Happy 7th of July, Willing Subscribers!
In honor of the Fourth, I weeded my garden; now I have a dirt garden. Either I can’t tell a weed from a plant, or the weeds strangled all of my plants, or I hallucinated planting vegetables in May. Any of these scenarios could be true. The jury’s still out.
We recently had a fence put up to keep our dog, Rudy, from running down the street and scaring the horses. My brother, our contractor, also put lattice all around the base of our deck so that Rudy couldn’t get under it. However, my brother missed a small spot behind a bush, and Rudy found that opening … at midnight last night. I had taken him out at 9:30 p.m. and he refused to come back in. When we went outside at midnight and firmly instructed him to get inside, he ran under the deck. Since every flashlight we own needs batteries, Frank had to go to Walgreens at 12:15 a.m. Once we had working flashlights, we tried to force Rudy out with a barrage of light, which didn’t work. He barely looked up as he backed away from us. We considered blaring cat music at him, to torture him, but it was after midnight, and we didn’t want our neighbors blaring police music at us. At this point, Frank said to leave him out there and suggested that I sleep in the family room so that I could hear Rudy when he started barking. I wanted to know why I had to sleep on the couch and Frank said that Rudy was “my dog.” Since when? Since 1 a.m., I guess. So, the little wretch (Rudy, not Frank) wandered under, around, and on the deck all night, jangling his tags. At 4:30 a.m., he barked to come in. When I opened the door, he realized how much trouble he was in and started to reconsider, but the hotdog I was waving at him changed his mind. A trainer once called him “food-motivated.” As Willing Subscriber Elizabeth commented, “Who isn’t?”
I’m on my way out to buy full-grown vegetable plants (plastic ones, if possible) to put in my mud patch. Please don’t tell my mother-in-law. She has told me, many times, that you don’t plant in the summer. She should know; she has the greenest thumb I ever encountered. Once, she was eating a peach on her second-floor deck, and she threw the pit over the railing and into her yard. Two years later, we were eating peaches that grew from that pit. She didn’t even plant it. Well, summer or not, I’m going to fill that garden with something. I should have left the weeds. At least they were green.
Happy Summer!
Patsy
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Patsy Porco's Blog: Free and Worth It! 
OMG! My cousin is a famous star! A blog, WOW. I love it and keep writing. You remind me of Sarah Jessica Parker in Sex & the City. BTW did you see the movie? Dante in the shower? Do you have a Dante? Or a Mr. Big you are not telling us about?
Anyway I love you, keep it up.