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Chronicle 6: The Biggest Water Dish in the World
(Wynnie's Version)
As I may have mentioned, I think there are way too many roses in this garden - there's hardly any room to run around any more. On the up side, though, we do have the biggest water dish in the world. Me and the birds and squirrels and even the cat come to drink out of it.
We didn't always have the biggest water dish in the world - it used to be a great place to run around. But that sure didn't last once mom got here.
Mom says Henry Mitchell made her do it. I don't ever remember meeting Henry Mitchell, and to tell you the truth I don't think she ever did either, but I remember one year mom was reading some book. [N.B.: That would be Henry Mitchell: "One Man's Garden" Houghton Mifflin, 1992. Read it.] She read that book over and over again all summer long, and then in September she went out and bought a pick axe.
She started digging. She dug every weekend for weeks. Then she read another book [N.B.: That would be Bill Heritage: Ponds & Water Gardens. Read it before you start to dig.] and started muttering about how the pond had to have 50 square feet of surface area and she dug some more, and Murf started shaking her head but mom just kept on digging until it was snowing. She dug up rocks and rusty railroad spikes and old dishes and little tiny glass bromo-seltzer bottles. When she finally stopped digging, she put some old carpeting she got off somebody's tree lawn in the bottom (boy did it smell great!) and some other terrible-smelling stuff in the bottom of the hole and she filled it up with water, and then it snowed.
In April she made Murf help her carry a lot of bricks home. That's one of mom's worst habits, carrying bricks and rocks home. We've got half the old St. Vincent de Paul building back there, which she made me help her carry home in a blizzard last January and to tell you the truth, I much prefer grass. Anyways, then she mixed up some mortar (and I was NOT allowed to eat any) and she made a brick ledge for me to walk on! I don't think Murf cared for it much at first, but when she saw how much I liked my new outside water dish, she started to come around. It's very nice.
the biggest water dish in the world
everyone drinks out of it
there used to be lots of room to run
Getting crowded here, too
these guys live there all year around
Blue Beauty
January 2003
