A Suburban Murder Mystery

The Front Yard Bunny

So last week I caught a rabbit red-handed eating my beans. So I went out and bought a gate for the garden and sprayed everything with my homemade garlic-hot-pepper-Ivory-Soap spray. 

A few days later, I found a dead rabbit in the back yard. I don't know if someone poisoned it - some of the neighbors use chemicals in their gardens - or maybe a predator hurt it - maybe it got hit by a car and dragged itself into the yard to die. I'm not even sure it's the same rabbit I've seen in the yard every day. 

All I know is that it was dead. Dead as a doornail. 

I disposed of the corpse but I was concerned that now I'd have baby bunnies starving to death in the yard. I considered leaving food around the deck but feared I'd attract every deer, fox and coyote for miles.  Who would probably eat the baby bunnies. Bad idea. 

The next morning as I was leaving for work, I saw an adult bunny hopping across the front yard. 

Now we have a mystery. 

Who was the victim? Was it the Dad Bunny?  I didn't get close enough to check, but it looked bigger than the one I normally see in the front yard. 


Do I have more than one Bunny Family?

Perhaps this was not a sad happenstance of natural selection. Perhaps the late Bunny was a casualty of an on-going vicious turf war between the front yard Bunnies and the back yard Bunnies. 

Some scary shit goin' down here in Suburbia. 

Dragons, Gargoyles and Pink Flamingos...

Le Garden - en mulch

We seem to be slipping into a gardening frenzy here. The garden is all neatly fenced, raised beds full of tomatoes, peppers, squash and beans - red mulch on the outside, brown mulch on the insides. Blueberries are in pots on a bed of red mulch under a cage to keep the birds away.



Blooooooooberries!

Today, Sparky and I went mulch shopping and stopped in a garden shop full of concrete figurines. We "oohed" and "ahhhed" over the dogs, angels, lions and birds, dragons and gargoyles, the gazing balls and even some lawn jockeys (who knew they still sold those?) ... but then, we stopped ourselves.

Thank Goodness.

Here in New England, the addiction to lawn ornaments is an epidemic. It's a slippery slope from one cute concrete gnome to Mary-On-The-Halfshell and Pink Flamingos.

 Our house is surrounded by solar lights and (are you sensing a theme here? ) red mulch.  I'm thinking we can skip the chatchkes for now.

Although, there's room in the back yard for a Koi pond...

50 Shades of Pink

Blooming, Blooming, Blooming!

Ever since that last post about Her, this concrete-busting columbine plant has been in perpetual bloom.  Feeling lucky, I bought and planted a blue columbine nearby. Within a day, every friggin' flower fell off the plant.

Blue Columbloomless

To make Her point, this is what sprouted up about 7 inches from the blue plant ...

Ta dah!

Just in case the message was unclear... Mistress Mother Nature (I once again surrender to Her Supreme Awesomeness) prefers the columbines in this garden pink.

Now if only she could do something about the Bear's wardrobe...

50 Shades of Green

Some people picture Mother Nature as a benevolent, loving Earth-mother hippie chick. Not me, I see her more like this:

Yes, Mistress

She is a harsh Mistress. We live on her planet. Our purpose here is to serve Nature.  

Some people have this misguided idea that they can control Nature. Take for example, my neighbor - the Ninja Gardener.   She spends enormous amounts of time and energy mowing and planting and weeding and watering and weed-whacking and fertilizing… and yet, her lawn still looks like a brown and yellow patchwork quilt.

Other “suburbians” pay exorbitant prices for lawn services in their quest for perfect green-ness.  A huge truck comes to your home weekly and full grown lawn gnomes spill out and spray a chemical soup on your grass and then disappear. They leave behind tiny white flags and a lawn that looks like Astroturf.  

Not me. I have accepted Mother Nature’s dominance over me. I embrace the dandelions and in return, she scatters my yard with violets and 4 leaf clovers, and later in the summer – wild strawberries.

It took me a while to get it. When we first bought this house, I planted a columbine in the front yard, but it didn’t take. I planted another one in that same perfect, shady spot the next year, but it died within a month. I tried a third year, same result. (OK, so I’m persistent) Then, I gave up. And that same spring … a beautiful pink columbine sprouted through the concrete between the stones on my front walk. I’ve tried to dig it up, but it persistently comes back every year, bigger and more vigorous than the year before.

She wants it HERE

I take this as a direct message from Mother Nature. “Surrender, Fool – Resistance is futile.”

Last year, I didn’t do any yard work. Didn’t clean out the flowerbeds, didn’t weed… and the Dogwood tree in the front yard didn’t blossom.  This year, I’ve been diligently caring for the yard… and look.

My Dogwood Tree :)

But now I’ve got to cover my petunias.

There are little white flags on the lawn across the street.

The Weatherman is predicting frost tonight.

Some folks never learn.