Look who showed up for Thanksgiving Weekend...

Yes, folks, this is a bug. A very BIG bug. And you KNOW how I feel about bugs in general.

Ew.

But actually, THIS insect was cause for great excitement in our household, because THIS bug... this four-and-a-half inch bug, is a fully-grown Praying Mantis.

Earlier this year, I wrote several posts about pest control in my garden. I'm not a lover of pests, but I'm also not a lover of using pesticides in the place where my children play.

I confess, when my friend Bill over at Sheridan Nurseries suggested that I purchase a Praying Mantis egg sack and hatch it in a bug-house in my backyard, I initially thought he was well and truly bonkers.

However, Bill has never, ever steered me wrong in the past, and so this Green Gardener (in more ways than one) carefully brought the precious package home, plonked it down in the flowerbed, and waited.

And WAITED.

It took weeks and weeks of letting it sit out in the sunshine AND the rain, but finally, one morning while I was out at the patio table drinking my morning coffee, I happened to look over towards the poppies and pincushion flowers... and caught sight of THIS:

It's hard to believe that one of these wee, creepy-crawly babies can grow into a honkin' critter like THIS:

But, as Bill told me, Praying Mantes are not just "bugs". They are Insects With Serious Attitude, and a penchant for ingesting all other critters that are a nuisance in the garden. Well, except raccoons, that is... but, looking at this fully-grown son-of-a-gun, I actually wouldn't put it past him to take a swing at Rocky and The Boys, just for fun.

Thanks for everything, Horace (yes, that's what the girlies decided to name him). You did a superb job this summer, and my garden and I really appreciate it. I'm looking forward to doing business with your offspring next year...

The Flight of the Hummingbir.... huh??!

This morning we were all up extremely early, as we have been every morning this week. Child Number One is in horseback riding camp, and the kids are all expected to be working in the stables at "first sparrow-fart", as my father used to say.

After returning home with the whiny remaining children, I handed them each a little bucket, and instructed them to accompany me out to the Garden. I gave each child a section of flowerbed to weed, after carefully explaining which plants were WEEDS, and which were NO-TOUCHY. They are always happy to be out in the garden, and thank goodness, felt "big!" to be helping their mother with such a grown-up task...

I then grabbed my "garden claw" tool (which is AWESOME by the way-- it does a nice shallow soil-turn-over, without necessitating that I wrench my back over the pitchfork), and made for the Butterfly flowerbed.

I've been trying really hard to perfect the Butterfly bed, not only because the plants I've chosen will hopefully turn out to look spectacular, but also in an attempt to coax more of the lovely, ethereal creatures to visit us. I once read that if a gardener is able to attract butterflies, he or she has managed to create a perfectly balanced little ecosystem. It has been my goal ever since.

A few weeks ago, when the flowers began blooming in the Butterfly bed, I went into the shed and searched out the hummingbird feeder, which I have not attempted to use for several years. I cleaned it thoroughly, mixed up the liquid food, and hung it over the blossoms, hoping for the best. While I have yet to actually set eyes on one of those lovely, elusive little miracles of nature, I have been full of hope and anticipation... because day by day, the food-level in the feeder has been diminishing. And not just because of bees and wasps, either! I have been watching and waiting and brushing away any insects that have happened across the feeder. Anyway, it is simply not possible that a bunch of bugs could be responsible for draining the liquid almost entirely, week after week.

This morning, as the girlies and I weeded, we kept a close eye on all of our birdfeeders. We have a remarkable amount of gold, purple and house finches that are feasting almost constantly, and noisily beating one another to the "best" perches. We have rose-breasted nuthatches and downy woodpeckers who delight the girls by hanging upside down on the suet as they peck out their meals. There are a pair of beautiful red cardinals who appear at least twice a day, and take turns swooning over one another and feeding each other safflower seeds (my husband figures that they are still very "early" in their marriage, and haven't had kids yet). We've got squawk-y blue jays who push all the other birds around, and a flock of grackles and red-winged blackbirds who clear the place of ALL the smaller birds, and descend like a nasty gang of ornery teenagers and gorge themselves until one of us shoos them away.

And then there are the Chickadees, my very favourite birds. They are EVERYWHERE this year, cheerful and twittering and bouncing around. Last spring, a nest of six babies hatched in one of our big old fir trees, and they've been our constant feeder visitors ever since. There are even more tiny babies this summer, and we just love the "wheek-y, wheek-y!" noise they make, before they are able to come out with a robust, "CHICK-A-DEE-DEE-DEE!!"

