Socks and Four O’Clocks

I opened the front door to get more of the morning through the glass storm door, then blinked in surprise as a squirrel on the lawn turned and ran toward me. I saw herwhite feet right away. We have been noticing Socks for years, frisking in the white oaks and in our neighbor’s pecan tree. And once you name something, it seems it becomes a part of the family.

In July I nearly fell off a second story ladder when, clipping ivy, I disturbed Socks in the middle of her morning nap just outside our bedroom window. She leaped out of the ivy, ran down the foliage and scampered off into the woods, scolding all the way.

Whatever you think of squirrels—and I know there are lots of opinions out there—we had found ourselves warming to Socks. Especially since we are without pets for the first time in our lives. Our beloved cats no longer live here; as their lives ended we did not replace them because they trigger a grandson’s asthma.

Our quarterhorse has been gone two years now, and the little society finches hatched at Mennowood no longer brighten our sunny spaces with their chatter and flirtations. Life with a one-eyed monkey and an orphan bushbuck in Africa is only an incredible memory.

So when Socks scampered up to the door and looked me in the eye, I wasn’t surprised.She knows us, too. She sleeps in the ivy a few feet away from our bed at night; she helps herself to our bird food; she frolics in the lawn with her babies.

There on my front step, she ran back and forth back and forth, beseeching with her eyes. Then she tried to talk her way in. She began to chatter and chirp. I briefly considered letting her in to scamper through the heaps of paper airplanes the last little boys left behind. But when I cracked the door the slightest, she scampered off.

Later that day she came and scolded again. This time it was evening, and Robby was pulling a few weeds around an oak stump. That was just where Socks was trying to have dinner, stripping seeds from a green pine cone.

She picked up her pine cone and ran to the little gingerbread cottage where she hoped to have some peace. After a few more seeds, she gave up, noticing that darkness was gathering around her.

She scampered around us and to the ivy at the side of the house. She leaped to the rain barrel, climbed the ivy and the downspout, and disappeared into her nest just outside our bedroom window.

Socks had gone to bed.

But our evening surprises were not over. There was a fragrance in the air. Many times over the years we have smelled a sweet fragrance and never knew where it was coming from. We walked down the path toward the moonflowers that had just opened. Nope, no scent there.

But just in front, in the fading light, we were met with a blaze of color and a strong perfume. Who knew that the fuchsia-colored four-o’clocks would be wide open at nightfall and spreading a strong sweet fragrance?

It’s not as if four o’clocks were new to me. My grandfather John ThurloSteme had planted them at my parental home in the mid 1950’s…and these were descended from those flowers. Mom always had them coming up after her peonies had bloomed. I should have had plenty of time to recognize their fragrance. But it was news to me.

The next afternoon, just out of curiosity, I went to check out the four o’clocks a few minutes before four o’clock. There was no fragrance. And this is how they looked:

Eight o’clocks? Four o’clocks? Does it really matter? All I know is, a garden is a never-ending source of surprise and delight, for those who pay attention.

 

 

Susan Yoder Ackerman is a writer and gardener in Newport News, Virginia. Both her writing and her gardening are enhanced by tending a century-old family farmhouse and eight grandchildren that come and go. You can email Susan at [email protected].