It’s a beautiful spring here now, full of color. The purple lilacs, white Lilies of the Valley, the Red Bud trees, the emerald grass. And a black snake. Our days are typical May – upper 80′s one day and 60 the next. We’ve had a lot of rain, so much so that the grass grows long because the ground is too wet for mowing.
The 80 degree weather earlier in the week found me in the garden raking out leaves, pulling weeds, doing a spring clean-up. As I returned from a rest break, and bent down to pick up my gardening gloves I found myself face-to-face with, yep, a very fat black snake. I don’t like snakes, especially fat ones. They’re just gross. I jumped back, ran into the house and locked the door. And then I called for my husband to come home immediately. Which he did, and he chased the snake away from the basement door. John remarked that it was a good thing I’d locked the door – “crafty snake,” he said. “You never know with snakes, it might have crawled right up the door and opened it.” Ha-ha.
Of course, the question around town was, “You didn’t kill it, did you?” And of course, killing it never occurred to us, not even to me. It was a black snake after all, fat and shiny granted, but still a black snake. And you don’t kill black snakes around here. My father taught me that. They’re good snakes, they eat critters you don’t want in the garden, so you don’t kill them. The gardens around here have plenty of black snakes and I have many memories of Pop picking them up with a rake or shovel and carrying them away. Guests here didn’t appreciate that he wouldn’t kill them, but he wouldn’t. He just moved them.
I thought of Pop as I hid in my locked house. He would have scratched his head, smiled a little, and said how the snake disliked me as much as I disliked it. (Which John had also pointed out!) Pop’s birthday is next Friday. He would have been 94. In a show of bravery to his teachings about black snakes, I’ll work in the garden again today. I just hope that the snake has moved far away. I’d like to do my gardening by myself!
May Lilacs
