It’s 7 am on a Sunday, and I am awake. I am simultaneously typing this post, making espresso, doing the dishes, and making bread. Well, I’m not sitting at the sink with my hands in water washing dishes and typing at the same time, the coffee machine is really making the coffee, and the bread is just sitting on the work table bubbling as it has been doing for some hours now, but you know what I mean.

Anyway, as soon as the sun is up enough to see clearly, I will be trudging out into the back yard to gather together whatever remains of poor dear Peyton the Possum and tossing them into the trash bin (after thoroughly wrapping them in a trash bag or two). No, I didn’t do it yesterday. I am fully capable of procrastinating on things I want to do, so just imagine how good I am at procrastinating on things I don’t want to do … like picking up pieces of dead possum.

If I didn’t have a garden out there that needs tending and watering, I’d be willing to bet poor Peyton would be lying out there in pieces until spring, while I totally avoided going into the back yard all winter. But alas, I do have a garden out there, and it needs to be watered and weeded today. Therefore, I have to pick up Peyton this morning, no matter how badly I don’t want to do so.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the fact that one day I had a whole dead possum in my back yard, and the next day I had a few smallish pieces of a dead possum in my back yard. My mind keeps running through all the possibilities of what exactly has been in my back yard that can either eat or make off with large pieces of possum over the course of a single night. It’s making me a little nervous.

The first possibility, of course, is the neighbor’s dogs jumping the fence again to finish what they started when they killed the poor thing. On the one hand, at least it isn’t some wild creature I don’t know about, but on the other hand, the neighbor’s dogs killed, ripped to pieces, and ate a large animal. Somehow, I don’t find that very comforting.

Another possibility is a raccoon. I haven’t seen any raccoons since the first winter we lived here, but that certainly doesn’t mean they aren’t out there. Do raccoons eat dead animals? I don’t know. I do know I don’t especially like raccoons, because they are aggressive, even when not cornered or threatened.

And I suppose the neighborhood cats could have gone at the corpse as well. There are a number of roaming kitties on our street, but it seems to me it would take a whole bunch of really hungry cats to almost finish off a large possum overnight.

Maybe it’s a combination of all these things. Perhaps even vultures, as we do have them around here as well. Who knows? It’s the not knowing that is bugging me. Whatever it was, it made clean work of the possum body, and that tends to mean sharp teeth. It’s bad enough my pleasant garden where I go to unwind has been tainted by a dead possum, but knowing there’s something in the area capable and willing to eat said dead possum, well … it’s making my pleasant garden a little less pleasant and relaxing to be in.

Speaking of the garden, it’s so depressing I can barely talk about it.

First it rained too much, and everything got waterlogged and didn’t get enough sun. Additionally, I wasn’t able to get out there for weeks, and there are weeds and fire ants all over the place. Then we had a storm that destroyed some plants, followed by the neighbor’s dogs tromping around in it killing some more plants. I also haven’t been able to get out there to build trellises for the beans or cucumbers, so they are all over the ground and not looking good, and who knows how many aphids are out there having the time of their life. I haven’t been able to check for bugs either. I’m sure there are some.

But the ground is finally no longer squishy when I walk on it. In fact, it’s dry enough I need to water the garden today. So I have to get out there this morning and get things done! Maybe I can make my garden a slightly less depressing place with a couple hours hard work. I hope so. I miss being out there, but I’m not so certain I am going to enjoy gardening during the winter as much as I do during the spring and summer. We shall see how I feel about it once I get things under control.

First task though is dealing with the pieces of Peyton, and then weeding the bed for the fennel and planting those seeds (way late, but I’m doing it anyway). Next watering everything a little, and after that weeding the rest of the beds. I can’t do anything about the ants just yet, because I haven’t found the organic stuff I want to use locally, but maybe I’ll carry a bunch of pots of boiling water out there again and deal with them that way. I did manage to kill off that one huge nest of them, so that works well enough for now.

I really don’t want to go deal with dead possum this morning. I really, really, really don’t. But someone has to, and that someone is always me.