Little Z is napping.
The fawn is settling herself down after the excitement of getting tangled in computer and printer cords.
Wait. Fawn?
Two years ago, we had a bottle fawn whom we affectionately named Frosty. She was a late-comer to the herd, and as such had a below-average hope of survival. So we bottle-fed her and kept her in the garden. Some of you remember this.
You probably also remember that by the end of the summer, I was beyond ready to wash my hands of her and return her to the herd.
So what on earth?
Well, for starters, this fawn isn’t staying. She’s just here for a field trip (or non-field trip?) while Mr. N mows the deer pens. See, most people don’t realize just how small fawns are, how their defense strategy is holding still and “disappearing” into the grass,” and hence, just how easy it is to mow right over them. I’ve never done it, and ever since Mr. N informed me how probable it is, I have never volunteered to mow the deer pens, even in non-fawning season.
Instead, I stay at home with our little boy and our little fawn, trying to keep the racket of hooves on the floor and against the printer stand (from the aforementioned tangling of computer cords) from waking the little boy from his overdue nap.
As I write that, I hear a cry from the bedroom. He’s awake.
The boy, not the fawn.
The fawn’s a “she” anyway.
Now Little Z is following her all around the office, fascinated by the long spindly legs that slip and slide over the hard flooring, but too intimidated to pet her without jerking his hand back again. They’re playing beneath Mr. N’s desk, Little Z telling him about “elicawcaw” (helicopter) and other things I can’t understand.
It makes me smile. In hopefully less than eighteen weeks, this little boy is going to have a little brother to be fascinated by, to love on, to hang out with.
And in a year or so? Will those two little boys be sitting beneath Mr. N’s desk, talking about helicopters?
Little Z and the fawn seem to have reached some level of mutual trust. She’s now curled up beneath the desk with Little Z and Z occasionally reaches over and pets her leg. Neither seems too worried about the other. He fetched his toy helicopter and showed it to her. She didn’t seem overly impressed with it, but maybe she’s just not the demonstrative sort.
I take a contemplative sip of tea and think about Little Z growing into Big Z, about him giving up pacies (with much–ahem–encouragement from Mom and Dad), about him becoming suddenly so big that I can tell him to get me some mulch while I weeded the garden, and he actually does, returning from the mulch pile to the garden with the tiniest handful of mulch.
And then I remember that Little Brother is going to start up where Little Z did, so small and dependent and snuggly and squishy. And we get to do this whole parenting thing all over again, training and loving and snuggling and diapering a whole new human and how is that even possible?
We need rain desperately here. There are rain clouds popping up all throughout our beautiful state and dousing little areas with much-needed rain. We are here, dry as ever.
“I would rather water than weed,” I muttered to myself this morning as I carted water down to the garden.
But the truth is that I’ve been doing both fanatically.
About a week ago, I watched this video which heartened me immensely, especially considering that I’ve been battling the same four varieties of weeds–and one in particular–since I’ve been growing this garden.
So I’ve been weeding my garden on hands and knees about three times each week, just hoping that I’ll get to the point where weeds will be virtually nonexistent. Weeding on hands and knees in the hot sand is actually pretty painful, and several times I’ve come inside with burned palms and knees (even through the layer of a denim skirt). Yesterday I returned indoors to discover a blister on my index finger from weeding the tougher weeds along the outside of the garden. My skin is burned and peeling. I spent the better part of Saturday weeding and mulching the garden and came inside completely bushed (no pun intended).
And after these battle scars, I’m still not really sure–am I winning or is the garden?
I’ve never been good at growing things. At least anything but houseplants and herbs.
“I think you’re discovering your green thumb,” Mr. N told me yesterday as we admired my sunset colored mini petunias (let’s all take a moment to appreciate the fact that I am growing a flower successfully. This is probably the first time in my life, other than last year when I got one just before spray season and the spray ladies watered it for me. So that doesn’t really count).
“I think I’m discovering how much I need to water things,” I returned.
Gardening has always been a sink or swim sort of thing for me. If the plants I put out can’t survive in this climate, I am not meant to have them, was my unspoken motto.
And so for years, I let my plants duke it out with the weather. Growing up, I had beautiful soil to grow things, rich black dirt that everyone reverently referred to as “soil.”
It isn’t really all that surprising then that my plants survived my neglect.
But here in the land of sand and sunshine and the absence of shade trees, things just wouldn’t grow.
So now I mulch and weed and water. The exercise is good for me and good for the Baby, I say. It’s good for Little Z to have all that sunshine. It’s good for us all to have farmer’s tans.
I look up, awakened from these thoughts by an unexpected sound.
Glory be.
It’s raining.
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