“We’ve kicked onion-butt today, Dee,” commented Christopher, my tired garden helper. Groaning, I stood up and stared at the umpteenth pile of dug-up ornamental onions we’d jammed into old buckets and wheelbarrows, or simply tossed onto the grass, to be raked away later. I swear the secret garden has breathed a sigh of relief. It’s lost weight quickly.
They’ll be back, though. Those beautiful wretches love my soil, and multiply faster than I can dig them up. It’s simply amazing how many onions have replicated, from the seven fat beauties I planted ten years ago. I’d researched them; there’d been no warnings. Now hundreds were everywhere. We’ve reeked of pungent onions for days. Christopher took some home to see if his hens might be interested; they clucked in disgust and ignored his offering. Chickens are smart.
When trying to haul out the darn things I’d keep bumping into ducks. Romeo and Juliet would paddle around in my four-foot wide pool, poop copiously into that ‘fowl’ water, then settle happily into newly seeded grass, exactly in my way. I’d move too close, dripping onions, and he’d quack a warning: I had to move to the side. It’s my garden, yet I had to accommodate them. Vociferous complaints were ignored. They’d simply tuck their beaks under their wings and tune me out. (Personally, I think Romeo is past it. Juliet doesn’t seem fazed by the lack of ducklings. Or nest. In love, she just goes where he tells her to go, and that’s that.
Harriet Duck has hatched two ‘lings,’ and proudly shepherds them around the fairy garden, but she always stays well away from these two. Quackhead, her mate, is never around. (I’ve fleetingly wondered if Romeo has a bird on the side (Harriet). Maybe that other furtive duck-dude was Romeo. But wouldn’t Juliet know? Can ducks in love be oblivious to such important things? How faithful are mallards males, anyway?)
The secret garden is organized now, and tidy. Everything in here grows an inch or two a day. It’s hugely satisfying.
But my home is still awful. I’ve endured over five months of dirt and dust, plastic-sheeted carpets, and our un-dressered clothes and bedding spread all over the library rug, the only room not filthy. (Many of the ceilings and walls had to be repaired after an SUV rammed the house in December. The powerful impact brought down much of the ancient plaster. Various workmen have trundled through the house since then, hauling buckets of plaster, ladders, boards, nails, insulation batting, big machinery, etc., which hasn’t helped.)
Two days ago a top-to-bottom cleaning finally began. On Tuesday we hope to reassemble the beds in their proper rooms, then clean the fourth one (where they’d been piled up). I’ll put freshly laundered bedding on each, and then restock the dressers, which had been emptied so they’d be easier to shift.
Room by room, bit by bit, the new Sunnybank is emerging. Yesterday the upstairs bathroom was transformed! It took my wonderful cleaner the best part of a day to resurrect it.
I took a shower. I can’t describe how fine that was.
Les and Sarah, knowing how things are right now, invited Joe and me for dinner; Emma-dog, their beautiful rottweiler/shepherd mix (rescued three years ago from an unspeakable early life), cried when she saw our car pull in. Holding her beloved tennis ball she rushed to greet us, giving low moans of delight. Always the soul of politeness, she pushed her nose gently into my palm and tried to lick me without dropping the ball. I never tire of watching Emma being joyful.
I offered a small milk bone; her eyes widened as she faced a dilemma- how to keep hold of the ball, yet collect the treat.
She thought.
Then she led me to some vinca vines growing up against the house’s foundation, gently dropped her ball between my shoes, accepted the milk bone, moaned a bit and mouthed it, then delicately pawed a slight hole in the earth, carefully placed the treat in the depression, nosed earth over it, pressed the mound flat with her paw, took up her ball and beseeched me to join her in toss n’ chase. One joy at a time, old friend. Emma has priorities, you see.
Who could resist? We played out there in the twilight for fifteen minutes, till she called a halt and sat in the cool grass, grinning. That was wonderful; thanks ever so!
I was released to join the dinner party inside. She unearthed the bone and happily scarfed it down
A few days later, at Sunnybank, the electrician discovered water in the basement. The source of it was eventually traced to a sprinkler whose buried hose line had been mysteriously severed. Twelve inches were missing. The break was repaired, but a half-day of interior work was lost. Then the attic insulation hit a huge snag. The porch stair steps, though built, haven’t been set in. ARGGGGGH…
I was about to fold into a bawling ball.
Joe, noting widening cracks in my emotional armor, snatched me up and whisked me downstate, then across Port Huron’s bridge and on to Stratford, Canada for 48 hours, to enjoy three plays. Les would run things at Sunnybank. (Stratford, by the way, is only 2.5 hours from the bridge.) I fell sideways onto my pillow on the back seat and slept deeply the whole way, mouth open, body rolled into a tight ball, fingernails still earth-blackened. The border guard, worried that I’d died back there, made Joe shake me briefly awake.
Friday night, after settling into our B and B, we drove into town. ‘Tommy,’ the original rock ‘n roll opera (which debuted in 1969), blew us out of our front row seats with that first chord! What fun! Sunnybank’s sex-mad onions, hose leaks, clueless ducks, insulation difficulties, etc., vanished in the musical blast.
‘The Three Musketeers’ and ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ will keep my exhausted mind off the house, and its seemingly endless challenges.
Big problems often grow smaller when we step away for a bit, eh?