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The Dog Days bear fruit

By G.D. Maxwell The Dog Days of summer are upon Smilin’ Dog Manor.

By G.D. Maxwell

The Dog Days of summer are upon Smilin’ Dog Manor. With empathy to my parents – who live in air-conditioned exile near Phoenix where the only tolerable time of year is any month ending in ’ebruary – the days have been stinkin’ hot. Climbing into the low 30s, they’ve finally warmed the emerald waters of Sulfuric Lake to the point where it offers blessed relief as opposed to a case of shrinkage requiring surgical intervention to reinflate.

Dog Days are called Dog Days because some bored shepherd in ancient times – even before golden oldies rock ’n’ roll – had hallucinations after eating mutton and wild mushrooms and thought the stars dancing in the night sky looked like a dog. Actually, he thought they looked like God, or a god, this being the time of polytheism, but like most shepherds, the one who came up with the dog idea and posted it to his very popular blog, was dyslexic. No, I’m being serious here.

To make a short story long, having connected the dots of all the stars in heaven and run out of names, the ancient shepherd started creating constellations in the likeness of ones he’d already named, kind of like Hollywood does with movies. Hence we have two bears, two fish, a lion and a ram you can’t really tell apart unless someone points it out to you and even then, it’s a stretch.

And we have two dogs, Big Dog and Little Dog.

The brightest star in Big Dog, like all the other stars in the sky, moves around the Earth in a fixed pattern. It just so happens, this particular bright star is the brightest star there is. Well, this smart shepherd, being an insomniac, discovered the bright Big Dog star moved in such a way that it rose and set with the sun during the hottest part of the year. Coincidence? He thought not.

Without so much as a supercomputer, he decided it was the added heat from the Big Dog star, coupled with the heat of the sun – which he correctly postulated was actually a great ball of fire, not a star at all – which made things so stinkin’ hot during that part of the summer heretofore referred to as Stinkin’ Hot Days. When his theory came to the attention of the Ancient Authorities, he was, of course, tried for heresy and staked out on an anthill in the desert until there was nothing left but his bones. Everyone knew it was only the Great Balls of Fire the gods threw across the sky every day that made the Earth hot, not the little lights in the night sky. The closer the Great Balls came to Earth, the hotter things got. Clearly, the Earth would have been hit long ago and burnt to a cinder had it not been for the continuing virgin sacrifices to Specs the myopic god of Double Vision. Silly, silly shepherd.

But like so many other oppressed movements, the story of the Big Dog star’s added heat took root and spread among the less well-educated classes, which was to say everybody other than the Ancient Authorities. So the martyred shepherd’s Big Dog Star Days of Summer Theory was never entirely stamped out and, according to the Ancient Phoenician Council On Shortened Names protocol, was shortened to simply Dog Days, as in, Every Dog Has His Day. Seriously.

Zippy the Dog doesn’t find Dog Days in the least amusing. Being a dark-coated dog, Zippy likes hot days about as well as he likes the vet taking his temperature, which is to say, not at all. Zippy’s a winter dog and his dog days are the days of deep powder when he can body surf steep hills and come out looking like a sugar dognut.

Zippy’s favourite thing to do during Dog Days is… nothing. From the moment the thermometer reaches 25º until well after sunset, Zippy lies in the cool shade cast by my bed. The only thing that will drag him out from under the bed is the sound of food being prepared, a clarion call for any Lab. Other than that, I’m pretty sure he’s dreaming about open fields of powder, just like the rest of us.

I, on the other hand, am revelling in the against-all-odds success of Strawberry Fields Forever. I’m not particularly a gardener. That title belongs to my Perfect Partner who takes great pleasure in all things to do with preparing, planting, even weeding, and watching everything grow.

I like eating. I don’t mind the chaingang work of building beds and shovelling shit but the whole planting teeny tiny seeds is fussy work and way too close to the likes of balancing a chequebook for my tastes.

So everything in the garden belongs to my Perfect Partner. Except the asparagus bed and Strawberry Fields Forever. Both endeavours, my former shrink would point out, play into my penchant for delayed gratification. After two summers, I’ve yet to taste an asparagus spear although the two-year-old roots we originally planted are thriving, having created a forest of tall, airy ferns that wave seductively in the slightest breeze. Next year, my lovelies, next year.

But it is the patch of strawberries over which I commit the sin of pride. Originally a lump of leftover dirt, a gopher condo, an unsightly mound upon which I burnt garden debris, the fertile ground which now yields so much sweetness was waste only three summers ago. With shovel and spade, I razed the gophers’ home, dug out a couple tonnes of Cariboo clay and rock, trucked in loads of manure and sand and planted strawberry roots mail-ordered from somewhere else.

They all died.

I replanted using local nursery stock. They lived. And were eaten by a million birds and a murder of thuggish crows. I fenced. Gophers attacked. I trapped their sorry asses. Berries grew.

And thrived.

So the dog days of the Summer of ’04, are Max’s Strawberry Daze. Having babied and fought over them for two summers, Strawberry Fields Forever are exceeding my wildest expectations. What started a few weeks ago as half a dozen red, ripe, juicy berries has blossomed into a pint a day with many, many more on the way. Runners have been planted to fill in the gaps and this time next year, I’ll have more ever-bearing berries than I know what to do with.

What luxury. Having given up on all but McEwan’s berries, I’ve now discovered something even better. My own. I can’t pass by the bed without filching a couple. Still warm from the sun, the taste, texture and juiciness is almost indescribable. I’d almost forgotten strawberries were a soft fruit, not a wooden, industrial, picked-a-week-ago abomination. I feel wealthy in a way so much more profound than the kind of wealth that buys a house in Whistler.

Dog Days… bring ’em on.