But, after an hour in the Butterfly bed, there was nary a hummingbird to be seen. Not a single, solitary hum. I kept glancing up every few minutes as I weeded, and tried to keep as still and as quiet as I could... but nothing.

Nothing, that is, until I had almost given up completely, had gathered up all the weeds and tools and was about to stand up-- there was a sudden flurry of wings.

I looked up-- and finally laid eyes on the tiny, tiny bird who had been enjoying the garden and the nectar I had provided...

It was one of the baby chickadees. One of the sweetest things I've ever seen. He was little enough to wrap his tiny toes around the hummingbird perch, bent forward like one of those toy "bobbin' birds" we used to buy at Woolworths when I was a child... He stuck his tiny beak into the feeder again and again, sucking up the sweet liquid with great enjoyment. If he had had lips to smack when he was finished, I'm convinced he would have.

He then glanced down at me, gave a little "Wheek!!", and was gone before I'd fully registered what I'd just seen.

I've just about given up on attracting hummingbirds to the feeder this summer. But I've decided that I really don't mind that much. After all, how many people can boast having "Hum-a-dees" in their garden?

Very rare, I assure you.

Just wait till the Audubon Society finds out.

The Ontario Hum-a-dee

The sounds of summer...

To me, there is no sweeter sound of summer than the shaky, shimmering trill of a cicada. I remember the everlasting holidays of my childhood, heavy and sticky with southwestern Ontario humidity... lying on my back in the soft grass of my parent's front lawn, staring up into the branches of the huge old maple tree... and listening to the cicadas as they bantered their "song" back and forth.

This is one bug that the Goddess welcomes into her garden, year after year. Because the song of the cicada is what MAKES summertime. It beckons to the little girls and me, and reminds us to Slow Down. Relax. Look up. And, Enjoy...

The Critters are out to get me...

This is what my Pink Stargazer Lilies SHOULD be looking like today... But alas, in the night last night, a posse of vicious, deviant raccoons attacked the plants. They tore off all the big, beautiful buds that were just about ready to BURST, hauled them all up onto our glass patio table, and tore them to shreds. I've got the footprint evidence to prove it.

To say that I am ticked off about this act of vandalism is a wild understatement... Pink Stargazers are my absolute favourite flowers; I carried them at my wedding, and it gives me tremendous pleasure that I am now able to grow them in my own garden. I was SO looking forward to them blooming again this year. The plants are enormous, and they always seem to open just in time for my birthday.

Tonight, the Goddess is taking matters into her own hands... "The Boys", as we've always called the raccoons, have gone TOO FAR. I have officially HAD IT with their nightly habit of knocking over our garbage cans and scattering the contents hither and yon, no matter what tricks we use to try and thwart them. I am DONE with hosing down the top of my tool shed, in order to eliminate the enormous piles of scat they leave for me every single morning. There will be NO MORE raccoons carousing, feasting on the contents of my garden, and then ceremoniously ralphing in my swimming pool.

They have Crossed The Line!! You can defile my garbage cans, but By God, don't you put a PAW on my lilies...

The Proper Authorities have been called... The humane traps will be set first thing tomorrow morning.

This year, I guess I'll just have to settle for a photograph of stargazer lilies... and the sweet, sweet feeling of REVENGE, as The Boys are carried out of my garden, past the garbage cans, and into the animal control truck.

Enjoy your new life in the countryside, Boys...

And Christ Almighty, they had better not have a "homing" instinct...

The New Resident in The Goddess' Garden

Can you spot our new baby?

This tiny little brown bunny has actually been sighted in The Garden a few times over the past week... but I have resisted telling the girlies about it until today, because I wanted to see whether she was actually making her home here with us. Today, I discovered her burrow under one of the Butterfly Bushes in the upper flowerbed!

The girlies and I spent a delightful afternoon outside, waiting for her to come out for a little hop around. She seems to like it when I put the sprinklers on-- with the heat being as bad as it is these days, there is apparently nothing quite so delicious for her to munch on as newly-dampened grass.

She is so teeny that I assume she must be very newly separated from her mother. We are resisting the great temptation to feed her, as I feel it is important that she learn to survive on her own. She doesn't seem to be frightened of humans, really, at all... she actually scurried right over my foot the other evening while I was out watering the flowers! We won't get TOO close to her... but it is lovely to lie on our tummies in the grass and just watch...

The Trees Are Worth It. Luckily...

Well, I'm able to stand up once again, after a long, hard slog in the garden yesterday.

Yesterday, I single-handedly conquered that lower flower bed that I've been gassing on about for the past couple of weeks... You know, that horrible, messy patch down the hill at the bottom of the garden, formerly full of evil, wildly overgrown rocket junipers... Jim the Arborist came and ground those buggers to a pulp last week, and since then, I have had the tremendous pleasure (well, when I wasn't obsessing about the neighbours' air conditioner, that is) of planning and designing the fresh, new space.

