Joy Nicholson lives in New Mexico with 
| Gardening With Dogs: An Eco Disaster in One Act |
| Saturday, 15 May 2010 | Joy Nicholson | Blog Entry |
|
The toilet plunger? A dog toy. My last remaining nice French bra? Ditto. A stack of library books? Why… dog toys of course! Verrrry fun to tear the pages out of! Plus, makes neat little confetti piles for hours of continuous bedlam! One day last harvest season, between yelling, “Salty, take your brother out of your mouth!” and “Buddy! Stop licking the doorknob!”, I was hobbling around wearing one shoe, while scanning desperately for the other in the turnip patch. Late to work, half-crazed, I mistakenly left the garden gate open. Which is how I came across the hugest, neatest, repurposed dog toy of all! The garden itself! As I walked to and fro through rows, desperately seeking an admittedly hideous, purple, size 7½ pump (Could I have somehow mistakenly taken off a high-heeled pump while gardening and forgotten I had done it? And why?), I started to lose my lunch. Literally. Potatoes, turnips and beets… all were disappearing on a conveyer belt of teeth. Somehow, after behaving pretty well until harvest time—only occasionally sneaking in for a tidbit, instead usually interested in the horse turds next door—my pack discovered the joy of harvesting my veggie garden. Not only was there the fun of digging, tugging apart stakes and ruining pretty little rows—there was the really fun part. Surrealist tag! Baby vegetable maul! Plus playing chase with a sweating, tripping, cursing, running, wild-eyed monster—me—so funny when foaming at the mouth! “Dagmar! Drop that beet! Drop it! No—we are not playing. This is not a game.” The crazier I got, the more 180s the dogs did, throwing root vegetables into the air. “Drop that carrot, Poppycock! Before I get, you know, really mad!” Ha! I could see the mirth in Balderdash’s eyes. “Look as Mom gets really mad and red and sweaty! And look at that Comfrey burr go into her bare foot! Ha! Bet she can’t catch us now!” “Wow! Look at that ugly purple vein coming out of her neck!,” I imagined Farrah Fawcett Minor—all blonde four pounds of her, barking to her friends. “Kind of like the color of that pump we chewed up yesterday!” Now the half-dressed thing was bad enough. (I was wearing pajama pants, a formal blazer and one purple pump. I was terrified some paparazzi might be around—cuz you know—they often stalk farmers and dog rescuers.) But while I panicked, typical chihuahua cunning was at work. While the show-offs grabbed my attention, platoons of diligent, quiet chihuahua thieves quietly dug up all the fingerling potatoes. “Guys! You break it. You eat it.” And so they did. One delicate tooth mark at a time. And, of course, they found each hard-won vegetable worthy of only a few tooth pricks. Just enough to make them too gross to serve to company. I told my husband, “We won’t be having any guests this season.” I’m hoping to stick to both promises. Mainly, I’m hoping never to garden with dogs again. I can’t starve and wear a single purple pump at the same time. Frankly, I’d rather starve. Updated 5/15/10; originally posted 4/14/09. Copyright 2009-10 EcoHearth. All rights reserved. Reprint Policy
Share This
Email This
Comments
(1)
|
Here at the Rancho de Chihuahua we tend to reuse and repurpose things quite naturally.
Show/Hide comments
