She sits next to me and rubs her feet on Copper's fur. I ask her if she'd like to eat her strawberry now, "I think I'd like to wash it first, just in case there are teensy, tinsy bugs on it what you can't see."
The garden has been neglected this year. I planted it, hoed it, fed it, watered it and no weeds grew. I trained the tomatoes up strands of baling wire and hilled-up the potatoes. But still, the tomatoes' skins split and the peppers developed burned spots and the spiders--oh, the spiders--are everywhere. Funnel webs dot the flowerbeds every foot or so. I had no idea there were enough insects to support such a population--an inundation, really--of spiders.
I think about how the nights are cooling as evidenced by the slowing of the crickets' chirping. I read somewhere that you can tell what temperature it is by how many chirps there are per second, but I think it was in a Trixie Belden book so maybe that isn't really true. I worry those spiders are going to come inside and I think about how the weather stripping has peeled away from the basement door--a perfect welcome mat for invaders of the eight-legged variety.
"Mom, does Copper like it when you pet her?" she stops petting for a minute and Copper turns and looks at her expectantly.
"Yes, she does."
"I wonder what it feels like to her."
"Maybe like a hug or when I tickle your back."
"I will pet her all the time then."
I suppose gardens and dogs and people are all the same....it's not enough to feed them, and train them up, to weed them and groom them...they need to be loved, too.
