Can you dig it?

Last year we had cherry tomatoes in abundance. This year, almost nothing. Last year, we grew them upside down, in pails with holes in the bottom. This year, we got smarter and hung the pails right-side up, which apparently drowned the roots, or starved them of oxygen. So our waterboarded tomatoes failed to yield any useful data.

This afternoon, I was enjoying a beer in the Zinn Center, a screened addition to our deck, when up popped a squirrel. Assuming a he, although one is never entirely sure except during breeding season, the visitor scrambled up onto the railing. In this mouth, he clenched a black walnut in its green case. Around the corner he roared, and came to a screeching halt at a handful of peanuts, placed there by J's granddaughter earlier in the afternoon.

He placed the walnut carefully beside him, and paused to enjoy the first few pieces of the offering. Soon he retrieved the walnut and raced to the end of the railing, where he clambered up a wooden post from which I had hung a pot of petunias. With his back to me, he dug a substantial hole in the pot. Then he dropped the walnut into the cavity, and covered the treasure.

Back he roared to the remaining peanuts, and sat calmly while devouring them so fast that I could barely see his lower jaw moving. Stopping to scratch an itch, he completed the feast, and continued along the railing the way he had come in. At that moment, a tomato pail caught his eye, so up he jumped into the pot. It soon became apparent from the falling leaves and stems that he was treating himself to an after dinner mint.

The devastation complete, down he sped along the rail to the steps, and vanished.

I assume that the idea behind burying the treat is that the outer covering rots, making it easier to delve into the nut inside. I also assume that he, like every other squirrel we have observed, will forget where he buried the walnut. At some point, the chances are better than fifty-fifty that a small walnut tree will begin its life in our petunia pot. And in this way, Mother Nature carries on her fascination with life against all odds.