Well, I was pretty adventurous, as it turns out. Wildly, optimistically adventurous.

Because somehow, I convinced myself that I would be perfectly capable of Planting Large Trees All By Myself. I had watched a grown man effortlessly haul thirty foot trees OUT of the ground... Hell, how hard could socking a couple of six-footers back IN there possibly be?

Okay, I confess, it was also about the Money. Because I figured with the money I would save by NOT taking Jim the Arborist up on his kind offer to deliver and plant whatever I chose at Sheridan Nurseries, I would have a whole lot of extra cash to blow on good plantings.

And blow money, I did. Hey, good planting specimens are an INVESTMENT, people!! Especially if they're perennials, right? My plan was designed carefully, so that I would have something flowering, or at least "coming into colour", at all times. Including winter. The gorgeous Emerald Cedar I planned to plop in the far corner of the bed would take care of THAT. I even thought we could string some lights up on it, to kind of "twinkle in the background" during the Festive Season. SO WHAT if the tree will be so far away from our line of vision from the kitchen windows, that the only ones who will actually SEE the lights will be the Garden Critters (and that's only the ones brave enough to face the polar conditions at night time). The point is, this garden is going to look GREAT year-round, even if I'm not actually able to see it without leaving my cosy, warm house in the dead of winter.

On Monday evening, I began executing my plan. Right after my husband and I did a celebratory waltz on the patio, to the accompaniment of the distant hum of the neighbours' air conditioning unit which had FINALLY been successfully re-RE-located, we left our three children with a babysitter, and set off for the garden centre, armed with The List.

A new guy named Greg steered us around Sheridan that evening, pointing out where everything was, and helping us to select just the right plants. Unlike my beloved Bill, the more mature and considerably less spry salesperson/Garden Guru who usually advises me, Greg was so full of reckless enthusiasm and "go-to-it-iveness", it almost bordered on the ridiculous. "Trees?! Get 'em BIG!! Who wants to WAIT for them to grow?!! Six feet? NO PROBLEM!! The lady looks strong and healthy!! SHE can plant these!! Hey, why should it cost ya?!"

Once I had my rather embarrassingly large order assembled in a grouping by the front till, Greg convinced my now-brainwashed husband that, SURE!! We could fit ALL The Stuff, including SEVERAL six-foot trees, into the back of our volvo stationwagon!! As long as we were planting The Stuff ourselves, why not save the DELIVERY fee as well??!

Why not? Well, for starters, the plants had all just been watered, and the trees weighed about two hundred pounds. And then there was the MESS factor, in the extremely fresh and clean automobile usually reserved for "adults-only" ventures (we can only fit all of the required car seats into the Loser Cruiser... hence the ONLY reason why the Loser Cruiser was purchased in the first place. Space, people. It was AAAALLLLL about the space. Mostly, the space BETWEEN the children, but that's another story for another day).

Anyway, we HEAVED and we HAULED these plants, boosting up root balls to fit between the front seats, and cursing at each other like stevedores, while a team of bemused teenaged boys in green uniforms looked on. SURE, they had been employed to help with the job, but none of them actually OFFERED. In the end, I figured that we were scaring them, and didn't bother to request assistance.

Eventually, we managed to fit the entire load into the car, and my husband carefully steered us back home, while I held the branches of one of the Purple Leaf Sandcherries away from the front windshield so that he could see where he was driving... Every time we turned a corner, the entire load would shift, and root balls would ROOOOLLLLL... And we would CURSE and apply the BRAKE and turn AROUND to see what had been FLATTENED...

We made it home.

And then, the UNLOADING began, which I'm sure, gave the neighbours a flashback to watching a ridiculous amount of clowns emerge from a tiny car at the circus.

I decided to give the larger plants about 24 hours to dry out, so that they would be considerably lighter to transport to the bottom of the garden, and hopefully easier to get out of their pots. Yes, a "day off" from gardening was just what was needed.

The call for a large thunderstorm hit the television on Wednesday morning, and I knew that I had better get those plants into that flowerbed, PRONTO. I phoned a babysitter to take the younger two children to the park while I got the work done, and the schedule looked as though it was going to fall into place perfectly. The weather wasn't too hot, the wind hadn't yet started, and the storm wasn't called for till evening.

