This installment brought to you courtesy of my drug-induced haze

A little over a week ago, I noticed my left ear felt a little twitchy. I attributed it to the fact that I live at an altitude of over 8,000 above sea level, and that I gone shopping in the flats at my “local” Target, which is 30 miles in an easterly direction and about 3,000 miles lower in altitude. Several days later, I attributed the twitching – which had migrated to trash-can-lid-thumping – to some possible water in my ear courtesy of my daily shower.


It’s been so long since I’ve been sick (since I don’t have health insurance, I stay in remarkably good health), that it took a full week to realize some little bacterial devils were hosting their version of the Superbowl in my ear. Today is Day Five of The Drug Regimen, and I am as spacey as David Bowie’s Major Tom. It’s a backhanded compliment that I could never be a drug addict. Two antibiotics a day, and I am couch material. That’s actually where I spent yesterday getting caught up on “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” It was a good excuse, anyway…


Today, I am feeling a little more human. Our mountain weather, which changes and moves as fast as a square dancer’s petticoats, has become a little more temperate. When all this ear twitching began, we had a few feet of snow on the ground. But it’s warmer today, and the shadows are getting a little longer. So I got the itch to go check out the flower garden.


Like an ear infection, gardening is no small prospect at altitude. In most places of these United States, spring has probably left its mark and the hand of summer looms large. I know the people of the fair state of Florida, where I used to live, are undoubtedly sweating bullets already. But not so here in Bedrock. The ground, which has been heretofore permafrosted, has softened slightly to the touch. I can see the first glimpses of this year’s coming crop of Shasta Daisies, and it’s time to clip away last year’s stalks. It’s advisable to keep the dead stalks attached here at altitude because they act as a natural snow fence and hold some of the flaky stuff in place.


In other words, they become a natural tool. It makes me think of the older nature shows which first discussed the fact that apes took long sticks, shoved them down termite holes, and pulled out dinner (or breakfast or lunch) slick as you please. Tools, of any description, are where you find them.


So I am luxuriating in the morning, snipping the sticks away, and pulling up other garden detritus. That’s when I notice my day lilies and delphiniums are getting a sneak peak at the longer days. I also notice the deer are mowing down the tender young shoots of my iris bulbs. I have to laugh about this because folklore (and garden shops) says iris is deer-resistant. Poppycock for sure, judging by the munch factor. At least for the moment they are leaving my clematis and honeysuckle alone.


A few weeks ago, much to my utter amazement, I noticed a Johnny JumpUp blooming right in the middle of the snow. Well, blow me down! They are one of my favorite flowers, and grow in crazy profusion throughout my flowerbeds. This little guy had been sheltered by a few rocks, and so was staking some serious territory and annual intention.


Even the peonies and hybrid lilies are coming up. I haven’t figured out how they managed to show themselves before the daffodils, which are usually the first harbinger of spring in my flowerbeds. And then there are the Pasque lilies which grow wild here and haven’t even poked up yet.


I recall that time a number of years ago that I first decided to put in some flowerbeds up here. Gardening here is akin to moving mountains because…when you live on a mountain, all you have to work with is rock in some form or another. I really hadn’t intended to put in a large flowerbed at the foot of my driveway until our Road and Bridge Department decided to rearrange my landscape. And that was all it took. I sought out the largest boulders I could move, drawing my proverbial line of granite in the sand. Whoever constructed my house had dumped some gravel/rock/dirt/etc. to one side when the driveway was carved, and that eventually because the top terrace of Flowerland.


Flower gardening is so unusual up here that, during the summer, people walk down my dirt road just to see what I’m up to. I’ve actually met a number of my neighbors that way. We may not be able to talk about the state of world affairs, or the status of our rather insane county government, but we can sure talk about flowers. Like chocolate and love, it’s a fairly universal language.


And if you’re going to garden up here, you better be prepared to pay the piper. Even before the flowers burst into their dizzying displays, the deer have staked out spots like seniors at a mid-day smorgasbord. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve kept a daily vigil over some certain flower or another that was about to open in a splendiferous manner only to find a telltale petal as the sole remnant of the long-awaited occasion. Floweriss bloomis interruptis.


But I love gardening so much, I take it in stride. Up here, you can buy a product called Bobbex -- which is a disgusting concoction of garlic, wintergreen, sulfur, pee, and pretty much everything else with a noxious odor -- to fend off our four legged friends. I have to chuckle when I read the label: spray every 10 days to two weeks. Yeah, right. Once upon a fairy tale, I used to pour the elixir into one of those trigger-spray bottles and gently mist my plants. This is guaranteed to annoy the deer, but little else. Today, I pour the concentrate into a fertilizer applicator, attach my garden hose, and douse everything.


Trust me, you don’t want to visit the house right after application. But the smell and the annoyance are all worth it when bloom time hits.


And so I have accumulated a wheel barrow’s worth of dead material and head into my forested backyard, returning to Mother Nature what she has go graciously given to me.


The timing is good: it just started snowing and someone is playing “Wipe Out” on my eardrum.