In Spades

As with anything else, the work of the garden comes with bright moments and none-so-bright ones. This morning -- blustery, overcast, heavy with storm-premonitory humidity -- I was spading up some sod, removing it to make a place for planting peas; and I was thinking how gardening implements of iron and steel must have served so often in history as weapons -- so sharp are they, so sturdy, having been fashioned for rough work in the soil. My mind went back to a watercolor I painted back in the early 1980s of some Markrichian characters who were farmers taking up their implements of agriculture for reason of war.

It had to fall after such a meditation that, at last, I did what I long have feared to do, while gardening -- which is to do in one of our most favored garden denizens, genus Bufo. What a moment of horrified realization followed the act. The spade I was using, in common with most of our garden tools, is venerable ... and it has a name upon it, a somewhat suggestive one: "Razor-Lite." The manufacturer was Union Fork & Hoe Company.

I will atone for this inadvertent violence ... although I can hope I have served enough time in anuran habitat support, and in tadpole-raising activities, still to be viewed with sedate impartiality by the Great Toad in the sky -- or in the earth. Yet the idea of raising tadpoles again is far from distasteful: so I might as well engage in that atonement.

Later in the morning I was using another old implement, a cultivator, in removing some violets from beside the asparagus bed, and broke the handle where it fits within the cultivator head. The fix will take some doing. it being so fine a tool, the fix will be worth doing, though.

Near the Hansen's cherry bushes, I saw I had set my white coffee mug on an overturned galvanized tub. To my pleasure I saw it still held cold coffee -- with a tiny cherry blossom petal floating it:

Speck of white upon pool of black within white.

Visually delightful. And delicious.

Cheers ...

Author Shot

An Author Shot

Actually no more than portions of two hands, one of them hidden within a wrecked leather glove, are visible here of the author. In most of my previous lives I looked like what these hands hold, however; and no doubt in my next earthly cycle, having earned enough cosmic bonus points by writing the Kornbluth biography, I will return to the simple and contented state of once more looking this way.

March is not quite over and already Bufo americanus has come twice into my life, both times because of my spadework. As best I could tell, fortunately, I hurt neither one. (Last year Martha dug up two, too, around this time of year.) A few days ago I uncovered one next to the blueberries; yesterday, I spaded up some dirt to fling it deeper into another garden plot -- and saw this upside-down, pale-bellied thing with gangly limbs akimbo where I had tossed the spadeful.

I brought it inside to let it say hello to Martha; and since Martha happened to be photographing a few small items in the kitchen, I thrust the philosophic creature into digital immortality -- a little close to the camera, admittedly.

Cheers ...