Garden of the MAD Goddess

About this time every year I like to indulge my nature Goddess aspect. After being buried in snow up to my hoo-ha for six months, then spending another eight weeks or so scrutinizing Mother Nature for any signs of green life, I accept that summer in the northland is arriving late, as usual.

Now, if I lived where things warm up a bit more than 70-degrees before the dog days of August, or where the bodies of water were bath-temp tidal pools, I might take a skinny dip and indulge in some au naturale' sun bathing on a large, flat rock. Instead, I invoke the virtue of patience and begin filling my bird feeders, watching for the return of the birds on the spring breezes.

I’ve learned to be happy sipping my morning brew, wrapped in my fleece robe with fluffy chenille sox on my feet. I tuck back into a sunny corner protected from the wind and chant, “I do believe in summer, I do believe in summer, I do believe in summer.” Where are those damn hot flashes when I need them?

When I think of a nature Goddess, I conjure images of the Disney Princesses (I’m a child of the 60’s, what do you expect?). I imagine strolling through my acre-sized yard, which I like to refer to as the Garden of the Godddess, with small woodland creatures flocking around me and bluebirds lighting on my shoulders.

In reality, I talk to the feathered and furred, the four-legged and the eight legged, and even the no legged slitherers. I'm old, I can act as flat out crazy as I want to these days. The animals tolerate my eccentricity, most likely because I keep filling the feeders and growing the flowers and vegetables they eat – or that attract the critters they eat (food chain principal – more on that later). I keep a respectful distance from the stingers and biters. I have just one expectation; within the boundaries of the MA’d Goddess’s acre, everybody better get along and play nice.

There’s a new visitor to our little sanctuary. A brazen young buck still wet behind his nubbin, little antlers, he’s been spotted in several locations around the village. Striking at night, he’s destroyed half-a-dozen of my birdfeeders at last count and gorged himself on close to 25 pounds of birdseed. He is about to incur the full wrath of the MAD Goddess.

I’m a pacifist; you know, do no harm and all that jazz, but I admit to a dark side. For instance, the squirrels and I have an understanding; they are welcome to forage from the ground beneath the bird feeders. Occasionally I have to remind them of that rule. I 've switched to a pellet gun instead of the .22 caliber automatic action rifle, so there are no longer any squirrel carcasses to hang from the feeder pole (a warning to other would-be marauders). Time is short. The MAD Goddess doesn't waste it on nice.

I don’t ask for much, really. It brings me great joy to sit on my deck, sipping coffee, watching the birds and enjoying my Disney Princess world for a few minutes in the morning before the real insanity of my day kicks me in the butt.

As for little Bambi, he’s got a lesson to learn. There’s room for everybody at the MAD Goddess banquet table. Either you’re a guest, or the main course – food chain, you know.