”I wonder if starting my
vegetable garden this year was such a good idea.” I could not believe the
damage that a thunderstorm, the previous night and my young, black Labrador puppy had done to it. “What a mess! Am I going
to be able to rescue any of it?” I asked myself, as I made the decision to see
what I could salvage.
Planting a vegetable garden in
a new sub-division can be a lot of work, but it is usually worth the effort
when it starts to produce results, so when we moved into our new home in
southern Ontario, in 1987, it was first on my spring agenda.
Finding an appropriate place
for a vegetable garden on a new lot can be a challenge too, especially when a
front-end loader has to come in to level out the yard for seeding grass and a six-foot, wooden
fence is required. Then a new homeowner has to deal with picking up, moving
and disposing of all of the construction debris including wood, rocks, chunks
of cement, etc.
Small, garden wheelbarrows work
great to carry whatever one finds to a low-lying back corner of a lot that
still needs landfill once the front-end loader is finished. Then soil and
composted topsoil can be dumped on top of it and voila, a potential, garden
site!
Such was the beginning of my
new garden plot. Whatever did not belong elsewhere immediately went to the back
corner of the lot, which was still too low and quite wet. That included
branches, logs, sticks, weeds and everything else that might serve as either
landfill at the bottom, or compost, on top of it. It was heavy work!
Maximillian, or Max for short,
was a bright, happy puppy, who stayed close by my side, as I worked to fill in
the low area where my new vegetable garden was destined to be. Whatever I did,
Max helped me with, or thought he did. As often as not, he would grab something right out of my hand and run away with it. He received a lot of extra attention by
doing just that. Grab and run was the name of his game. We were both busy and
having fun!
The lot was a fair size, so it
took about a week for me to build up the area for my new vegetable garden.
During that time it became his play area too, as he knew that was where I
focused most of my attention. From the middle of the garden plot, he could see
through the fence. He barked at the other neighborhood dogs, but could not get
out of the yard to chase them.
After many hours of back
breaking work, the base for the new garden was finally completed. The garden
now had soil and composted topsoil. The seeds planted, the bedding-out plants
transplanted and the rows well marked, my new garden was perfect! It looked as
good as any garden I could see in the surrounding neighborhood and better than
most.
That night, about ten o’clock,
there was a major thunderstorm, in our area. Suddenly, the rain came pelting
down. Max was outside. He was excited, running back and forth, jumping up and
down, and barking at the thunder and lightning, or so I thought.In the
distance, I could hear a chorus of other dogs barking, too.
I decided to bring him inside.
He was wet and enjoyed all the attention associated with getting his fur dry.
By nature, Max was quite mischievous and fun to play with, as he grabbed the
towel and took off with it!
Over the next few hours, Max
would not settle down. Instead, he kept running back and forth to the back
door. He jumped up and down and barked repeatedly regardless of what I did, or
said. I finally gave up and put him back outside, so he could run off his excess
energy.
At midnight, the police
suddenly appeared at my front door. Someone had complained about dogs barking,
in our area.
I quickly apologized for Max
and promised to bring him in. Now, he was thoroughly drenched and covered with
mud. I cleaned him up again, but even then, he would not settle down. Uncertain
as to why Max and the other dogs kept on barking, I put him on his leash, took
him outside and sat down with him at my feet, in the back patio, a relatively
sheltered area.
“Be quiet,” I insisted, every
time he barked.
The storm was getting worse. It
was raining even heavier. The sky was constantly lit up with sheet lightning,
as well as intermittent streaks of white lightning. There were repeated bouts
of loud thunder.
Much to my surprise, I suddenly
realized Max and the other dogs were not barking at the thunder and lightning.
What they were reacting to was an intermittent, flashing, blue-white welding
light emanating from the neighbor’s garage on the lot behind ours.
It was a long night for me, as
the neighbor continued to work in his garage, until the wee hours of the morning.
Even after the storm died down, Max and the other dogs still barked, whenever
the blue-white light flashed.
Morning finally dawned quiet,
clear and bright.
Everything in the back yard was
drenched and there were huge puddles of water everywhere. Max had tracked a lot
of mud into the patio area too, and so I had my work cut out for me that day.
My garden looked like a total
disaster, as he had virtually destroyed everything in it. Most of my
bedding-out plants had disappeared, but there were still a few, partially buried plants
visible in the mud.
A few days later, after the top
soil in the garden had a chance to dry, I re-planted my garden. I had rescued a few of the
original tomato, cabbage and green pepper plants originally planted beside the new fence.
I replanted them, along with some new bedding plants. A good portion of
what I originally planted was lost forever, but some of the plants reappeared
later, in the most unexpected places.
To make a long story short,
this proved to be my worst and funniest vegetable garden experience ever, as
everything I had planted as seeds, just grew wherever. The corn came up in
among the beans. The peas and carrots grew in the midst of the potatoes.
Squash, zucchini and pumpkin seeds sprouted all over the back yard. My seed-onions
sprouted on the other side of the fence. Most of my sunflower seeds came to
full bloom on the opposite side of the yard.
“Silly me,” I said. “Why did I
not think to put a fence around my garden, or at least, tie you up?” I asked my
puppy, who did not seem to think anything was wrong. He continued to be the
same, happy little dog.
“Next year will be better,” I
decided. It was. By then, Max was a year older, as well as a far wiser dog with
his own fenced-off play area.
.
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