Speed Cleaning the Garden

I hear the peepers, especially the loud one by the pool where the Glacier ivy grows. I have never seen that loud one, but I look every time I pass by. I marvel at a gigantic mosquito seemingly frozen on a daffodil cup. The ladybugs are swarming inside on the glass porch, I did finally see one out in the garden. I hope it ate an aphid. Once today, when I slapped open the kitchen screen door, I put my hand right on a wasp.

Some years I've seen snakes when I am shearing off the ornamental grasses, but not this time. Instead, my big game sighting today was of the gray fox. He dashed past from the right corner of my vision, coming from the field and across the road into the woods with a lanky, herky-jerky trot, not a lope but moving very fast, a ground covering trot but not the usual business-like and dainty footed gait.

Something rounded and white in his mouth -- bunny sized or maybe a kitten? He lunged once just past the edge of the woods as if to get a better grip, then hurried off into the deepening shadows. It was dusk.

I rolled up my electrical cord, collected my little spade and the child-sized rake. The rake is orange for visibility. My gloves have a swath of teal blue for recognition. By dusk, they are hard to see in any color. I drop them in my garden cart along with the electric hedge trimmer and the loppers and the little grape pruner, and trundle on home like a peddler at the end of the day.

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