Death in the Garden

When I headed out this morning at 7 AM to dig up 2 1/2 rows of red potatoes, I expected an uneventful gardening experience. Tom had canned tomatoes on Saturday, and my contribution to our gardening enterprise was to do some of the manual labor, which I actually prefer, anyway, to canning. The cats accompanied me outside, Persey sleeping most of the morning in the Secret Garden room that I created out of a 10'X10' dog pen, and Cassie wandering around the yard and garden on the lookout for mischief.

The garden this morning, after I had dug up a few potato plants

After turning over half of a row of potatoes, I looked back at the work I had done so far and saw something small wriggling on the upturned soil. I bent for a closer look. With my spade, I had dug up a nest of what I first took to be mice but that later I suspected were moles. The creatures were very tiny, without hair, and obviously in distress. What to do? We live far from any conservation group that might want to take in tiny moles still nursing, and since I had violently--though unintentionally--disturbed the nest, the little things wouldn't live.

What I inadvertently dug up when I was spading up potatoes

So I put the creatures back in the soil where they had been, knowing that they would die there. Of course, Cassie, who had been incommunicado when I had called for her a few minutes earlier, showed up, and, when my back was turned, dug up one of the tiny critters.

Cassie with her tiny catch

I took the little mammal baby from her, knowing that Mama Mole would reject these little creatures because they had been handled and disturbed. I returned it to the garden, and closed the garden gate so that Cassie could not return. However, later that morning she snuck up onto the greenhouse roof and down into the garden, making off with another mole--which I "rescued," after a manner of speaking because nothing was going to save these creatures from death.

Cassie makes off with a baby mole a second time

Later I did look up on the Internet how to take care of baby moles, but, really, it was way too late. These little guys didn't even have their fur yet. And I'm not the nurturing type. I have a rather jaundiced view of nature red in tooth and claw--even though there is much in nature that is lovely and mysterious. And as I type this I am reminded of something that the Polish poet and writer Czeslaw Milosz observed about nature in his published journal A Year of the Hunter. I took the book down from the shelf behind my desk and flipped through it, for I knew that I had underlined several passages.

I opened the book immediately to this: "I am not a passionate admirer of Nature," Milosz admits on March 30, 1988, "because Nature is a pain, but I still feel the presence--inborn, inherent--of a tree, an animal, a flower...." And in an earlier entry in September 1987, he describes nature programs on PBS as "obscene" because the scientific approach to these programs includes humans as part of the cycle of nature as any other creature and, because of that, people "must accept the world as it is," without moral force. He is "horrified by the images of mutual indifferent devouring" and wonders how the message of that indifference translates into human society (and how children, for whom these programs are created, interpret that message). He asks: "Is hunting and devouring each other the very essence of Nature?" And answers: "It is, and that is why I dislike Nature."

I don't dislike Nature, but I recognize its indifference. A parent of these little creatures made a nest in garden soil in an Arizona garden. Today, I dug potatoes in that garden and destroyed the nest. I guess I'm a force of Nature, just like my cat Cassie,  though not totally indifferent to the suffering.

I continued with my work.

At the end of the row where the tiny creatures met their fate.

The completed work, stones marking near the center of the photo the dirt tomb of the moles.

The potatoes I dug, drying and curing in the pantry

I suspect that one reason Czeslaw Milosz hated Nature is that it reminded him of the fragility of his own body, that he also, despite his intellect, morality, and fine-tuned emotions, was subject to that same indifferent force, for he also muses in an earlier entry: "The dividing line between life and death is so fine. The unbelievable fragility of our organism, which suggests a vision: a fog of sorts condenses into human form, lasts for a moment, and is instantly dispelled." 

So, here....a poppy memorial for the fragile lives that I destroyed today.

Note: The other lives I destroyed today were the potato plants--"devouring," the "very essence of Nature."