Things to look forward to…
petting a friendly dog
I have always been a dog person more than a cat person. I like cats, I just don’t understand them. And I rather feel that’s the point of them. I live with a cat. She sleeps on my feet and claws at my rugs despite the hand knitted bed and the feline entertainment tower that came into my house with her. She attacks patterns on the quilts and hunts mice at 2am. She talks more than any cat I’ve ever known, keeping up a running commentary on the things that irritate her. Or that’s what it sounds like most of the time. Sometimes she is just asking how my day went. Maybe.
And that’s the thing about cats. They don’t bother to mimic humans. I suppose that she talks at all is some form of mimicry from an animal that would naturally be silent. But I have no idea what she is saying. Not with her voice nor with her expressions and body language.
I don’t have that problem with dogs. Dogs are pretty much an open book just begging to communicate. Constantly. They ask how you are doing, tell you about their day, give you a lift when you’re down, dance with you when you are joyful. They are interested in everything and have a million observations to share. But they also know how to read their people and will temper their mood when it seems polite.
I can pet my cat when she feels like it. It is not an open invitation. And my cat in particular — a shelter adopted, possibly formerly feral animal — won’t allow much physical contact, aside from sleeping on my feet. I can’t pick her up and she won’t sit on my lap or even much near me. She favors sitting a few meters away, out of reach, and staring at people.
But dogs always want contact. They will lean up against you just to make sure you know they’re there. They sit as close to their pack-mates as allowed, and sometimes transgress the rules when they feel physical closeness is necessary. They are constantly saying “I love you” with touch. And petting? Always!
I miss that. I have never gone this long without a dog in my life. It is probably not a coincidence that I started having high blood pressure a year into my dogless days. But I just haven’t been able to bring a dog into my home — because I’ve not been at home. Most of the last several years, I’ve had jobs where I couldn’t get home at lunch to let a dog out or to just be present to their needs. And I’ve worked very long hours. My current job has me away from my home for nearly eleven hours every weekday.
However, I have just moved to a different position, one that makes better use of my skills and also one that has better pay. But the biggest bonus for me is that I will be five minutes from my house. I can finally look for a new dog friend. A friendly dog. A dog that will share my days and require relaxing petting. All the time.
I can’t wait. I am already looking at the shelters. I know I may have to take on someone with special needs, but that might be all the better. I like being needed.
in eclipse
drawn by this forbidden fruit
compelled to fathomless pursuit
for but one pause within the dance
he holds her golden light in thrall
mercurial darkness over all
wan moonbeams douse her radiance
Wednesday Word
for 10 April 2024
nightshade
If you garden in the northern hemisphere, it is time to think about tomatoes and all their nightshade cousins. These tropical plants need many weeks to mature, and they need to be started now. Potatoes go in the ground as soon as the dandelions in your grass are large enough to bloom. But all the fruiting nightshades — tomatoes, eggplant, and peppers, including my personal manna, chile — these all need to be started indoors in pots well before it is warm enough for them to grow outside.
I suppose need is a relative term. I have heard that starting them from seed outdoors makes for stronger, happier plants. But that’s only if you have varieties that will mature within your growing season, and chiles will not. They generally need 60 to 90 days from germination to fruiting, and germination can add as much as two weeks on to that time. The ironic thing about a plant family named “nightshade” is that they also prefer heat and long hours of sunshine, even to germinate. (Do not ask me how a buried seed knows the sun is shining… but they do…) These are not normal conditions in northern spring. In Vermont, we don’t even reach germination temperatures until early June, and then temperatures begin to cool again in August. Chiles will still set fruit in cooler temperatures, but they will not develop much flavor or heat. Similarly, tomatoes may get to maturity but they don’t taste all that great without long days of warm sunshine. Sometimes they won’t even ripen if there’s not direct sunlight on the fruits.
If you want good fruits, it is necessary to have 60-100 days of warm daylight, and on average Vermont does not have that. So I start my fruiting nightshades indoors. Or, in difficult years, I buy plants from nurseries — who, more often than not, have also started their nightshades indoors. A complication with buying nursery plants is that if you don’t order early, you will not get the varieties that you want — early, as in well before plant-out time in May, often before March for less common veg. Buying plants in May means growing some rather tasteless hybrid slicing tomato and some watery hybrid bell pepper that may or may not even mature beyond bitter green fruit. So, whether you start your own or acquire them from somewhere else, it is now time to be obsessing over the nightshades that will grace your garden and please your palate in the Dog Days of summer.
