Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Garden Parties







Garden Parties

Our yard is rustic, untamed, watched by us with much worry and too little action. There’s a falling-down Connecticut wall, twisted branches of dead rosemary wound with ivy, plenty of places where missing bricks have left holes for animals to burrow. We have seven fruit trees which, with the exception of the Meyer lemon, produce little.

One morning this Spring I noticed a fallen lemon; it had been neatly and perfectly peeled, the fruit flawless and unbroken. The oddness of it barely registered then, but a few days later there were three more peeled lemons in a neat row under the tree. Looking up, I saw at least a dozen others hanging pale and naked in the branches. Under the tree were hundreds of bright strips of peel with the pith completely gnawed out. Each ribbon was perfect; thin, golden and transparent —a chef’s delight, really.

I’m afraid the bottom line here was rats--big Norwegian ones. But I can’t see them in too bad a light. What they were doing was wholesome and industrious. They were only eating riboflavin. If Ratatouille got restaurant work, these rodents could be stripping peel for martinis in bars all over town.

No comments:

Post a Comment