My garden has been neglected. Look at my trowel. That's not fresh garden soil on it--it's month-old (at least) soil. I have been away and the forces of weeds and weather have been at work. It is probably too late now for this trusty tool to do much good.

While I have been away, woodpeckers have decided that my house is their house. They think of it as a big tree in a little woods and love it because instead of those pesky round surfaces, it has nice flat ones that are easy to maneuver. Being cedar, it is softer than an oak tree. Because it is made up of hundreds of pieces of siding and trim, it has hundreds of places for bugs to hide, making for hundreds of places for woodpeckers to go for dinner--sort of a franchise row for the pecking set.

We have done the recommended woodpecker control--shiny, moving things dangling from the eaves; no more suet in the feeders; new caulk. Woodpeckers, however, don't give up. When the shiny things blow down--and sometimes even when they don't--woodpeckers return. A small downy woodpecker is the most persistent. Flag's barking does nothing to deter him because the downy is up so high he knows no dog can bother him (though she can spring at least five feet off the ground). That is why yesterday, in order to scare this little tyrant away, when I could see nothing else at hand, I picked up my long-unused trowel and flung it at the house. I had the fleeting thought that I should be careful not to break a window, but I needn't have worried. I heard the metal hit the cement block foundation and immediately knew that I still throw "like a girl." Why is it that this is the only part of me that doesn't age? In any case, the woodpecker flew away--and so, though many gardening chores remain undone, I celebrate the revelation that it's never too late to throw in the trowel.