The National Weather Service predicted a deluge for our area, so I was not surprised to wake up to clouds.
Something else did amaze, however: upon gazing upon our palatial gardens, it was to observe the ultimate pop-up in the guise of Mr. Gopher, a well-known local resident famous for his superrodent ability to pull an entire 20-year-old fig tree down into his hidey hole piece by piece over a month’s time.
Now, soft: at this moment in time the Weather Service’s rain prediction had not yet come to pass. Skies were cloudy and threatening but the torrential downpours reminiscent of the Days of Ark had not yet begun.
Yet somehow Mr. Gopher had been made aware of the pending doom (….given the fig tree decibel, there’s probably a hand-crank radio down there in his living room) and decided to ‘close the door’, frantically pulling dirt over his entranceway in a hasty attempt to forestall the inevitable.
When next I looked, there was NO evidence of his front door.
10 minutes later the skies opened up to reveal the awful truth: SOMEBODY had placed their front door directly under the gutter, which at this point was happily overflowing in an effort to fill prediction beyond its wildest weather dreams. Talk about bad feng shui!!!
Lesson One: Placement of the Front Door
am sure somebody else, unseen, was stewing in his living room as a lake formed over his front door, because suddenly – much as in the manner of a plugged toilet plungered to freedom – a whirlpool opened up and ALL the water went swirling merrily down his front entryway, now exposed for what it was: a drain.
A little later I saw Mr. Gopher at the other end of the garden ruefully surveying matters. Obviously SOMEBODY had picked the wrong location for his estate during the summer dry season.
From Eden to Hell…in 60 seconds flat!
And a little later I saw a furred denizen leap into the huge drainage pipe that led from just outside the garden up the wall to the gutters: a pipe obviously plugged with leaves despite my usual autumn cleaning pre-storm.
And so it was that I informed The Peanut Gallery that there was clearly NO NEED to ascend to the roofline to unplug the gutter drains: somebody with far more invested in his real estate choice was in the process of undertaking the entire messy unplugging job for us.
Thus neatly proving that when one door closes, the other opens … turning a former garden demon into an Unplugger Angel.
