Canine Capers 7

We awoke to business as usual for a Monday. Breakfast, snooze, snack, snooze, lunch. The perfect preparation for an afternoon of scurrying around outside.

For some reason, it was very noisy today — no, not courtesy of that noise — but from lots of sirens whizzing by on the main street. Fortunately, none stopped anywhere near here, and equally fortunate was the complete lack of rain — inside and out.

Eventually heading into the yard with all eyes open for something to investigate, we spied something odd and seemingly out of place.

“What is that growing through the fence?” M pondered.

We took a closer look, but were none the wiser about the apparently rapidly growing leafy thing stuck between our chain link fence — yes, yes, “ours” is only a temporary sentiment — and the neighbour’s tall wooden fence. Adding to the challenge we faced was a corrugated plastic barrier that, from what we heard, has a purpose for down the line. For now, however, it merely served as a safe place from where we could witness the unruly green threat comfortably nestled on its other side.

Given that we have, of course, read the story about the beanstalk, let me say that we were concerned about “our” place being thrust way, way up into the sky, beyond clouds, higher than birds, and having to rely on some kid named Jack to save us. Especially when we had the power to stop things before they got out of hand.

Anyway, after a brief discussion, M and I recognised that there was no way we could get over the fence and down to the source of the potential problem. Instead, we opted to seek out the help of some other critters in the yard.

We spoke to Elisabeth Ladybug and her cohorts Adam Ant and Theodore Spider, all of whom agreed to either climb over, walk through or scurry around the fence maze to get to the source of the oddness. They would then compile their information and report back so we could take appropriate action.

Elisabeth managed to climb over both the chain link fence and the wooden fence where she saw similar growths in evidence in the neighbour’s yarn. After walking through the open link of the first fence, Adam was able to enlist the help of Webster Worm, who, after digging around a bit, reported that the soil in which the growths grew was very well aerated and the roots shallow and weak. Theodore carefully climbed one of the growths in question, webbed it up, and brought back a sample.

When we had all regrouped, we discussed the findings. Clearly, this was not an anomaly, but merely a repeated event in at least two backyards in the neighbourhood. The soil in which the leafy things were growing was too well aerated to support any kind of giant tree. And the things themselves were not likely to grow very big since they were obviously weak in stature, with shallow roots and spindly stalks.

The verdict?

Weeds. Just your good old common garden-variety weeds — albeit quite a few of them.

If we could, we would have peed on all the invaders to kill them dead. But hopefully we can bring them to Jenny and Leon’s attention so they can take care of the weeds themselves. After all, why should they rely on us for everything?!

T