One of the things that I didn't actually think about, back when the idea of planting my own trees sounded like a great idea, was how enormous the holes that needed to be dug would actually be. According to my Gardening Bible, each hole needed to be deeper than the fibre pot by several inches, and at least twice as wide. The other thing I didn't think too much about was the enormous root systems left behind by the flowerbed's previous residents. Because, while Jim the Arborist had done a magnificent job of grinding out the stumps of those forty-year-old rocket junipers, it turned out, once I had started digging furiously, that he had done a CRAPPY job of pulling out the gnarled, tangled mess of roots, deep down in the soil.

I slogged away, digging deeper and deeper, hacking furiously at those roots with my freshly sharpened spade, and hauling on them with all of my strength (which isn't much, but hey, isn't too bad considering that I'm not exactly a massive person). After about an hour and a half, I went back up the hill to the garage, and hunted around until I found my husband's secret hiding place... for The Hatchet.

My husband is a good man. He doesn't keep lethal weapons around the house as a rule, but he DID purchase a small axe that we used when we were on our more adventurous camping trips, long ago, before children, when we lived on the West Coast. The rule was, HE was the only one who was allowed to use The Hatchet-- he was convinced that if I were to use it, I would instantly hack off one of my own limbs by accident, or, even WORSE, one of his limbs on purpose.

Well, on Wednesday, I NEEDED THAT HATCHET, people. It was the only way to get the job done before storm-time. Those roots were just too much to handle without serious weaponry.

And amazingly, I didn't lose any limbs that day, even though I was over-heated and frustrated and blinded by the sweat pouring down my forehead, as I hacked and dug, and dug and hacked...

And then, once the holes were all dug, I lined them with triple mix, chose the first tree to plant...

And I couldn't get the goddamn fibre pot off of the root ball.

The instructions in the Gardening Bible said clearly: you HAVE to take the tree out of the pot, or the wire and burlap off of the rootball, or you'll wind up binding those roots, and the tree will eventually die a horrible death of strangulation.

I tried everything people, everything short of The Hatchet (I was still lucid enough at that point to know that THAT would have been a bad idea). In the end, I took my trusty hack-saw, and hacked big gashes in the sides of those pots as best I could, and when I couldn't "peel" the segments away from the soil, I just broke off the heavy, top rims and jammed the damn things into the holes, fibre pot and all. What the hell. Time was running out, and after all, there IS a two-year warranty on the trees.

By four o'clock, my eldest daughter was being delivered home from school by a friend, and our babysitter arrived home from the park, pulling the two younger girlies in the big green wagon. Our babysitter, who is a nurse, took one look at my face as I crawled up the hill from the bottom of the garden, made a small choking-shrieking sound in her throat, and hustled me into the house.

One look in the mirror made me see why. My face, usually an English-pasty-pale colour, had turned bright puce with the effort of all that damned digging and planting. It would have looked like a sunburn, had there not been white rings around my eyes and mouth... a sign of "over-exertion", apparently. Well, YEAH, I GUESS so.

She hooshed me up the stairs for a long, cool shower and a major lie-down, clucking at me for doing a job that was so CLEARLY beyond me... and I have to confess, she was absolutely right. It has taken me a full twenty-four hours to feel like myself again, I was pretty much inert for the rest of yesterday evening.

Today, however, now that I'm feeling considerably better, am rested and sweetened-up with a fresh pedicure and everything... I look down at that garden from my patio with a sense of immense pride. It looks fantastic. It is finally the way I've wanted it for the past eleven years that we've been here, and as the plants mature, they're only going to get better.

Well, so long as those fibre pots hidden deep down in the soil start breaking down in a hurry, that is... Maybe I should just run down there and put the soaker hoses on for a FEW hours more, come to think of it...

The Truth About Planting Large Trees... All By Myself

It's actually a lot harder than I thought.

I'm going to lie down, now...

I am NOT actually the "bigger person" because...

I've just sent a dozen pink roses over to "Tish", the nitwit next door.

My husband suggested last night that it might be "nice" if we were to extend a peace offering, once the monstrous beast of an AC unit had been moved back to its previous location and was growling satisfactorily next to the neighbours' porch. After all, he reminded me, I HAD actually threatened to sick our lawyer, and then the City on her (or was it the City, and THEN our lawyer??), if she didn't have the (insert many colourful expletive words here) unit removed within a MAXIMUM of one week... And, he recalled with alarming accuracy, I HAD actually given her until precisely five o'clock on the seventh day... And, truth be known, I WAS sitting at the kitchen table with a stop-watch in one hand, and a telephone in the other hand yesterday, when he arrived home early to make sure that there wouldn't be any carnage and bloodshed within the final hour... And... and... and...

Well, okay, so perhaps I came on a little "strong".

