Tails From Rainbow Bridge: The Warm Up Angels

This is a picture of my garden.  I am very proud of it.  During the long, cold, snowy winter I would enter Mommy’s dreams and we would spend all night planning every plant and flower down to the final detail. But we were not prepared for two additions.

The first can barely be seen.  It is a pink rose bush.  It is a shoot from Daddy’s grandfather’s rose bush. It is wrapped around the small black trellis at the bottom of the picture.   Daddy’s cousin Jan had been the caretaker of the family flower and we were honored to share caretaking duties although I was not sure I wanted the rose bush in my garden but Mommy assured me with a little luck we would soon have lovely pink roses to put a smile on the face of my blue lady.

The second detail was my angel.  For two years after my passing my angel lit up my garden at night.  It spent the winter in the shed where it would be safe and unburied.  Early in the spring Daddy took it out of the shed and planted it at the edge of my garden by the bush Hobo Hudson’s parents sent me.  But when the sunset my angel would not come to light.

Mommy and I knew what we had to do.  It was time for a new angel.  She found a special angel that lit even brighter and changed color.  Mommy ordered it and a few days later it arrived.

Daddy took it out of the package and put it in the ground.  I couldn’t wait to see it.  I was sure it would be the prettiest angel ever.  Daddy took the old angel, the one who looked over my garden for two years, the one that shone all night long and let my parents know I was thinking of them, and brought it over to the trash barrel.  

Suddenly I realized I could not let my angel go.  It had served me so loyally.  It is very difficult for an angel to change something on the mortal side of the bridge but I concentrated on my original angel as much as I could.  Daddy had placed it in the trash and was closing the top when I made the angel light up for the first time this spring.

Daddy saw it glowing and removed it from the trash.  He brought it over to the garden and put it opposite the new angel and waited for night time.  Right at dusk, before my new angel lit up, the old angel shined brightly.  it didn’t shine for long, and was extinguished shortly after my new brighter, more colorful angel lit up.

I am so happy my original angel is shining again if only for a short time.  I have my original angel, now my warm angel, shine first, until my main angel comes on.  I love having two angels in my garden.  And I am so glad my warm up angel is working again 

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.

Time to tend to my garden by Foley Monster

Finally my minions have melted the ice rink, most of the water has run off, and we even have some grass shoots coming up.  I do apologize for the long winter (and especially to Enzo. There is still lots of snow on Enzo mountain due to a leaky ice machine.  It was my first winter at the Bridge and I learned a late season hockey tournament was a bad idea.  I am going to make up for it with lots of heat lamps to help my garden grow here.  Lots and lots of heat lamps

Not only do I have to worry about the gardens I am planting up here (I am going to be doing lots of watering once I have planted my seeds so those of you who live along coastal areas or waterways I am issuing a flash flood warning until the beginning of June.  If this had been an actual emergency I would have appeared in your dreams and barked:  “Head for the hills!)

But  the Bridge garden is not the only one that I am concerned with.  I have to start planning my earthly gardens for the spring.  I have visited Mommy in her dreams and she is already buying flowers for my garden to make is look beautiful.  

Next to my garden was the wheelbarrow garden.  At the end of last season the wheelbarrow, which, against my advice, was bought on the cheap at Walgreens, predictably fell apart.  Mommy has money set aside for another cheap wheelbarrow, but in the interim Grampy passed, and Daddy took the St Anthony statue (he is the patron saint of lost things and no one loses more things than my forgetful parents) from his garden and put it in the wheelbarrow garden, which I do hope is going to be named he St Anthony garden because if you cross over the Bridge and on your questionnaire you state that you had a St Anthony statue in your garden but still named the garden after a cheap wheelbarrow you will be going to hell.

Mommy has told Daddy that they won’t be spending as much money on the gardens this year because of the number of perennials she planted.  HAH!  Mommy said the same thing about Christmas gifts for the grandchildren and his credit card still shows bruises.  My parents constant gardening produced multiple trash bags filled with landfill, weeds and grass, so much so that the management company is limiting the amount of trash bags residents can put out.  Although their gardens are much admired Mommy and Daddy aren’t the most popular duo in the Village of the Pruned.

They have already dipped into the kibble account to buy a rain barrel, something that would not have happened if I had any need for kibble.  They collect the rain from the roof and keep it in the barrel and then use it to water the yard where the rain would have gone anyway.  I swear the whole household has gone to hell since I departed.

But most importantly I want my garden, Foley’s garden, to be tended to properly.  The first step is to send a message to my sisters:  STOP PEEING IN MY GARDEN.  I mean it.  My buds are blooming, my crocuses are up, and while I didn’t mind when my flowers are dormant I don’t want your water waste amongst my blooms.

Once my sisters control their kidneys my flowers can begin to bloom and a little bit of my soul will be alive just outside my parents window.  

And they are on strict order not to let anyone pee in it.

Foley's Garden

Foley's Garden with beautiful hydrangea plant from Hobo Hudson, memorial stone from Smoochy, and solar powered angel