Best-Laid Plans

September 12th was the day three years ago (2014) when a good friend passed away after what seemed to be a short illness (I say "what seemed to be" because I sometimes wonder if she knew more than she was telling). I had not been to the cemetery for quite a while and I decided that the anniversary date of her passing was a good time to remedy that and take some flowers to place on her marker. I had planned to go early in the day, but after doing the things that I needed to get done in the morning, I sort puttered around and did not make an early start and I didn't arrive there about 2:45 PM. There are no stand up headstones in the section where she is buried; rather all graves have flat markers. I always seem to have trouble finding her marker and this time was no exception. I walked out to the row where I thought it was and of course I was wrong. Walking back and forth to the left and to the right, I still could not find the marker. I decided to go back to the row where the markers began and start looking again. Before reaching the street and my car I heard a loud hissing noise and almost immediately was hit with a stream of water right in the face! For a moment I was stunned and didn't move. It was a hot day and the water actually felt good, but only for a moment when I realized I was about to be soaked. Large sections of the cemetery were being watered by large, oscillating sprinklers. Walking quickly I made it back to the road and my car where I stood for some time thinking that I would wait until the watering was done and I could resume my search. That assumption was wrong and after standing in the warm sun for a while, I got back in my car to wait it out. Fifteen minutes later the sprinklers were still going and I was getting a bit frustrated because I knew that traffic was starting to get heavy and it would take more time to get home. I was also disappointed not to be able to place those flowers on the headstone of a good friend. Instead I put the little bouquet at the edge of the grass. On the drive home I felt sad and a little bit bad for not coming sooner.  I also wondered why such a large section of the cemetery was being watered during the afternoon in the hours when people were visiting.

The best-laid plans...

Another Garden Guest

Friend or Foe?

In my previous post about BUGS I complained about the holes I was find in the newly emerged bean bushes, vowing not to plant any more seeds or seedlings if the current ones ended up full of holes or cut off at soil level. A few days after I posted that the plants had grown several more inches and there were no more holes in the leaves. In the next weeks blossoms formed and opened on the bushes, could beans be far behind? Soon that question was answered. Little beans of all colors started appearing. I have since been able to harvest enough beans for 3 meals and I think I can probably pick enough for one more meal. The little garden has a drip system of irrigation but there are sometimes some dry spots which I usually water with a hose to make sure it doesn't dry out. Yesterday when I was watering I noticed a movement in among the bean bushes, looking down I saw a slim snake curled up against the the boards of the raised garden bed. This snake didn't want to meet me or the water coming out of the hose and it somewhat frantically moved around, managing to slither up and over the edge of the border around the garden. It found a safe space under the bucket we use to make compost. Today we found either that same snake or another one (I wasn't able to get a good look at it) making it's way across the deck. From what I saw it looked somewhat smaller than the one I saw yesterday. I am fairly certain that the snake(s) were Garter snakes. They are generally slim and their average length is 22 inches. I did some research and found that Garter snakes can sometimes give birth to a large number of young. Information varies, but an average seems to be between 7-40! Garter snakes are carnivorous eating a diet of snails, slugs, crickets, garden pests. Now I think I may know where the insects eating my bean plants went! Another part of their diet can be earthworms. Our garden used to have a large number of earthworms and now that I think about it I have not seen many earthworms in our soil. Overall I suppose I should be "thankful" for the snakes as they probably consumed the bugs that first attacked my new seedlings. But I do have an aversion to coming "face to face" with a snake or stepping on one.