true dirt

There are moments in my garden when it feels like Eden and then there are the times I feel I’ve stepped into the killing fields. Everything seems intent on eating everything else. It started with the piercing distress calls of the Brown Towhees who had obviously watched Fraidy the cat haul away their baby– which i found shortly in the basement. The unlucky fledgling did not survive and my attempts to quarantine the cat until after nesting season are only marginally successful. Meanwhile the garden is a mass of chewed, mangled, stripped, shriveled and uprooted plants. Something is boring holes into the buds of the hollyhocks, Mexican sages, and pentstemon leaving empty bracts and mangled half-blooms. The newly planted pimentos have had their stems ploughed by slugs and snails. Aphids cover the new rose buds in a chartreuse cawl. Japanese beetles are snacking on the open rose petals. Cutter bees have turned the rose leaves into green half-moons. The Towhees are doing their hopping dance in the dirt to find bugs and kicking up seedlings. The squirrels and Scrub Jays are excavating my herb pots. And I watched a Cooper’s hawk carry off a small songbird in its talons yesterday afternoon. My garden–it’s a cat-eat-bird-eat-bird-eat-bug-eat-bud world.