I'm agonizingly far behind in posting important family events because our computer is down, and typing on an iPad is the pits. Not to mention that I can't post the great pix from our summer adventures because Camera and iPad are not on speaking terms right now. Something about iPad being jealous because Camera gets to go on all the fun outings, while iPad sits at home and is stuck doing all the post-play-posting chores. They're as bad as the kids sometimes.
But I did take a picture on my phone this summer that has inspired a little musing (the phone stayed out of the fight; it knows it can't take pictures like Camera or post like iPad. Being old and slow has its perks. Okay, not for people). So tonight I will post a little story that has little to do with anything at all.
Once upon a time...
Last year I harvested a grand total of 20 peaches off of my very loaded tree. The squirrels got about 200. The rotten rodents had discovered in early spring that there is a pit inside each golden beauty, with a meaty little nut at it's center. Each time I went outside from late spring on, there would be one or two of my lovely peaches, still green with potential, massacred on the ground like a scene from a wildlife poaching documentary. Those tree-climbing kleptos would tunnel into the innocent fruit, laying it open on one side, robbing it of it's squirrel's-gold-nugget, and then casting the rest to the ground. All that loss for a morsel the size of a peanut!
I tried to fight the peach poachers. I had my boys glue thumb tacks, vicious-end up, all along the top sides of the fence boards and posts. The furry hoard-heiesters expertly and effortlessly maneuvered around the spikes without skipping a burglaring beat. I went to the "Big Guns" store, the local nursery, and explained my produce-plundering predicament to the apron clad manager. He laughed. Apparently, I had managed to present him with a a gardening quandary he had never before encountered. Of course I did. Because that's what I do, confuse and amuse people.
For a mere $40 I could purchase a kid-safe concoction that "might" work to repel the scoundrels, he informed. I read "cayenne" on the label and figured that for two bucks I could make my own version.
That's as far as I ever got. I got discouraged and gave up. I had more important things to do, or more pressing, anyway. I stopped measuring my lost harvest, and did laundry instead.
I got peaches on sale at Costco.
....
Apparently, one year in the life of a squirrel is long enough for a nut-sized brain to forget. And thanks to that, I got a bountiful, beautiful peach harvest this year. I have spent many happy hours pealing and paring my reaping, glutting myself as I go, and ironically squirreling away my prize into the freezer.
I don't know that there is any lesson in my story. Maybe it would be that if you just wait a while, some problems go away on their own, though I don't think I'd recomend it as a strategy. I believe it did help me to be less fatalistic, something I'm accused of often. I had figured I'd never get another peach off of that tree ever again. Never. Ever.
I was wrong.
Being wrong, in this case, was delicious.
Happily ever after. The end.
