I had to publish this today because it was yet another stressful day for Americans.  The president is the one who is supposed to go grey early, not the people he’s attempting to govern.  So now, for a bit of levity.

I was dismantling some fencing yesterday, moving grow beds to a different part of the yard and clearing out old debris when a worm caught my eye.  Yes, a worm.  To put this in perspective, when I was a very little girl, my grams, a gardener, used to have us over to her home all the time.  She taught us all kinds of things: sewing, knitting, crocheting, and gardening.  She even taught us the medicinal benefits of certain plants like aloe vera which she always had handy in her garden and used to treat our cuts, scrapes and mosquito bites.

She also taught us the value of various insects in a garden.  Lady bugs work wonders against aphids.  Praying mantis are fabulous grasshopper eaters.  Bees will get your garden started for next year with their mad plant fertilization skills.  And worms, well, those little darlings aerate and fertilize your soil like you wouldn’t believe.  When I was three I learned that an invertebrate could make space for plants to breathe AND that their droppings were food for plants.  Who would’ve thought?

With that knowledge I quickly decided that we needed worms in the back yard of my family home.  Not knowing if any were extent there, and not really trusting that they had a relatively long life span or if they would proliferate of their own accord, I set out to create a worm population like the world had never seen in our back yard.  Every time I went to grams house, I spent at least a little time digging for and collecting worms from her back yard which she dutifully put in jars or plastic containers that she had saved (Grams was raised during the Great Depression—they saved everything).  Then when we got home I immediately released the little darlings in various spots in our back yard with some sort of invocation that resembled, “Be free!  Make our plants grow stronger!”  I’m sure my mother was thrilled by all of this activity.

Over the years I learned many things from Grams about gardening:  Soak your roses at least once a week; cover plants that tend to be more delicate with a bed sheet when there is going to be a frost; you can tell if there will be a frost by looking at the moon (if there is a halo around the moon, it will be a chilly night); cover tomatoes on full moons when moths tend to lay eggs that hatch into “tomato bugs”; rotate your crops; plow everything up once a season and fertilize.  The only thing she didn’t teach me was that you needed to measure pH levels now and then.  I learned that on my own later on.  In truth, she didn’t need to measure pH and nutrient levels.  She just had a knack for knowing what her garden needed.  She was the plant whisperer.

Her greatest gift was teaching me to experiment.  My husband would argue against that, as I experiment without telling him what I’m doing quite frequently and it vexes him, but we’ll leave that one alone.  Well, wait.  I actually “experimented” with adding two additional hens to my flock without telling him.  I also experimented with building a second chicken coop in the backyard to accommodate them, which I didn’t tell him about.  He figured it out a little over two months later (how do you not notice a second chicken coop in your back yard for over two months?).  He happened to figure it out on the day I drove up to Sacramento to see my Grams one last time before she died.

He called me on my cell while I was driving north on the 5, “Why is there another chicken coop in the yard?” he demanded.  “What are you talking about?” was my reply.  See, he’s an attorney in addition to being a man, so when he doesn’t want to answer a question or when he’s trying to buy time to come up with a reasonable answer for a question, he answers the question with a question.  He taught me well.  “You KNOW what I’m talking about.  Are we getting more chickens?”  “What do you mean?”  “You KNOW WHAT I MEAN!  Are we getting more chickens???”  “Right this second?”  “STOP USING MY OWN TACTICS AGAINST ME!”  “You shouldn’t have been such a fucking good teacher then, should you?”  “Okay.  Goodbye.”  So there was that episode.

Back to rearranging grow beds.

ripleyYesterday, I shifted some mobile grow beds from one area of the yard to another in preparation for spring planting.  They are handy little suckers with wheels and everything.  They also render shade and shelter to all kinds of little creatures when left alone for even a short time.  After a winter rain—a rarity for us in Southern California these days—my worm friends emerged when I disturbed the grow beds.  I was only a little surprised that a worm rose up in an area so far from the big garden where I originally introduced worms a few years prior.  They are, after all, nothing if not intrepid.  And for crying out loud worms have five hearts.  You can even cut them in half and voila!  Two worms!  Yes, I know, weird facts I should never let anyone else know that I know.  The secret is out.

As I was clearing debris and getting ready to move the last grow bed to the south-facing side of the yard, this huge worm began to rear up through the soil, and for a brief, shining moment, I waxed nostalgic.  I remembered all the times I dug in Grams’ soil, harvested worms, planted corn and other crops.  I remembered cutting bits of one of her larger aloe plants and squeezing the nectar thereof on various cuts and bites I sustained because, well, I was slightly intrepid and required an aloe remedy more frequently than I care to admit.  I remembered the smell of her home, and the time that I decided to play driver when I was three and my mom left me and my baby sister alone in the car and I almost got us both killed.  Ah, good times.  (I’m sure my husband would insert here that some things never change.)

All of these things ran through my head in scarcely more than a heartbeat or two.  Then I looked down and noticed one of my hens—one my Grams had never met—following me around and scratching about.  For those who are uninitiated, chickens scratch for food.  They are quite adept at finding it, too.  So when I saw Ripley, my first inclination was, “Oh, cute little chicken following her mistress about,” a thought which came shortly before the, “Wait a second…”  Right then, the rug was ripped from beneath my feet.  That one worm, the one that took me briefly back to so many fond childhood memories, was snatched up in the beak of a small hen named Ripley.

In that moment, I truly was at a loss for words, my jaw agape as Ripley continued scratching, looking for more prey that I may have inadvertently stirred up.  I felt truly awful.  Yes, that sounds ludicrous, but I was enraptured in fond memories and they were rudely interrupted and literally ripped apart in the space of a scratch and peck.  Chicken beaks hurt when they peck, by the way.  Ask me how I know that…monsters.

Is there a moral?  Probably several.  My first thought was that the early bird may get the worm with some doing, but the bird who follows her intrepid mistress about at dusk gets a really full belly.  Here’s another potential moral: animals behave in relatively predictable ways, and we are all animals.  Do not look to morality for explanations.  Look to animalistic behavior.  You can glean all you need to know from an objective, realistic compilation of knowledge of any creature’s predictable behavior.  Hoping a creature will randomly change its behavior is naïve.  Learning to predict, adapt, and respond appropriately to their behavior is something of a trick, but necessary to survival.

Grams, yes, they are beautiful birds.  And yes, I’m keeping up with the victory garden.  I have the sore muscles to prove it.  I love you.