Hey, it's who I am, people. You Don't Mess With The Domestic Goddess. Not twice, anyway.

Harumph.

Well... Seeing as I'd won the day...

This morning, I grudgingly headed off to my favourite flower shop, ordered the bouquet, and wrote out a "neighbourly" message on the card.

But all the while, dear readers... The Goddess just COULDN'T STOP THINKING what a colossal waste of time and money "being the bigger person" can be.

On the other side of the fence...

If good fences make good neighbours, well then, make mine the Great Wall of China.

Early last week, after a gruelling day of ferrying the kids to-and-from all of their various schools and activities and end-of-year festivities, I swung the loser cruiser into our driveway. When I opened the car door, not only was I blasted in the face with the usual heat and humidity of a typical summertime late-afternoon, but also by an outrageously offensive squealing, grinding, growling sound. My first instinct was to look up into the sky, to see if some form of aircraft was in trouble and attempting an emergency landing in the vicinity of the back garden. My second instinct, once I had freed the kids from their car seats and proceeded down the path towards our garden gate, was to peer over the fence into our neighbours' back yard...

Apparently, during my absence that day, our next-door neighbours, in a fit of what I can only explain as selfish insanity, had employed a team of nitwits to dislodge their very large, very inefficient and extremely noisy air conditioning unit from its place over by the side of their deck, and had it re-installed up the hill and around the corner... about two feet from my patio, and about six inches from my children's play area.

People, the noise had to be heard to be believed.

The gale-force blast from the air conditioner's exhaust fan practically re-arranged my face as I took a peek at the cause of the racket, but once I had pulled my skin back into place and re-combed my hair with my fingers as best I could, I gathered my children and my wits about me, and made for our neighbours' front door.

"Tish", as my neighbour likes to be called, attempted to explain that her AC unit had been running "hot" in its place near their porch, and after careful consideration (presumably entirely about her own family's well-being, and certainly not about ours), she and her trades-person had come to the conclusion that right next to our fence was the perfect spot to re-locate the monstrous beast.

I took a deep breath. And then I took another, and when I let out the second breath, I must confess, dear readers, that the words I spoke were not carefully chosen, nor were they particularly polite. As you may have gathered from previous postings, there are a few things that I love and value above all else in this life: two of them happen to be my family and my garden. Well, by re-locating that AC, "Tish" was jeopardizing both of those things... The powerful noise blast rendered my children's play area completely unusable. My beautiful garden, creation of my own two hands and saver of my sanity, was unbearable to spend any time in, unless you were wearing wax earplugs.

I gave "Tish" notice. Notice that, if she didn't put the situation right, she would Suffer The Goddess' Wrath.

It has taken nearly a week, dear readers. One solid week of ceaseless mechanical growling and grinding... day and night. Even when we were in the house with all of our windows firmly locked, we could STILL hear the noise and feel the vibrations it caused in the floorboards. Worst of all, our bedroom windows all face out in the direction of the air conditioner, so for six nights, not one of us has been able to enjoy a solid night's sleep. Child Number One has been sleeping with earplugs. Child Number Two took to reading books when she couldn't get any rest. And Child Number Three... well, we did a LOT of rocking in that rocking chair, let me tell you. And with each swing of the chair, I silently cursed the people on the other side of the fence, who were, no doubt, sleeping like babies.

Not only that, our Garden Critters have reacted to the unholy disruption of all earthly order. We haven't seen our chipmunks in at least six days, and all five of our birdfeeders remain full of seed. Even St Francis hasn't been able to charm them out of their hiding places.

There were four very tired, and very grumpy girls sitting at the kitchen table late this afternoon, gazing wistfully out of the window at the unusable garden, when the air conditioner "experts" finally showed up to move the unit back to its original location. Once the power line to the Great Beast had been severed and the world at long LAST fell silent, we ventured outside and sat and enjoyed the soothing hum of the drills, the little hack saws, and listened to the men grunt and groan as they hauled the beast back down the hill to its (hopefully) FINAL resting place...

I've decided that what we actually need is a much taller, much more solid fence between our two properties, so that no matter WHAT those people decide to do over there, it will affect us a whole lot LESS over here... And while I was noodling this thought over, trying to decide exactly how high the fence should go...

I happened to glance up at the neighbour's house, and noticed that while their monstrous AC unit was grinding away, in a futile attempt to cool their house down in this thirty-degree weather we've been having... all of their second floor windows were hanging WIDE OPEN.

Now, I'm no EXPERT on cooling technology, but it DOES occur to me that habits like that might just cause even the newest and most energy-efficient air conditioner to run a little "hot". I wonder if our neighbours have installed their thermostat on their second floor, too?

