We dropped by our old neighborhood this weekend. Stopped in for a visit with Rose. Looking out her front door at our old house, we noticed that the new owners had torn out all of the plants in the flower beds and put down mulch. All of them. Including the hydrangea and the butterfly bush and the big clump of phlox that proudly bloomed in a pale purple all summer long. They must not be gardeners.

I can't blame them, really. I know it must be overwhelming for former apartment dwellers to inherit more than a tiny patch of garden. I know how the weeds creep in. I know how it is to want to erase the blatant thumb-print of the former owner and make the place your own. After all, we tore out every single yew that shrouded the front of the house when we moved in.

But then I thought about all the daffodils and tulips hidden in the ground. I wondered if any of them would survive the upheaval and surprise the new owners in the spring anyway. I hope they do.

Rose said she watched as they tore everything out and tilled it up. Every once in a while, she wandered outside and waited for them to look up so she could wave. They never did. I told Rose they would probably plant some little square shrubs, something more manageable. We laughed. Little do they know a quick tilling and some mulch are not the answer. Bee's balm and burmuda root chunks are snickering under the layer of mulch, waiting for the right time show that they won't be so easily defeated.

Then we looked at Rose's garden. A mish-mash of flowers she loves intermingled with the weeds she is having a hard time keeping under control. "Do you see that weed?" she asked, pointing at a five-foot-tall plant topped with a spray of purple flowers. I had reconized it earlier as one of the plants that grow in the pastures around here. "I wish all weeds bloomed," she said. "Then people wouldn't know how weedy my flower beds are."

"That's not a weed," I told her. "That's a wildflower."

It is a wonder that I have the right to claim to be a gardener. I keep telling myself that one day, I'll get serious about this gardening business and do it 'the right way'. In the meantime, I continue to compulsively and impulsively dig up sections of soil and haphazardly throw seed down or shove mangled roots of some sort into holes.

Today, I finally planted my fall garden. If I can call it a garden. This week, in the middle of the excitement of getting footings poured for the house, we managed to string up some fencing to keep the chickens (and deer?) out of the 'garden'. As I put the finishing touches on the fencing, I had to laugh at the tiny little plot I had prepared as a temporary garden. (You should see the magnificent one I have in my head... laid out in a couple terraces above the pond, surrounded by a quaint wood and wire fence similar to the one I saw in a This Old House magazine.) Anyway, today I planted (in square-foot-and-a-half patches) some Romaine lettuce, spinach, cilatro, carrot, and radish seed (always plant radish). These were seed choices left in my collection I thought I might see some results from this fall.

I have yet to eat a tomato out of my own garden this year. The chickens have pecked mercilessly at any fruit showing a hint of red, and bugs have done their share of damage as well. I still have hope that I will get a chance to eat at least one tomato from the five surviving plants.

Let me take a moment to reflect on Finley.

When she was four, I bought her one of those big boxes of crayons. One day I walked in on her to find that she was organizing the box based on the color's beauty. On the right side of the box were the colors she thought were beautiful: reds, pinks, oranges, purples, and blues. On the left were the 'ugly' colors: yellows, greens, browns, greys, and black. I felt sorry for the colors on the left. How do explain to a four year old that colors you don't think are beautiful in themselves have use and merit, and that when they are used in the right way make a beautiful world even more beautiful?

Now she is six. She still has a definite sense for beauty, and it makes me a little nervous. I don't want her to be shallow. Her first week in school, she came home and told me that a boy she didn't like was line leader that day. "Why don't you like him?" I asked her. "He doesn't look very nice," she said. I asked her if he was nice to her. Yes. Carefully, I explained to her that even though he may not look as nice as she likes people to look, there were other nice things about him besides looks, and if she paid attention, she would probably find that he would be a very good friend... and that was more important than looks. Then, just to be safe, I threatened her with severe punishment if I ever found that she had been mean to him in any way...

My lecture hasn't stopped her interest in visual beauty, however... Joe told her one day that he had made a new friend: a girl named Katie. Finley's first question was "Was she beautiful?" And yesterday, she told me about her new friend at school. "She's very pretty," she said, then went on to describe the clothes the girl wore that day.

So on top of all the other prayers for my children is that they would be able to enjoy the obviously beautiful things in the world, but also have eyes to see the hidden beauty of things as well...

The Yolk Is On Us

A couple of weeks ago, we had some hot, dry weather here, temps reaching the upper 90's. We stopped finding eggs. I heard that hens stopped laying in very hot temps, so figured that was the case with our hens. Finally, it cooled off a bit, and we got some rain, and once again, we started finding some eggs in the nesting boxes in the coop.

Today, Chris came in and said he found a few eggs out in the stable by the tractor. Two of them were broken, and there was one whole brown egg. I was a little confused. I know Elizabeth, the only one I thought to lay brown eggs, had been giving me a daily egg, and I had gotten one for the last 5 or 6 days, I thought, and had already gotten hers this morning. Was she laying more than one a day? I took the egg inside and washed it off and set it out to dry.

Later, I went outside to bush hog for a bit. When I came back to the stable to park the tractor, Chris and Finley were standing by a cache of 16 eggs. Now, I doubt they ever stopped laying. They just found a cooler place to do it: under the bush hog. And I was wondering why the polish hen hadn't given me any more eggs once it cooled down... but I guess she still preferred the shelter of the tractor.

So I raked out the old hay to discourage them from laying there any longer. This time the yolk's on them.

Two Year Old Beggar

Z is mastering the art of begging. In her sweet, little voice, she'll ask for things. "Watch Cars, Mom? Pease, Mom, pease?" or "Mo milk, pease? Pease, Mom, pease?" Makes it hard when I need to say 'no'.