Every day as I bring my bike through the gate into the back yard, my eyes are on the garden. How are the carrots? Does the eggplant have a blossom? Are the raspberries quite, quite over? Today I shrieked in dismay and grief, because squirrels scaled my sunflowers and decapitated them again.
The first year, I naïvely planted regular sunflowers--big, happy-faced, seed-bearing sunflowers. Squirrels decapitated them as soon as the flowers bloomed. The next year I planted a non-seeding variety that put out several small flowers instead of one big head, and that they left alone. Last year I planted what were called Mexican sunflowers, also many-flowered, non-seeding, and of several colors, and those were spared as well. This year I tried a variety called Moulin Rouge, again non-seeding, and the first blossom that emerged had absolutely lovely petals, dark red in front with yellow backs.
Non-seeding but still tasty, apparently, and the vermin don't care whether something's in fruit anyway: they dug up both eggplants while they were yet seedlings. I expected them to, when RDC wanted to give eggplant another try, so the one plant's death didn't break my heart and I don't expect them to spare any fruit from the survivor. But sunflowers! Those two years lulled me into hope. Plus, since these sunflowers were not along the fence, the rodents had to scale them, cracking or at least weakening the stalks, so I doubt any more flowers can come.
Fucking squirrels.
So bookclub is just what I needed. We talked about Bel Canto and ate lox and talked about immunizations (for Monkey and for Stick, which is what I'm going to call the stick-loving two-year-old we all adore) and Erin's 170-mile bicycle weekend. AEK and Maven want to come cheer me on Sunday, which is so sweet, and the three of us in a tangle of legs and hand-massages consulted only our own calendars before announcing to Kal the weekend we want to go to her cabin. Scarf and I danced to whatever salsa-y music the hostess was playing.
Maven pretended embarrassment at whatever mystery she's reading now and I said hey, I still read Jean Auel, so have no shame. She hasn't read the latest one, and I offered to lend it to her if she wanted, as unsatisfying as it is, from my cache of trash, with the V.C. Andrews. She said Flowers in the Attic had inspired her to take ballet lessons, and we all cracked up: "As long as that's all it inspired you to do!"
It was a nice evening and distracted me from my savaged sunflowers.