Our Garden Gals bought a huge fig tree last year! It was as tall as Teddy, and we ate three figs from it last year, too! Well, this year it got soooooooo much bigger, it had to be as tall as Spaulding and the leaves were huge! It’s only June, so the figs were just beginning to grow, and looked more like little green dots, then figs, but we took good care of it, even during this first heat wave, making sure it got enough water.

We went out to water it last evening and beavers chewed it right off its roots! Sure, beavers don’t live in a city, but what else could it have been? And, the beavers chewed one of our brussel sprouts down, too, but, at least half of it was still connected, so we just put a stake next to it, and tied it up. It doesn’t have any leaves left on one side, but it’s not dying, so we’ll take good care of it! AND, as if that wasn’t enough, the beavers made a huge hole in our lavender hedgerow, big enough that our kids can use it as a fort now!

We were in shock! The Garden Gals were all crying. Our sons got out some rubber bands and paper clips to go hunt the evil beavers! Mommy and Daddy were beary sad (those homegrown figs tasteded beary good last year, and they were excited to have our beary first tree – the only kind of fig tree that can survive our growing zone – a Hardy Chicago!

Well, Garden Gals don’t give up on plants anymore then we do, so after some confurrying, they decided it couldn’t hurt to try and regrow the tree with a little effort. Worse that could happen was that it wouldn’t work, and, since it wasn’t going to live as it was when we found the poor huge tree – well, might as well try!

Our Sweeties cut all the big, beautiful, dying leaves off, and then all the branches but two. Our daughters sadly places the leaves and branches into the new compost bin. (Our real compost bin is now home to a huge acorn squash plant, thanks to some squirrels, who liked the outside of the squash we never ate last winter, but didn’t like the seeds.) Mommy cut off the top of a 2 liter plastic soda bottle, put in a small terra cotta pot in the bottom, so the branch….errr, the tree, which by now only looks like a sling shot, wouldn’t twirl around the bottle, when she added rooting hormones and water to put it in. (It looks pretty much like our Dwarf Lilac bush looked like when we first got it as a bare-root plant, so we’re hoping the few little roots left, might make the fig tree remember to grow more roots, just like the Lilac did!)

They put it up on the top shelf, so it would get sun, but beavers couldn’t get at it. (We don’t think beavers climb, but we also didn’t think beavers lived in Philadelphia either!)

Just as they finished, our sons came back from their hunting up and down our alley, and reported no beaver sightings! We were all mourning our plants, when we heard an ice cream truck! Ice cream makes girls, even Garden Gals, happier, so we brought some back, to eat in the garden, just in case the beavers returned.

The ice cream helped us feel a little cooler, but we’re still in a heat wave, so we came inside fairly quickly after eating up the ice cream.

Well, tonight Mommy went out to water the garden, and to her great surprise, she found a couple of squirrels in the yard. (Sammy, the squirrel’s family lives in our park, so these are squirrels we don’t know, and don’t like since they seem to have no idea that we don’t want them to eat our tomatoes, and now they were found digging up some more fig tree roots and eating them, and the other one was hiding under the injuried brussel sprout plant!

We didn’t know squirrels ate tree trunks and roots! Sure looked like beavers! The squirrels won’t talk to us (probably, because they know we don’t like them), so we couldn’t find out why they were so mean!

Mommy had to know how to protect the rest of our garden, so she went onto the Garden Web, and askeded if anyone knew why they’d do that! Well, today is the third day of our heat wave, so one of the guys thought maybe they were thirsty, and getting fluids from well watered plants!

Could be. We now have a couple of water dishes for the squirrels. (Our birdbath always has water in it, but maybe these squirrels could never find it.)

One water dish is near the corner where the fig used to be, since we know the squirrels ran away around that small area between our fence and our house. The other dish is near our gate, since that’s usually where squirrels walk in. Hopefully, they know they are welcome to water, but stay out of the rest of our yard!!!

Tomorrow starts our beary first heat wave of the season. (For those of you, who don’t get cleaver little invented weather words, “heat waves” are when it’s above 90F degrees – a little above 32C – for three or more days.) We’ve already had several days in the 80s, so figure we would need the Teddy Bear Pool Opening before the heat wave hit.

We set the contacting chain in action by telling Ding and Tee’s sparrow buddies to contact our buddies, Pete the Pigeon and Sammy the Squirrel, so they would tell all the other small city Animals. We called some of our stuffed animal buddies to invite them and have them call more stuffies, until every stuffy in the area, and just about all around the world knew about it. (Our daughters were happy to find out Dilly was coming, and we were all happy to hear Bob T. Bear, Tequila Teddy, J.D., and a bunch of our other buddies were coming.)

Molly and the mice, who help take care of the Hotel NOLA, already knew it was time to open the pool, so they got help last week from some of the park’s animals and birds to pull the cover off the pool, giving the ducks and geese some time to clean it a bit by eating out of it. (Ewww)

We got there early to surprise our buddies, after there . What the ducks and geese wouldn’t eat, we vaccuumed out, before everyone got there. This years pool opening party was nothing but fun, food and naps! No work involved at all foe most.

We hadn’t seen Sammy the Squirrel in a while, so were a bit shocked to realize, he is now older then his grandfather was, and is a great grandfather himself. Each generation named their oldest son Sammy, so it got quite confusing. Mrs. Sammy noticed our reaction, but waited until Sammy wandered off searching for great-grandson #94. She laughed and told us, that, at their age, they know all their family has names, but it’s just easier to remember them by number. (Squirrels average a liter of about 6, every year, and have their first liter when they are about 1!)

She told us that squirrels, generally don’t live past 6. This a’scared us greatly, a’cuz we know Sammy is getting up to 6 already, if not there now! Mrs. Sammy told us that it’s not as bad as it sounds. There are a bunch of reasons squirrels don’t get older, and they include not enough food, storms, cats, dogs, and cars. Thanks to storage at the hotel, the squirrels will always have enough food. Thanks to friends like Axlerod, Lady, Dee, Tee, and Tee’s buddies, who can tell their kind not to eat squirrels, there’s a lot less worrying about dogs and cats. Mrs. Sammy still remembers the death of Sammy Sr. in that terrible flooding accident during Tropical Storm Flloyd, so she has convinced Sammy to move into Hotel NOLA next winter. And, finally, since Hotel NOLA is in Teddy Bear World, they can’t get run over by cars.  Mr. and Mrs. Sammy should live to be the world’s oldest squirrels.

Anyway, the day was full of games, food and naps. Of course, naps were often interrupted by excited kids wanting to show their parents their special dives. We weren’t close enough to get wet, but, if you have over 1000 stuffies and small city animals, with most of them having their own kids, it’s hard to tell which “DaddyDaddyDaddy, watch this dive!” is being called over to you.

ESPN (Mommy note: They confuse the sport’s TV station with telepathy) runs deep in stuffies – we all surprised the kids at the same time, by running into the pool with one massive cannonball flop, and soaked the entire line waiting to dive.

Then, to tease us right back, Tee called out boldly (what happened to that shy kitty cat from a few years ago?), “Sharks in the Middle!” We all turned from cannonball daddies to sharks in the middle, ready to tag any child bold enough to try to swim past us without getting caught.