I confess that the longest periods spent in the gardens these past couple of weeks have been devoted to misguided attempts to remove hair from my dogs. They are both standard poodles, and they need regular haircuts. I bought a decent battery operated clipper. Once charged, I led Lucy, my two year old poodle, to the Secret Garden, sat down, and began cutting. Shaving would be a better word, though. I worked on her no more than 10 minutes and decided to stop. I would tackle more later. Because the weather turned cold, later came a few days, um, later. Honestly, she looks like an escapee from a horror movie. Over the course of a week, I was able to shave the parts of her that were likely to mat.
The more difficult task was Bridget. I confess, I’ve barely begun. She only has three legs, so her stamina isn’t all that great. My goal is to keep her from getting matted, and to shave off the dingy white hair. I’m looking at her right now and she’s still really dingy, even in the places that I ran the clippers. I don’t think I have the patience to groom my dogs. I am going to always generously tip my dog groomer.
All of this Covid-19 sheltering in place has been depressing. The private dog park where I take my two year old standard poodle closed down for about a month.
Anyway, it’s hard to celebrate my gardens. But, I just called the irrigation company and made an appointment for them to turn on the system. And, I called the landscaping company to order the shredded bark that goes on all the beds. And, my garden guy has been in the gardens twice and will be returning for more prep, transplanting, and general sprucing. There are things happening in the gardens and I decided that my best approach for documenting would be close ups. So, I dusted off the closest macro lens and started searching for beauty. Odd, that picked up my spirits.
Thank you to Carol who dreamed up Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day as a way to showcase each month what is happening in our gardens.
I read an article that discussed the “medical” end of an epidemic and the “social” end. The author noted that we were now in the social ending of Covid. I knew we were there last week when there was a rapid increase in traffic. I travel daily to the dog park and, masked and gloved, stop mostly at groceries stores on the way back. Today it will be corn tortillas.
I do know that the medical end of this pandemic will not end for a long time.
Garden 337 