Waiting With Sparky

When I’m nostalgic, it’s mostly over times when I was waiting and preparing for something just before it went well. Just before something was achieved. I use the term ‘went well’ since, once something has been achieved, things are better than before, but the result isn’t exactly what you thought it would be. There are good things and it went well. Even though it can happen, I don’t expect great things, like a million-dollar check printed on 3’ x 6’ foamboard, the woman of my dreams, or a ticker tape parade. Actually, the check might be something I would hang on my wall, but it would be one that had always been invalid. Something I can look at while eating bologna sandwiches. Perhaps the woman of my dreams is also out of reach. And I believe ticker tape parades are overrated.

            I mean, C’mon. Case in point: The space missions. All that preparation and ordeal didn’t end with the ‘ker-sploosh’ in the South Pacific. The waiting hadn’t come to an end. It ended when the astronauts were towed down 5^th avenue in a convertible as an adoring crowd tossed fluff onto them. There’s a trick, though. Breathe normally through the nose, keep the eyes at half-lid and wave. Then all should go well. That’s what the waiting was for. Oh! That and we were closing in on the Russians.

            On the subject of waiting, I know a little guy who is good at it. And years ago, I met his uncle. You see, one of my chores is to tend to the exterior of an apartment house on a busy avenue. I mow the lawn and pull weeds, sometimes making use of a weed wacker. In early Spring, one of my chores is to move the soil which has shifted onto the sidewalk. Here in the Mississippi river valley, we’re bothered by rich, dark soil that has to be put somewhere.

            But this life comes with hazards. One afternoon, ten years ago, I was working a weed wacker along the base of a large tree. I stopped and looked four feet over, and there on the trunk was a squirrel- chewing me out. I hadn’t heard him over the whirr of the electric weed wacker, and that was kind of his point. I understood what he had to say. I won’t repeat it verbatim, though, so’s to maintain the 15 rating, but it was something like:

            “Get that- Thing! away from here or I’ll jump on over and jack up your face!”

            And I did. Along with an apology. I said that I was sorry and that I didn’t mean to bother him. I was just keeping the weeds down. I told him, over my shoulder as I walked away with my weed wacker. It was all a bit lame. But now I always think of that squirrel as the uncle of Sparky, who, years later, was waiting along with me for things to go well. Sparky helped me count my blessings.

            That was during the rough Winter of ’13 -’14, when, even as late as April our television meteorologists were talking about soil frost depth with awe-struck tones. Since I worked in retail, my hours were less, money was tight, and I suddenly had a variety of vegetables on my mind. I had never gardened. I decided this would be the year.

            Then, during a walk to the library, I came across a plot beside another apartment house where sunflowers had been grown, and the gears in my head were set to turning. Someone had taken the old plants down recently, and I found a sunflower head that had been taken further down the street and left on the sidewalk. I took it from there. I would be a sunflower farmer.

            And I would be a cucumber farmer and a green bean farmer and I would sow lettuce and spinach. I would also grow marigolds along the north side of the house to discourage the already unassuming garter snakes. But I’d done that before. By then, I was a marigold veteran.

            The Spring struggle began, and it felt good. I started some plants from seed inside, set out to spruce up the yard and dig up a small plot. I gathered old leaves which had migrated during those ringingly cold days into the many corners of the property and scooped up the slipped soil, the worth of which I realize, but not entirely. Rich, forgiving soil which would reward this garden rookie with can’t-help-but-be-vegetables.

            One chilly morning that experimental Spring, I toured the garden and found that most of my starter plants were gone. Nibbled to the quick. Tiny tomato plants- scattered. My garden was decimated, and I thought- ‘Rabbits’.

            Either Peter or Brer Rabbit had had their way with my garden, I thought, with my children’s book take on gardening. But it was all too soon, and it seemed unfair that they would go for my tomatoes and cukes and sunflowers even before the lettuce came up. (which I’d planted along the edge so they could have their fill, then I could grab some for my salad.) I’m very pro-rabbit. I’ve read Watership Down. Or, I thought, it could be groundhogs, or chipmunks, even raccoons. But the size of them! The raccoons go for volume, and wouldn’t mess with a small garden. I took precautions and fashioned wire mesh cages for the new plants. At no point did I consider squirrels, but my perspective was from the warm side of a wall. Outside, things were much more desperate.

            Late one morning I went out the back door of my apartment and caught Sparky in the act, digging around the garden. Here it was May, and this tree squirrel was only a little larger than my hand. He seemed to be all eyes. Perhaps he’d been born in the late Fall and been hunkered down with the family over the winter, then set out on his own, working the tundra, pouncing on anything green- week after week.

            So I went from neutral to (provisionally) pro-squirrel; tossing scraps toward the tree where Sparky lives. They were taken, perhaps by him, perhaps grudgingly. The bad times were over for Sparky, though. There was plenty of green about and the weather was better. My sunflower seeds were in the works, despite his lack of cooperation.

            Not only did I not consider squirrels, but I hadn’t thought of the effect of birds on a garden that year. I always thought they went for seeds and small sprouts. But one afternoon I saw a thrush on the ground in my freshly weeded garden. As it sunned itself, it idly picked at a tomato plant. Sharpening its beak? Perhaps. But I swear that the bird just looked bored. A good argument for after school programs for robins.

            The garden went well that first year. There was a bit of the grazing dynamic on my part. I went through the summer having a tomato and a full salad daily. I put the green beans in stir frys. The sunflowers turned out to be a floppy, but tall variety with a light yellow bloom that Hewlett Packard will never be able to replicate. One plant (‘Audrey Tautou’) became a hazard after windstorms, flopping over the path and against the shed. They lean and I prop them back up. The seeds are for the critters. Word came back this year, from a neighbor, who found that seeds had somehow sprouted in her yard. They were probably taken there by a squirrel, as a smaller part of a major haul. She left one plant up. Over the past three years, the flowers display in the Spring, then the squirrels work on the withered heads in the Summer and Fall.

            And I can still pick Sparky out. (He?)’s adult, precocious, and a bit smaller than the rest. When I’m outside near my garden, and he’s there, I give him a few clicks of the tongue, you know, so he thinks he’s getting away with something. He looks up as if to say- “So, the scruffy one’s getting possessive. Well…” (scrabble-scrabble) “I’ve got 360° of options, and you better be glad I don’t choose the 90º.”

            I am. I ran into his uncle once. Other than garden loss prevention, I’ve found that with such a small plot, all I have to do is not be lazy concerning weeding, and not try so hard otherwise. This year, for the next few weeks, and with the forgiving soil, all Sparky needs to do is wait for the scraps and seeds. ‘I can’t wait’ as they say, but I guess I’ll have to.