first, certain that our wooden porch posts had been selected for the honor. But instead, it was the face of the owl that had attracted an ambitious downy woodpecker. Far from being intimidated, he saw a real-estate opportunity and moved in (as it were). The owl is now sporting a perfectly round, beautifully constructed hole, about the size of a quarter, on the side of his face.

I’d share a photo, but the batteries in my camera died just as I had that woodpecker in the the viewfinder. (Surprise.)

Photos of the owl, before and after, to come.

WORDS FROM OTHERS

“All nature wears one universal grin.”

— Henry Fielding (1707-1754)