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Chronicle 5: Devastation and Ruin

By Memorial Day of 2001, life was as good as it has ever been for the residents of this little garden. The hardest labor was past. The awkward years forgotten. May 26, 2001 was the peak of this garden - as 100 photographs taken on this day bear witness. The lean years of making do were over - so much so that we were planning a pilgrimmage to England to see Sissinghurst and Great Dixter. Life was peace and plenty, love and light. We were acutely aware of our good fortune, and grateful for it every day.

But one spectacularly bad decision was to end all that.

When one of our best friends called on Memorial Day weekend, we little suspected how our lives would be forever changed. Jogging in the park that morning, she'd found a frightened puppy abandoned in a pet taxi. The note attached to the box claimed she was a boxer/lab mix, so of course our friend though of us.

Sophie arrived in our household that weekend, and nothing has ever been the same. Call me melodramatic. Behold the photographic evidence and judge for yourself.

Wynnie tried to show her the ropes, she really did. But the poor boxer was getting on in years, and this new creature bore no resemblance to herself, even in her youth. Sure, Wynnie ate a vacuum cleaner once - who hasn't? And she'd always had a weakness for the kitchen trash, particularly if there happened to be any coffee grounds in it and we were on our way out the door dressed in black velvet. Dogs will be dogs.

Wynnie, however, had always been a perfect saint in the garden. Once the edges of the beds had been delineated with sandstone, she understood and respected those boundaries, except in cases of the utmost ugency. Occasional lapses due to circumstances beyond her control - squirrels, for example - were understood by her to be grievous offenses and swiftly forgiven and forgotten by her doting mother.

I was sure that with time, patience, and gentle, consistent training, Sophie, too would learn the boundaries of the garden, and would be as wonderful a companion as Wynnie had always been. We prepared ourselves to lose a few things, hoped they wouldn't be any particular favorites, and began the longest, most exhausting and unhappy summer of our lives.

For Sophie, it soon became clear, was no ordinary puppy. She appears to be equal parts mountain goat and kangaroo, with a fearful propensity for digging and no conscience whatsoever. No training technique, however kind, stern, loud, or consistent made the least impression. I don't believe she actually noticed that anyone was speaking to her until February of 2002, when she had some sort of puppy epiphany and began to settle down. But by this time the garden was unrecognizable.

Don't ask why we put up with it. I cannot say. And as for the inside of the house, please don't even mention the antique bookcase. Or the hole in the wall where there used to be a baseboard in the bathroom. Or the several down comforters. Or the most beautiful cashmere sweater there ever was, and isn't anymore. These things are beyond the scope of this narrative, and too painful to recount.

The destruction wrought upon the garden, though - this is fair game, and may even be therapeutic to relate. At first it was harmless puppy tomfoolery: toppling lanterns, tripping over benches. Chasing things into the rugosas. Flinging stuffed toys into the pond. These things were to be expected.

But soon she was foraging in the flowerbeds, and by the beginning of July, Sophie had turned into a canine rototiller. The ferns were the first to succumb. Before long the hydrangeas had no buds left, the snowdrops and bluebells were sitting on top of the beds as a tempting buffet for the squirrels, and a rare weeping hemlock was reduced to sticks. Even the english ivy, which I would have thought was indestructible, looked as if a truck had driven over it.

Since we hadn't slept through the night since May 31, and since we'd been driving home for lunch every day to let the puppy out, and since we found ourselves quite preoccupied with an unusual number of domestic tragedies requiring the assistance of glass-cutters and other tradesmen, I must admit that the garden - even this garden - was not our very first priority. We had enough to worry about with preserving our sanity, our domestic harmony, and most of all, the peace and safety of our beloved old boxer.

So entire flats of as-yet unplanted perennials were consumed, as we pretended not to notice. Previously healthy, well-established rugosas began turning yellow and dropping leaves. One particularly unfortunate pieris shrub was chewed to sticks, then pulled out of the ground, roots and all, four times. By the end of the summer, the gardener had fallen into a depression and pulled the shades to avoid looking outside, and poor distraught murf was avoiding home altogether.

Then came September 11th.

Which has absolutely nothing to do with gardening, of course. Except that in the weeks that followed I found myself drawn back outside, comforted by the simple acts of clipping and tidying and restoring order. Over the next few weeks, I reclaimed my garden. And over the winter, I made a plan to keep it safe.

The last thing this garden needed was more fencing. But the only alternative I could come up with was paving the whole thing over. I had to figure out how carve the tiny space up without destroying the spirit of the garden. The day I discovered our little 65-lb adventurer standing on thin ice of the pond, I quickly erected a hideously ugly but effective barrier which actually helped me to visualize the best location for the new fence.

I decided on a cedar fence short enough to preserve sightlines, but just tall enough to separate driveway and garden. The arbor would have to go, but that was probably just as well, since it needed painting. Since I wanted to preserve the feeling of entering into a secret garden, I splurged on an English iron rose arch. The carpenter who built the fence turned out to be a fine craftsman and a kindred sprit who kindly and very carefully helped me to save as much of the honeysuckle as possible.

And the dog run is an unqualified success. The new fence is wonderfully fragrant, especially in the rain, and the additional enclosure protects the oriental lilies from the coldest winter winds. The honeysuckle has obligingly scrambled up onto its new arch, and wonder of wonders - Sophie is actually beginning to shows signs of becoming kind of a nice dog.

Chronicle 6: Just a Little Fish Pool...