JOY ALONG THE WAY: SUMMER GARDEN SEAT DOIN'S, PLANS

Whoever heard of spending quality time with a garden trowel? I have and I do. The contribution of the trowel to such times ebbs and flows, depending upon what sounds reach my ears and what attracts my attention out of the corners of my eyes. Four corners, four attention getters. Two ears, two more attention snatchers.

I try, though, to keep riveted on the business of the trowel, for it is just into its second season with me and hasn't yet been grooved and polished to fit the bumps, curves and callouses of my hand. It's getting there. The tightly glued-on manufacturer's label is gone, rubbed off by dirt and sand, and the painted-on price has faded into obscurity.

Although the ground was very wet, I recently plunged it into the ground to scoop up a little raw dirt for something, I've temporarily forgotten what, when to my wide awake ears came a fluttering, bashing, pecking sound from atop a new up-sized garden seat I've had constructed.

More of a whimsy than anything else, when the seat was finished, I had Bill, the constructor, place a two-story birdhouse on the top of a partially cut down tree in back of the seat. Serendipity! The birdhouse looks as if it is a part of the garden seat.

Naturally, I rested the trowel to see what was making the strange noises. It was a shiny black grackle with those iridescent greenish feathers on neck and head. It was trying to get into the too-small holes of the birdhouse. It was a puffed up, be-feathered black ball of fury, dashing, swooping, poking, pecking, flying off and coming back like a suicide bomber. I feared for its life.

I suppose it had a right to be in a warlike mood. Here was this pretty, latticed garden seat, shade dappled, draped with big ferns and Swedish ivy and hanging baskets of rosy impatients. All, in a bird's-eye view, a foundation for the two-story birdhouse with doors too small. Black outrage!

This went on from time to time for a few days before the grackle gave up and went off on other adventures. I picked up the shed feathers of fury that had drifted down and added them to a peculiar wall hanging I have. I hope the grackles are not on an endangered list. Should the ATF men espy my wall hanging with feathers from endangered species, it would be off to the pokey for me and my only hope would be that all doors would be too small.

But, back to the trowel. In the succeeding days I scooped up enough soil -- well, mud, to fill a depression by the driveway that gets depressed every year. It is where a maple tree was cut down almost 20 years ago. I got pretty depressed about that depression this year, but in a moment of feeling I was trowelling dirt down a super rat hole, I was once again attracted by a motion at the new garden seat.

A squirrel had hopped up onto the seat, much to the rage of a blue jay that was perched on the latticed roof above. I had meant the new erection to be a symbol of friendship, with its wings angled in such a position as to resemble arms ready to hug anyone who came up the back walk. But, blue jays and squirrels! Who wants to tinker with nature. That would be super depressing.

I think my first social event at the garden seat will be a Kate Greenaway costume party for Samantha, Angel, Sarah and Mandy, my little local friends. Pink lemonade, cookies, etc. Neighbor Sue was prompted to write the following bit of verse:

In early spring with flowers in bloom,

The seat was built with plenty of room.

There was laughter and advice as neighbors gathered 'round

To watch the carpenter with his hammering sound.

Now with flowers and ferns and a bunny rabbit too,

The garden seat is ready for a visit from you!

It needs only another little patch of impatients at the foot of a post. Now where did I leave that trusty trowel?

REJOICE!

~Jean Bell Mosley is an author and longtime columnist for the Southeast Missourian.