My Day In a Nutshell... or rather, Nut HOUSE...

Today was a crazy, busy day. But, what else is new, right?

It's nearing the end of the school year... at last. I can't WAIT for it all to be over, and if I'M this wound up with anticipation about the end of the drudgery of routine, then just imagine how my girlies are feeling these days.

Actually, this morning was Child Number Three's last day of junior nursery. Of course, there was a "graduation" ceremony... Because, nowadays, EVERYBODY "graduates" from EVERYTHING at the end of the year, don't they?! Fortunately, the event was overwhelmingly cute, and there was good food involved. I'm a sucker for both of the aforementioned. In fact, I was up until midnight last night, baking cookies just for the event. "Disorganized!" you say? Not at all. I actually baked the FIRST batch yesterday afternoon, then made the mistake of leaving the children with my husband at home while I nipped out to run an errand... Well, let's just say, when I came home, it was evident that a second batch of cookies needed to be baked.

When we finally made it home after the ceremony this morning, and had completed all of the to-ing and fro-ing that make up my children's' multiple lunch hours, I threw on my grubbiest clothes, set up a little tent-and-tunnel set for my kids to play with on the lawn, and set off for the lower flower beds with my biggest, baddest pitchfork.

I recently threw in the towel with the lower beds, and hired an arborist by the name of Jim to come over with enormous chain saws, a grinder and a very noisy wood chipper. He heroically sawed down the revoltingly overgrown rocket junipers that had overrun the space, and then laughed wildly as I did a little jig, watching him feed the chunks of tree through the wood chipper. The noise and the mess he made with those machines was formidable... and watching him grind the stumps and roots right out of the ground made me Want His Job. It was an immensely satisfying afternoon's work... even if I was only allowed to watch from a safe distance.

So, now I've got a whole new space to plan and plant. I've got some great ideas... and I confess, I have actually bought some of the plants and small trees already. However, what I also bought were about ten enormous bags of fertilizer and triple mix... the soil in that bed was evidently last "turned" during the reign of the dinosaurs, and it needs a good deal of digging and mixing-in before anything will be able to thrive down there.

So, there we were... me, filthy, sweaty and generally horrifying to behold, and my children grass-stained and grubby and gloriously happy in their tent... When I looked over on the grass next to me, and noticed that the little red "MESSAGE" light on the the roam-telephone I had brought down with me was flashing wildly.

I dropped my pitchfork, pulled off my gloves, and listened to the message... and immediately wished I hadn't.

It was my mother. Whom I love, don't get me wrong. But today, I felt a whole lot LESS love than usual, because her message was to say that she and my father were in their car, ten minutes from my home, and they were coming for a "surprise" visit ("You don't need to go to any TROUBLE for us, dear, we'll just see the children and sit on the patio for a bit...") Fine and fair enough. The kicker was, that they had a pair of ancient and extremely high-maintenance British relatives with them, and they had ALL just been to a funeral. And I'm not kidding about that last part, they actually HAD.

"Jolly good."

NOT.

People, you should have SEEN me take off out of that flower bed. It must have been a sight to behold-- Goddess With Wings On Her Heels, no kidding. And with a trail of little children flying behind her. Because, Goddammit, no matter HOW BAD I LOOK, my kids need to look at the very least, neater and cleaner than I do.

By my calculation, judging by the time on my mother's message, I had approximately five minutes to get the garden, my kids and my SELF in some semblance of presentable order.

The kids actually co-operated: Child Number Two wiped her little sister's face and helped her put on something without mud on it, before cleaning and changing herself.

I whipped wildly around the garden, collecting things to throw out of sight, into the sheds. After I cleaned and polished the table and chairs, I galloped into the house, and gave each child their very own Secret Weapons.

In a closet on my main floor, I keep several empty white laundry baskets. Not for laundry, but for JUST this sort of occasion. It's my method of emergency "cleaning", even if it's not REALLY cleaning, but rather a sneaky form of "shit-shuffling", and my husband and I call it. That's where you don't REALLY put stuff away, you just move it from one place to another.

Anyway, each kid and I got a big white basket... and we filled those baskets with as much clutter as we possibly could, with the time we had allotted to us. Then, before anyone could catch us, we crammed the baskets, filled-to-the-brims, back into the closet, and slammed the door. By the time my parents et al sailed through my garden gate, the house actually looked relatively presentable.

And the visit was pleasant, it was actually very nice. I had tremendous sympathy for my relatives, who were close friends of the deceased, and who were holding up pretty well for the most part, under the stressful circumstances they had just been through. We sat on the patio, sipping lemonade, and chit-chatting about nothing in particular, watching the children water the flowers with their little watering cans...

