It looks like we may have a few hours of sun after all the rain, and I am heading out now to plant some of Sabine’s bulbs. Sabine (pronounced Sabina) is one of those avid gardeners that has a calling for encouraging the rest of us to at least try to add fancy plants to our yards. The colorful trees and ornamental shrubs from her garden business are showing off all over town right now. Red, yellow, orange. She talked me into the bulbs and even bagged them in groupings she assures me are varied sizes and shapes that will create perfect little clusters of daffodils around the place in the spring. Then she delivered them.
In August, Sabine planted that long strip between the sidewalk and the giant parking lot at the harbor with lovely bushes and trees. She seeded the area with bee-loving clover that won’t require mowing. It makes my heart sing. I mean, it’s only been six years since I was on the Borough Assembly and we allocated the landscaping funds against big pushback from the folks that believe practical can’t be pretty. My advocacy of shrubberies is one of the reasons Big Don insisted I was incompetent. And yet, now we have a green belt, with fancy trees, thanks less to politics and more to Sabine’s personality.
Still, if good-will could keep the bears out of cars then you wouldn’t need to hang moth balls on the door handles. (The dogs photo bombed my shot.)
The bears have been opening car doors and looking for snacks all over town. They recently hit Mud Bay Road and River Road, and so, just in case, one of my friends decided to try the moth ball cure. I guess bears don’t like them. We will see if it works. Another friend, who has since passed, swore by bars of Irish Spring soap. He hung them in his cherry trees to keep bears away. (So far the bear, or bears, just opens the doors and looks around. He or they, have only made really bad messes when there is food.) The word from a bear-photo tour guide who was volunteering at the library yesterday when I checked out my books, is to make sure you don’t have any food or any containers that look like food in your rig. Such as potting soil. Yup. One tore open a bag of that, his wife said — and “Don’t lock the doors!” They will tear them off if they can’t open them.
And, since Jeff really wants to have his picture taken, here you go. He is as nice as he looks. (I hope he doesn’t dig up my bulbs. Wish me luck.)
