Caught

While weeding the vegetable garden I am often so focused on getting out those nasty things that I don't notice much of what else goes on around me. This morning was no exception. We have two beautiful mature trumpet vines in our backyard right next to the vegetable garden. I love them, but have learned a few things about having trumpet vines. First, if you till up the area where a lot of the root stalk is to level out that ground for a garden bed you will cut some of the stalk into tiny pieces. If you leave these pieces in the ground they will become their own new plant that you then have to constantly pull out of the garden. Second, if you pull it out of the ground, but don't exactly throw it all the way out of the bed, it will re-plant itself. Third, if a vine from the original plant touches the ground long enough it will grow it's own root system and become another new plant. The trumpet vine is a very hardy plant.

All this adds up to a whole lot of weeding the stinking thing out of the vegetables. I was doing just that this morning when I looked up through the monstrous pumpkin vine and saw Suzie, our cat, walking up the back sidewalk. Happy to see her I put down my tools to start to pet her. Then she came a little closer and I saw she was bringing me a present. A live bird fighting to get free. And she was bringing it straight to me!

I did what any normal person would do. I jumped up and ran to the back door to get Daniel to save the bird. I was yelling, "Let it go Suzie! Let it go!" The door was locked so I couldn't get Daniel soon enough. Suzie brought the bird right to where I had been weeding and started to try to thoroughly kill it while I watched horrified at the back door.

Luckily this bird had a lot of fight in it because it got away and flew to the power lines by the time that Daniel got to the back door. Suzie was so disappointed. I went back to weeding and saw all the little feathers the bird had lost in the fight.

That poor little bird. Also, I'm very happy to report that the fight did not injure any of the asparagus they were tussling in.

As an aside, the garden is going fine. When we left I thought all the bell pepper plants had died, but lo and behold there's a single plant still out there. The peas unfortunately did not fare the hot weather without watering so very well. We had quite a few pea pods starting to grow before we left and when we got back they were all brown and dried. Oh well, I'll keep some for next year when we plant them earlier. The pumpkins are crazy and so are the carrots, so at least we'll have something of a crop.