Caught!

For Father's Day weekend Skip bought me some flowers to plant in my pots. Read that sentence again. I've got a good thing going here. Pippa and I planted all but one right away. That one was carefully put in the shade for later. And it endured a horrible storm that night. Whoops! But that would not be the end of this story.

We planted it a couple days after the storm (it took me that long to decide that it could be revived and I had not killed it). Surprisingly it perked up the next day and had bright pink flower buds. A morning or two after that I noticed some potting soil on the deck. At first I thought I'd been a messy gardener, but when I looked again there was noticeably more soil on the deck and my flower was lying on its side wilting in the heat.

So we anchored it in the soil again and gave it a drink.

Doomed, I thought. And possibly the end of me receiving gifts on Skip's holidays.

Once more it flourished, as much as one little plant can for two days before a horrendous night of wind and rain beat it down. I had placed the plant on a stool to keep the critters out of it. The storm knocked it over and my plant lay a few inches from its pot. By now you believe this to be the bitter end. It is not. We re-planted. And the flower buds returned. And I moved the pot back down on the deck....

And this morning I saw the chipmunk digging in the soil. And tonight I'll be ready with my Daisy Red Ryder. I'm declaring war on the flower obsessed chipmunk and the squirrel that stares at me when I eat.