tomaatoes

For the second time I discovered my big heavy tomato cages blown over. My son-in-law was with me today when we saw this disheartening sight. His analysis was that the strings I had put up to keep the branches from breaking was pulling them over. So, we set them straight and weighed down the cages with large bricks and then cut all of the strings holding the branches up. He thought that just letting the branches hang down might help to keep them from blowing over. He gave them a good watering and gathered 12 large green tomatoes from where they had fallen. Fried green tomatoes are a favorite of many southern gardeners.

Yesterday I happened upon a squirrel in one of my blueberry bushes. He must have heard the crunch of my golf cart tires on the gravel as he frantically ran back and forth until he must have remembered the fence and scampered up onto a post and was gone. Last year the squirrels got all of the pears in a large pear tree up near the main road. They were seen with pears in their mouths, coming down the tree and running away. I would never have thought that squirrels would eat pears, or perhaps they thought they had found the mother lode of nuts !! And did not even have to crack them.!

I have seen some strange things around this place. A number of years ago, possibly ten, we were having a rare snow fall. It had just begun to snow and I was watching out the front windows when I saw what at first appeared to be a dog. But it proved to be a red fox and he was romping and jumping and running around playing in the snow. He was just as excited as could be. I had to believe it was his first snow !

Foxes do not generally show themselves. I once saw one on my back, brick porch. He had the thinnest little legs. Another time I was coming home after dark . As I drove around to the back of my house my headlights fell on a fox which was standing at the top of a stone wall. I stopped my car about twenty feet from him. He stood still for about thirty seconds and then was gone.

I recall my first encounter with wildlife when I was around age five living in southeastern Kentucky, I was playing in the woods behind our home and came across some baby rabbits in their nest with their eyes still closed. I watched in wonder and then quietly slipped away. I was reminded of that experience a number of years ago. I have thirty windows across the front of my living room. They are covered with triple honeycomb shades. They face the south and I keep them closed in hot weather so my house is cooler. Ond day I raised one of them about twelve inches and walked away. Later I was looking out and saw a rabbit patiently sitting there under the branches of a cotoneaster bush. I carefully came closer and witnessed a mother rabbit crouched over her nest - a depression in the ground - patiently allowing her babies to nurse. I left the blinds in that same position in order to observe them. The next time my grandson came to see me they were still there but much larger. We went out to see them firsthand and just our presence a few feet away frightened them, as they scampered into the grass and on to the woods. Perhaps some of the brown bunnies I see around here from time to time are the descendants of those little babies we watched. At least I like to think so.