Well this morning, THIS woman (me) was watering her garden, and went to fill her water pot from out of the rain barrel, and this is what she saw................... floating in the water.................
(whoops, I forgot to turn the picture right side up). At first I couldn't tell what it was because of the reflection. But the whiskers and the eyes told me that it was either a squirrel or a rat. I didn't stick around long enough to figure out which one, but I guessed it was a squirrel, since we don't really have any rats around here, especially that size. I was a little bit freaked so my knee-jerk reaction was to back away, say "ew!", and walk (very fast) back into the house. I texted Chuck right away - what a time for him to be gone in Seattle! Since he was gone, I knew I was gonna have to handle this on my own. He told me I needed to empty the whole thing out and replace the water, which I already guessed that I would have to do. So I gathered my senses and "manned up" (or "wommanned up") and dumped him out.
Hmm. He looked a lot fluffier when he was floating in the water.
Poor thing. Now I feel bad for him. Or her. I hope there's no orphaned babies.
But I wasn't gonna allow myself to get emotional over a dead squirrel. I grabbed a shovel and flung him into these weeds. For one brief moment he was a dead flying squirrel.
Now I will think of him every time I throw my rhubarb scraps in there. May he rot in peace.
Oh, look! A pretty butterfly came to pay his respects.
Poor squirrel. I really do feel bad for him, but what can I do?
On a different note, we acquired more garden vegetables to raise:
Chuck's secretary gave us 8 acorn squash seedlings. I love acorn squash so of course I wanted them, but where, oh where, am I going to plant them? I got on the internet to learn more about them, and apparently they take up a LOT of room. I found room for two of them in one of my garden beds, and I'm hoping that the roots aren't going to spread and interfere with my other veggies. The plants are intended to grow out, but eventually I am going to have to trellis them up so they don't crowd everything else out.
Now, what to do with the other 6? I hated to throw them away. So we went shopping for more growing pots and some more dirt.
I hope these pots will be big enough. If the plants don't make it, I suppose we have nothing to lose. All I could do was try it. I was going to put them next to the chain-link fence so I could use the fence as a trellis, but for now I decided to line them up next to my bed where they will get more full sun. Eventually I will have to trellis them up somehow, but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.
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