Yessir, it would have been quite a successful visit indeed, had I had time for a shower MYSELF, and an opportunity to change my clothes... Because there are few things in life quite so unsettling as being in absolutely no doubt that, while you are making small-talk with people you hope to favourably impress, your entire being simply reeks of sheep manure. The pong was pungent, people, and no one was in any doubt of what I had been doing with myself all afternoon...

Oh, well. At least they didn't find the laundry baskets in the closet, right?

This Means War.

We are having an infestation problem in the Goddess' Garden... Over the past couple of days, millions and trillions and zillions of tiny little green aphids have appeared. And they're driving EVERYBODY crazy.

The little buggers are EVERYWHERE. If they're not airborne, they're creepy-crawling on absolutely everything outside, including ME. They have been using me for their personal amusement and transportation whilst I have been weeding, planting, and filling up the birdfeeders. They have annoyed the entire family during alfresco meals. This afternoon, they managed to ruin the finish of the piece of furniture I was attempting to clean, sand and paint for Child Number One's bedroom.

Yuckiest of all, we have to be especially careful when we return indoors from the garden, because more than anything else, they seem to love getting tangled up in our HAIR... we need to shake ourselves thoroughly clean before daring to cross the threshold of the mudroom. Bugs outside are bad enough... but to the Goddess, bugs indoors are intolerable.

Our baby Praying Mantes are still doing pretty well out there... but I'm making the excuse that they are STILL babies, and still just getting the hang of the "hunting" thing.

The breaking point between Goddess and Aphids occurred sometime on Saturday afternoon, when I felt it necessary to weed with ipod earphones jammed in my ears. When I realized that the reason was not so much that I wanted to listen to music, but that I wanted to keep the aphids from creeping in... I knew it was time for War Tactics.

Enter the Ladybugs.

I went out an purchased an enormous bag of Ladybugs at Sheridan Nurseries... yep, the same place the Praying Mantis egg came from. Bill told me to keep them in the fridge, and each night after watering, take them out, warm them up a bit, and shake a handful or two out amongst the flowers.

Unfortunately, before I got a chance to show the girlies, Child Number Two discovered the enormous bag next to the milk jug... and ran screaming to her father, worried that Mummy was going to try and make the family eat bug casserole for dinner.

Needless to say, it took a little time to explain myself to her... but she came around when I offered to let her be the "shaker" when it came time to make the first release later that evening.

It's been a few days, now, and I have to admit, the aphids are still winning the war so far. However, it is delightful to come across the little red-and-black-spotted ladies as I make my rounds of the flowerbeds every day. The very sight of them gives me faith... faith that ONE DAY, the eerie creepy-crawly sensation I feel on my skin every time I step out of doors will fade... the green greeblies having been made into a spectacularly satisfying ladybug smorgasbord.

I wonder what a Ladybug burp sounds like? Lady-like, or an almighty belch?

I'll keep you posted.

Bloomin' luvverly...

In the Goddess' Garden today:

After the lovely, two-day long spell of moderate temperatures and PLENTY of rain, the first of the enormous Oriental Poppies bloomed...

The Veronica and Sweet William seem to be coming along nicely...

The Bearded Irises are so magnificent, their heavy heads are weighing down the stems and drooping them along the pathway... But they're still the Kings and Queens of the garden.

And Frank seems well pleased.

All Is Right With The World.

WHO made you do it??!!

The resounding cry of “Blame The Mother!!”

We hear it and read it every day… on the news, in the papers, even in the school playground. Axe murderers’ motives are always traced back to the mothers, who undoubtedly owned a couple of kitchen knives, and occasionally -GASP!- used them in front of the children whilst preparing dinner. Stressed-out, workaholics-gone-postal undoubtedly had mothers who -GASP!- had to WORK to support their single-parent families, thus setting a poor example of overly-intense work ethics. And of course, children with ANY sort of behavioral issues have mothers who are whispered and gossiped about on the school playgrounds… by OTHER MOTHERS. “Little Sarah PUSHED Suzie this morning and made her cry!!! What do YOU think is going on at home??!!” (Translated, this means, “What the hell is that mother doing wrong… or, not doing right??!!”)

Our society is one that has an unhealthy need to lay ultimate blame at the feet of Mothers.

