Lobsters and Rabbits

Last summer, we had three months without a single drop of rain.  This summer started out that way, but August has been entirely different.  We’re getting rain frequently.  We haven’t had to worry about the pump or the well.  Only two downpours have been heavy.  Mostly we’ve had slow pleasant rains that soaked right into the ground.  Friday was an exception this week.  We had about an inch and a half of rain within two hours or so.  But who’s complaining?  We can use the boost to the water table.  It’s also less work.

Our problem is tomatoes and chipmunks.  We rely on our tomatoes, but we’re getting very few.  The only tomatoes bearing reasonably are the sun gold cherry tomatoes.  My paste tomatoes started out beautifully, but now they seem to be dying and a large rabbit who is not even a little afraid of us is eating any tomato he can reach.

I started the second wave of cucumbers last week.  I hope they survive, as they were outside when the unpredicted downpour occurred. They’re waterlogged.  Cucumbers like lots of water, but now to drown in it.  Yesterday, I started two six packs of Chinese cabbages, one green cabbage six pack, one of radicchio and one of bok choi.  We’ll see how it goes. 

This Thursday, my beloved huge sugar maple had to come down.  It had become so enormous and beautiful because it roots crept into our old hand dug septic system and thus had a constant supply of all the water it wanted and fertilizer.  When I moved to Wellfleet over fifty years ago, there were few regulations and what existed were seldom enforced.  It was the Wild East.  But a decade or so ago, the State mandated a Title Five modern septic system, which was installed down by the road.  Unfortunately, they drove a huge bulldozer over all my plantings beside the drive and put down a layer of rocks so that I can’t put anything there except what weeds grow in anything.  I surely have tried.

I loved my sugar maple in front of the house.  I’d planted it shortly after moving in, along with the magnificent weeping beech across the drive form it.  But it began to die.  Slowly it lost its leaves and many branches died.  By last year, birds no longer nested in it nor did wild turkeys roost on its flat branches in a row like so many clocks.  It was dangerous.  Maples are shallow rooted and in a nor’easter or a hurricane, it could fall on and crush the house [and us] or hit the weeping beech or our neighbor’s, so it had to go.  I miss it already, even in its two thirds dead form.

Last Saturday, we had Tasha and Stephanie, and other folks over for supper.  Last night, we went to our friends Eleanor and Jeff’s summer rental.  They also had visitors from Chicago, Bill Ayres and Bernadine Dorhn.  I have known them all since the 60’s, in SDS and when they were underground.  We had lobsters! We haven’t had lobsters since our anniversary June 2nd at Moby Dick’s. Today Woody is going kayaking with Jeff in the Wellfleet marshes and through Blackfish Creek. 

I’m hoping to get into the garden today and tomorrow, while it’s not hot and humid, but rather sunny and dry with low-ish humidity