Plant the Onions Twice

The triangles and waves of onions are nice, but I got serious last week.  Most of the remaining bags of onion sets went around the edges of two of the garden beds.  Poking tiny onions into the ground took me straight back to wee childhood--maybe three years old.  My grandmother had me pushing the little bulbs into the ground with the pointy end up--the perfect planting task for a kid that age.

Root side up, looking a little worn

And now one of the Things I get to do today is plant a dozen or so of those onions again.  Seems that the throng of squirrels that roar through my yard routinely thought I'd buried something special to them under the onion sets. Apparently they had to dig up a bunch of them before deciding that no peanuts or sunflowers seeds were hiding in the freshly disturbed soil.  So not because I'm a workaholic and love to overdo it, but because I want these onions to have a chance to grow, I'm planting them again.

Barricaded for their own protection

You can also imagine my fascination with the crow and squirrel performance out back.  The crow delivered his terse, strident lines with great volume and clarity from the tree.  The squirrel (may have been the onion digger) scuttled across the ground to the other side of the tree.  The crow shouted his speech again from the top of the chain link fence, a much closer stage.  The squirrel ignored him.  The crow flew past, banked sharply and strafed the insolent squirrel.  Duck and run for cover!  In my eagerness to see the display, I moved too close, and the crow, my new ally, lost focus and flew away.  Darn!

He may have been the same one that sang from our roof for several mornings, intermittently pounding on the skylight.  I think I've found a friend.