Pocket Says Goodbye to the Flowers

I got out of bed with Daddy Friday morning to do my business.  We went out on the porch, I looked through the window, saw the snow and let out a deep sigh. Not because the snow makes my paws cold, which it does, or the air makes me shiver, which it does, but because my main responsibility, garden design and supervision, was done for several months.

Mommy loves doing gardening but frankly she has no design skills.   She used to rely on Foley, who had an excellent eye for layout, but when she accepted her Judgeship it fell to me to supervise.  (Foley still visits me in my dreams to tell me how she wants things but I like to add my own little twists now and then.)

Every Monday morning, from mid-March until mid-November River Song and I would be placed in our overseer’s buggy to watch my parents work.  For the next three to five hours, by pointing, barking, and whining, we would show Mommy which plant to put where so the colors would burst and complement one another.  

We started out doing it when the grass was yellow and full of sticks, when there were few flowers growing, we were there when the temperature turned warmer and all the pretty flowers bloomed, we were there when it was hot, humid and dry and Mommy spent lots of time watering her plants.

Often Foley would take the form of a butterfly and float down to check on our work.  She would fly around seeing how it looked from above.  She landed on one flower, then another, and that would mean Mommy had to switch them.  When she was satisfied Foley would land on Mommy’s shoulder then fly away.

Even though we spent most of our time in a little buggy where it was hot and we didn’t have a lot of room to stretch out it was our favorite time of the week.  We were outside, we were with our humans, we were making Foley’s wishes come true, we were making the world a more beautiful place.  Even with their being no laps, no cuddling, no petting, we loved it.

But now winter air has left the ground cold and unbreakable, all the pretty flowers have gone to sleep, the leaves are gone, the tools put away, soon all to be covered with white.  But we have a new section of garden planned.  When the terrible awful no good day happened and they dug up the driveway when they repaved it they left it ten feet short.  Some of that is now stones, some is paving stones, and some is a new garden.

So if we can survive two cold months of winter, then March will be here, and we can go out and work the Earth as a family again.

Sleep well flowers.  We will be back.