There just hasn't been anything remarkable, so I've not remarked.
Still nothing, really. Except that I planted some fat begonias in pots on the porch, I got a new chair from FreeCycle, and the gopher is finally gone.
What gopher, you say? For about a month we've had a little rodent living in our lawn and border beds. He's been merrily eating up the gladiolus, petunias, and lawn. One morning Gabriel and I even watched him pop in and out of his little tunnel. He really was very cute, I couldn't whack him with a shovel when he looked like that! So I told him that he needed to find a new place to live, this wasn't going to work out. His culinary and habitual needs simply would not be maintained by our garden and lawn. He ducked back in his hole after the conversation, so I assumed he was packing up what little he had brought with him and would be off the property by morning in search of a new flat. I was wrong; he had in fact expanded his building design and taken down 3 more gladiolus. Welp, there goes diplomacy. I started praying that the neighbor's cat would get him. Natural selection, circle of life, whatever...
The cat's providence proved fair with the nest in the junipers, not so fair with the gopher in the lawn. We had to go to the hardware store, "What have you got to get rid of gophers?" Sandy and I stood for the best part of an hour staring at the myriad of poisons, traps, and torture devices designed to remove rodentia. I prefer not to kill things, I especially prefer not to kill things that are just doing what they were designed to do. This little rodent was breaking no moral code, he was exercising the talents God gave him. How was he to know that to do so was punishable by death? Well, I had told him... but we couldn't buy the poison, and I didn't want to dispose of a body. So we bought some gum.
About a week ago, after a multilevel gopher expansion and destruction of all but 2 of the gladiolus, I broke down and put some poison in the ground. About a tablespoon down one little tunnel. I felt guilty doing it. He wouldn't know what it was, he would nom right through it, and then he would die in his tunnel somewhere and poison the dirt with his little poisoned body. But what else is a gardener to do? Pray for hawks?
There haven't been new gopher holes for several days, no more plants have disappeared underground, and the lawn has been repaired. New recruits have been marshaled in from the nursery and given their standing orders. A few cuttings from the back yard have been transplanted to the front. I'll bet if you were standing in our yard today you wouldn't even know the little critter had been there. But he was, and is, there. His little tabernacle of clay is returning to dust somewhere under the surface of our front yard. And I can't help but be glad for him. I mean, I know I cut his time short, but he was fulfilling the measure of his creation-- he wins! I'm kinda proud of that obedient little gopher. Undeterred by my threats he went forward doing what he was meant to do. You know, I hope I can say as much for me when my tabernacle of clay is laid to rest, that I was diligent, and thereby I may win the prize. Yes indeedy, I hope as much can be said for me.
