Chet Baker's Lament

A Boston terrier needs someone to play with. Boys like my brother Liam are good for this. They understand. They usually have balls with them.

The play should be active and raucous and rough. Liam bounces my tennis ball hard on the concrete and I leap after it!

and I snatch it away from him if I can. I catch a lot of sweet air when I leap. 

Boston terriers need to play a lot. I have just interrupted the writing of this post to bring my ropus to Mether. She tugs and we growl at each other ferociously and she kisses me on the nose when she pulls me in, which breaks the mood a little bit. I like it when she tries to grab my front paws. I growl very loud then! I sound like a wookie from Star Wars!

Mether has this greenhouse out back she calls the Garden Pod. And this is where the problem starts. She gets all antsy and has to empty it out when the sun gets warm enough to bake in. I like to bake on the sidewalk or the deck in the sun. I believe that is why they call me Chet Baker.

So she gets obsessed with gardening in early May and it goes right through the whole month.

Everywhere she goes she carries a plant.

The back of her car is lined with plastic seed sacks, the kind I love to shake! and it is usually full of plants. Just when I think she is winding down she goes and gets some more plants.

Plants, plants, plants...margeurite

and peach verbena

and cuphea in hanging baskets for the hummingbirds (another thing she is obsessed with)

and fancy geraniums like Frank Headley (ditto, obsessed)

which she grows herself all winter in the Pod which has a nice heater I can stand by while she dithers and clips and repots plants

plants, plants, plants, plants, all of them she grows all winter long

and then she must decide where they all will go--in baskets and planters, because these are the kind of plants that are candy to bunnehs, bunnehs I chase! Bunnehs I think about all the time!

but I am not obsessed about bunnehs the way she is about her plants.

What I am obsessed about is getting enough attention from Mether. I have sat waiting for attention for so long I have worn the hair off the tip of my little screw-tail. Phoebe says it looks like a tick now and is gross. She says I need a tail hair extension. Mether thinks the naked tip of my tail is cute, which is why I love Mether so much.

In the next post I will share my secrets for getting attention.

Most photos in this post by Phoebe Linnea Thompson. Thank you, Sister, for helping me tell my story.