spring and the little man in my garden

The William Shakespeare Mulberry is weeping quietly in my yard. I pruned him up this spring – cut him deep. Remnants of the past summer of his hairy dreams litter a sunken brick path now, and the little man who lives in my garden picks through the detritus. He is saying, 'tut, tut' like so much illusive Poo. The little man has been busy. How can someone so diminutive pack such a virulent punch? He is crooked from bending and creeping beneath the undergrowth, though at this early stage of the growing season he is fairly easy to spot. I can stand inside the picture window and see him easily as he sows his weed seeds like the curses that spew from his foul imp lips.

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Yesterday I pulled binoculars from my closet to spy upon the circling hawks. They were hovering in packs over the near wooded lots of neighboring avenues. Toby stood against the window, thinking maybe I had spotted that rabbit he so doggedly pursues. I caught him lying on his side peering beneath the shed. Was he hoping the rabbit would come out to play? Probably not, as he oftentimes looks out the dining room window and menacingly growls at the fur-tailed rodent while it sups on shoots outside the front door. Fur-tailed indeed; but I would wear its lucky foot around my belt if I could catch it nibbling the shrubs down to a nub over the long winter dearth.

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Today I will throw the trimmings on a fire and let the strong west winds carry the smoke away. I'll carve out another bed, lay the foundations of a short walking path leading from the fence to our short plank deck and try not to let the gruff rumblings of the little man who lives in my garden ruin a sunny day. The crisp air will cool my exertions while the wind cracklin blaze might muffle idle exacerbation from a gnome who dislikes fecund pleasantries. It's spring – bring it on.

Experimenting with Roman numerals , day IV .

The weather here has been no surprise . People will say , “Gosh , this has been a crazy spring ,” or “It has certainly been a wet summer so far .” You know , every year it’s an odd spring , and every year summer is either hot and mugly right off the bat , or it is wet . The weather is the weather , and it’s always the same or it’s different .

The really funny thing about this year are the multi-cultural gnomes living in my garage .

I’ll explain : Usually by this time of the year I have my garage and backyard shed emptied out and cleaned from top to bottom . Dust , leaves , spiders , dislocated nuts and bolts , etcetera , etcetera and so forth . This year I don’t know what happened . Either the extremely wet weather or my abject laziness has kept me from my duties . I vote for the weather , because , damn it !, I’ve been working hard and I’m tired , and I really did need all of those afternoon naps , and all the extra rain had me mowing the lawn more often so every dry moment was used up by the mowing of said grass , and golly gee , can’t a guy just be lazy now and then ?

Stupid garage … the cars don’t care if the garage is dirty , do they ?
Anyway , I guess it was time to clean the garage out at least . The wife was out of town for a few days , and it’s not like I was going to have a party or invite over some dancing girls . I don’t know any dancing girls , and I’m down to only a half dozen beers in the fridge , and they’re about 6 months old . I’m saving them for a nice dry night off when I can start a fire out back and kick back to watch the embers glow and slowly get stoned on stale beer and not worry about dragging my butt out of bed at 4 in the morning to stumble into work . Time to make the donuts . Gahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh . Kill me .

Clean the garage , right , OK . Maybe I should trim the shrubs first . No ! Clean the garage . It’s a pit ; you can’t even walk out to grab a can of pop any more without getting something wedged between your toes , or tracking dirt and cottonwood seeds into the kitchen . Cripes all mighty !

Forget the damned shrubs … forget the shed , leave the weeds alone for a couple days , what’ll they do , grow 6 inches over night and uproot the coreopsis ? Well , maybe …but forget it ; clean the garage !

Sure , it’s due . First thing is to move everything mobile out into the driveway . Then pick up all those boards and wood you were saving to re-floor the shed . Shift everything else to one side of the garage and sweep out the edges and corners , then grab the dust pan to collect the debris and chuck it all .

First thing I noticed was there was a big crack in the plastic dust bin that sat by the work bench . Probably because I was using it as a gauge to park my car . When I would drive into the garage , I would see the swimming noodle move the second my bumper made contact with the bin . At that point I would stop and switch off the engine . Sure beats running into the work bench .

Inside this dust bin were the following : A swimming noodle , 3 strands of Christmas lights , various screws , a bag of bird food ( put there because the chipmunks were getting to it on top of the workbench ) , and some Miracle Grow that had fallen off the work bench and caused everything in the bin to turn a faint shade of blue .

It was a motley collection of crap , it was . And because of the crack in the bin , now the chippies could get right into it and feast on the birdseed . And they did . And they chewed the swim noodle , and they nibbled the electric cords and licked the colors off of the bulbs , and they stuck the nuts and bolts into their cheeks and made goofy faces at each other , and all of it was coated with a thin film of chemical fertilizer so they ate that up , too .

You’d think it was enough to kill the poor little varmints , and it almost did . Man , I don’t relish the tummy aches they must have suffered . But they came out of it OK , and then went back for more . Don’t you know , they ate it , and hoarded it , and passed it on to their neighbor ground squirrels over a couple of three-day weekends until it was all gone . Then they went back to digging up my crocus bulbs and eating those .

Of course , the little creeps ended up having babies . They thought ‘why not , times are good ; there’s all this blue food laying about , so let’s have a peck of ‘lil ones .’
Good idea , bad execution .

Back to the garage . I‘m moving stuff around and sweeping and such , and I get down low to sweep under the workbench and hear this chattering and what sounds like cursing . You can always tell when someone is swearing , just by the tone , even if the words are in a different tongue . Chipmunks swear pretty damn good . These guys were letting me have it with both barrels . I was disturbing their dust . Geez . Anyway , I grabbed a flashlight and lit it up and pointed it under the bench . Holy … Unbelievable .

These guys were a furry , sparkly , cushiony conglomeration of raging , toothy , chipmunk-gnomes and they were living in my garage and building a miniature city out of spare hardware and stolen scraps . There were piles of empty soda cans that they were linking together with vacuum hose to build some kind of underworld sputnik station . I could smell the petrol they were collecting in a small vat , and a can of lawnmower oil was laying on its side . The things’ eyes were blue , like a native Arakin’s , and every hair on their body lit up like a fiber optic party lamp .

I would have seen more , but the whole bunch of them were brandishing the wrenches that I had lost earlier but never really missed because I didn’t actually have any use for wrenches .
Needless to say , I left them to their business and got along with mine . They can have that little portion of the garage , and I’ll be sure to keep mine clutter free for now on . I’m hoping that they finish up with their project and move out of my neat and clean garage . The neighbors , I’ve noticed are kind of slobs ; maybe their sloppy garage will be more appealing to the chipmunk-creatures that I have in my sloth created .

Last night I spread a trail of birdseed over there , and left the open bag inside the overhead door . Don’t tell .