Chipmunk Visit

I was sitting in the livingroom going over a plant catalog looking for items for the hill outside the dining room, mostly shady but some sun. It gets watered a decent amount.  I looked up when Schwartzie came into the room.  He came over to me and showed me, making a noise around his full mouth.  He had a chipmunk in his mouth.  Now, Schwartzie is a solely indoor cat. No doors of windows are left open. Question number one: how did a chipmunk get into the house?  Upstairs?

Even the fireplace is closed off by a glass door.  Query number two: how the hell will we get it outside.

While I am thinking this, Schwartzie lays it down at my feet, a gift.  But chipmunks have the ability to lower their body temperature when caught by a predator and slow their heartrate.  Schwartzie thought the animal was dead.  Zip, zowie!  It was gone in a flash into my office. He chased it. It ducked under chair, behind a cloth bag full of travel accessories.  It ran out the other side and into my closet.  Schwartzie did not see it and spent hours in wait by the spot where chipmunk had disappeared.

It chirped plaintively from time to time and spent the night in my office, invisible but occasionally audible.  The next evening, it somehow made its way downstairs and moved into the office shared by my assistant and by Woody when he wants to work in the house instead of in his office in town.  Woody heard it, closed the door to the cats and opened the window. He put two dates on the window sill and left the office. When he returned an hour later, no chipmunk and one less date.

We transferred most of the hardy plants from the greenhouse into the various gardens. Woody dug the brussels sprouts in the main garden which is all his.  I dug the calendulas plants into one of the raised beds of the pollinator garden.  I also planted both Italian and curly parsley pants into one end of my herb bed. I am thinning the tender seedlings, a bunch at a time.  All the tomatoes, marigolds and cosmos are moved off the bottom heat now.

The poetry reading from ON THE WAY OUT, TURN OFF THE LIGHT I did on Poets Corner on WOMR aired this week.  Now it should be up as a podcast, if it wasn’t already on the station website.  I’ve been getting some nice feedback.  This week I wrote three poems, but not yesterday at all. I had a dental appointment and just got some work on outside and of course my usual office work. The advantage ofd going to the dentist besides saving my lousy teeth is that the best Chinedse restaurant on the Cape is on the way back and we got takeout.  Sun On on route 134 in Dennis.  As we were introduced to them, we’ve turned several of our friends on as well.

Today I should finish thinning the plants growing in the greenhouse and also transplant some red begonias into a long pot to go beside the steps that are beside the house.  I need to complete 2 more garden orders by Monday.  A lot of the perennials I put into the pollinator garden have survived but there is still much room to put in more perennials. The calendula I planted yesterday, cosmos and two kinds of zinnias are waiting for a safe time to go out.