The reasons why we do this are unfathomable to me. Why do we always resort to whittling down issues to the most basic of potential causes when we cannot make sense of them any other way? Well, I suppose it’s because we are a nervous people, and our society seems hell-bent on “seeking justice”. So, we blame. We blame the very people who give us life. The constant need to Blame The Mother For Everything seems not unlike the habit a lot of unhappy people have of Blaming God for things that go wrong in their lives. It’s the “easy” way out: the “easy” answer. More often than not, it’s the ONLY answer they can come up with. Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned in my lifetime, there are some questions that just have no answers, some mysteries that have no solutions, some disasters that have no understandable cause. We either have to learn to be okay with that, or we find a way to lay blame in order to “set our minds at rest”.

Now, this is not to say that there aren’t some mothers out there who don’t deserve to be taken to task for their actions (or inactions). Lord knows that there are plenty of examples of those women out there… for instance, that lunatic who spawned Lindsay Lohan, for example.

But, I digress.

The point at which this whole excessive mother-blaming thing became TOO MUCH for me occurred this morning. This morning, I just cracked. Maybe it was the fatigue and disappointment after last night’s hockey game, I don’t know… This morning, I had had ENOUGH.

The mother-blaming habit has trickled down to the next generation in this house. My children, ages eleven, six and three, have developed an extremely nasty habit of blaming me for anything and everything.

I’m not talking about the big stuff. You know, the “I DIDN’T ASK TO BE BORN!!” big stuff. Thankfully, my kids are still so young, they haven’t had enough time here on earth to blame me for anything really catastrophic yet… But then, to this point, they haven’t had the opportunity to do any major damage on a GLOBAL scale (at least, none that I'm aware of).

The stuff they constantly blame me for is the little stuff, the every-day stuff. Most often, THE STUFF THAT THEY SHOULD BE TAKING RESPONSIBILITY FOR. I’m talking serious blame-shifting here, that borders on the ridiculous.

Like this, for example:

Mother: (running a comb through her eldest daughter’s long hair) Woah!! This could take a few minutes. Hold still, kiddo, you’ve got some mondo knots in this wig of yours… Hang tough, and we’ll get them out.

Child Number One: It’s all YOUR fault, Mother!! YOU bought the wrong kind of shampoo!! And then YOU forgot to remind me to blow dry it properly after my shower last night!!

See what I mean? Or, how about this:

Mother: (while serving lunch) Whoops! I see you’ve had a milk spill, there. Here, let me get you a cloth to clean it up, and then just make sure the cup is pushed back from the edge of the table next time, okay?

Child Number Two: Hey, YOU put the cup down on the table, Mum!! YOU made me do it!! It’s not MY fault my elbow tipped it over!!

Sigh. Let’s hear from the last one:

Mother: (averting her eyes from The Horror) Oh, my Lord… WHO WROTE ON THE LIVINGROOM SOFA WITH BUBBLEGUM TOOTHPASTE???!!

Child Number Three: (popping up from behind the furniture with pink-stained fingers and a foamy mouth) Maybe E’mmy Yeung did it!!

I have to confess, I forgave Child Number Three for that last one. You know why? Because, currently, she is the ONLY CHILD who doesn’t try to pin the havoc she wreaks on ME. Not YET, that is. She’s got ears, however, and she hears those big sisters of hers. She’s also got a memory chip in that little brain that rivals the one I’ve got in my computer at the moment. She’s listening, and I just KNOW that the words spoken in this house are going to come back to haunt me someday soon…

The last of the blame-laying occurred this morning, just after I had risen from bed. I yawned, put on my bathrobe, and went across the hallway to waken Child Number One, who had managed to sleep right through her extremely noisy alarm clock.

Mother: Time to wake up!!

Child Number One: (as cross as two sticks) MU-MMEEEE!! Now I’m in a GRUMPY MOOD and it’s ALL YOUR FAULT!!

All MY fault??! By simply waking the kid up, her grumpy mood is ALL MY FAULT??!! By simply uttering four words, and bringing her back to consciousness, I have completely shattered the child’s entire state of mind??!!

I DON’T THINK SO.

My three girlies attended a Breakfast Meeting with the Domestic Goddess this morning… during which, it was made AB-SO-LUTE-LY CLEAR that there would be no further tolerance of playing the Blame Game, either with me, or with one another. They heard about Responsibility, and Being Accountable for One’s Own Actions. About Politeness, and about Respect, both for others, and for themselves, as well.

They listened to me, and they heard me. They promised to Try.

I dismissed them for hand-face-and-teeth cleaning in preparation for school, and sank down at my desk for a moment with a LARGE cup of coffee, to peruse my email…

And wouldn’t you know it? I was SO overwrought with emotion after my major speech, so overcome by my sweet daughters’ words of remorse, that I joggled my elbow, and half a cup of scalding hot java splattered all over my keyboard…

The keyboard immediately fizzled to a standstill…

Drat those kids. THEY made me do it...