Today seems a good day to contemplate nightshades. For some in North America, it is also a good time to think about the recent nightshade that took over Monday afternoon. It is a nightshade time all around. Ergo…
If you choose to ramble on tomatoes, potatoes or perhaps the more deadly nightshades, some of which are quite beautiful — or if you want to talk about Monday’s nightshade in the daylight hours — you can respond in the comments below or go visit the All Poetry contest for April. Your response can be anything made from words. I love poetry, but anything can be poetic and you needn’t even be limited to poetics. An observation, a story, a thought. Might even be an image — however, I am not a visual person, so it has to work harder to convey meaning. In the spirit of word prompts, it’s best if you use the word; but I’m not even a stickler about that. Especially if you can convey the meaning without ever touching the word.
Even if you don’t choose to scribble, at least I’ve made you think about… nightshade.
©Elizabeth Anker 2024
By My Solitary Hearth 
We miss having pets: they add an important dimension to one’s life. However, we have reached a point where we can no longer afford to feed animals or pay for their exorbitant vet fees. I hope you find a loving dog.
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I was curious about the word “nightshade” but the internet was not much help with its unclear origin “related to their dark and mystical past” that was rumored to have included use as a narcotic and hallucinogen. Regarding nightshades, it seems that all anyone is interested in talking about is tomatoes. How are your tomatoes this year? Bad/good year for tomatoes, blah, blah, blah – how boring! I don’t really like nightshades all that much, with the exception of peppers. Every year, I say that I’m not going to do tomatoes, but end up tending volunteers or freebies from my neighbor who likes to sprout them from seed. My wife and I are vegans, so most of the limited space in our urban garden is for herbs and especially greens; collards, kales, mustard greens, chard, arugula and several varieties of lettuce. For those who use their garden as a supplemental food source, the kale, chard, mustard greens, and collards that I planted last March are finally coming to a flowery end. Just as the new crop is starting to mature. A good year-round food source in more temperate climates.
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The word may in fact be literal. The Eurasian nightshades prefer the deep dark under the woven canopies of mature forests. Even the beautiful silver nightshade that grows in the arid corners of North America actively seeks out shade. I had a thriving colony implant itself under the piñon in Albuquerque, which gave nut gathering a frisson of fear.
But all of these cousins also bring nightshade to those who have not built up tolerance of their poisons. They slow the heart. They paralyze the limbs. They belabor breathing. It must be like sinking into the darkness of deep water. Or just Night.
In my garden, I grow far more of the utilitarian nightshades, the potatoes and chiles, than tomatoes. But I don’t think I could go a summer without at least one freshly picked Black Krim tomato. Also… I make chutney and salsa to last the winter. And for all those purposes, the standard beefsteak hybrids and cute cherry tomatoes fall far short. So I have to find the seeds and grow my own needs.
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Cats and dogs, an age-old discussion on which one do you prefer or like to hate. The hate comes from the patriarchy (as do most bad things) with cats associated with the feminine aspects of the universe. Cats, women, witches, why are the haters always men? Since a black cat is my totem animal I take this question very seriously. On a lighter note, I’m with you Eliza and like both cats and dogs. Long ago, I was a dog person, but after living for over 30 years with a colony of cats, I guess you would say I’m now solidly in the cat camp. The breakdown for me has always been not between cats and dogs but between humans and animals. I’ve always preferred the company of animals and the natural world to that of humans and their society. What i like about cats is their sense of equality with humans. Species-ism has always been a form of hierarchy that i detested – different but equal. I never liked the subservience and obedience of dogs to their “masters.” Who needs masters anyway, when you can have a companion.
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I’ve had dogs and cats, and while there’s nothing like the happiness of a dog when you walk in the door, I much prefer cats. I find dogs to be much too needy. I like that cats are their own selves and refuse to be anything else. I’ve had an aloof cat, a talkative cat, and a cat who would demand I sit down so he could curl up on my lap. We are currently cat-free and not certain if we will welcome another cat into the house at some point. It’s nice just having outdoor chickens to worry about at the moment 🙂 I hope you find yourself a wonderful canine companion!
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