My hydrangea has been filling out nicely and has six heads of flowers now.

I wondered where the little plastic plant tag that came with it had gone off to. Huh. I had carefully kept it there in the ground so I could buy more of the same variety if it flourished as I’d hoped. (E., this is the one you gave me last year and it is the perfect plant in the perfect spot.)

The brick o’doom? There were two like that made of a calcium base that John had bought for his forge he’d turned the old grill into.  They’re lightweight, and lately the squirrels have been pushing them around: I put them back in their places in the circle, I wake up the next morning and this one’s two feet over that-a-way and that one’s sideways over there, and they’re a little more gnawed on. Wonder Bread! Grows strong bodies twelve ways!

Remember this? That was just the start. For three Wednesdays, I found some odd small lightweight thing stuck in the same place in the yard, in front of the barbecue grill and that circle of bricks. Each time it had not been there the day before. Some creature out there had developed a fetish for stashing its treasures in that one spot. (Oh. Wait. Remember the squirrel with the whipped cream? That’s where she’d eaten most of the thing, before she finished it off in the spot where I took the picture. Ah, maybeee…?)

And then last Wednesday it didn’t happen. I was actually disappointed.

My squirrels must have gotten wind of that, because on Saturday I found the missing hydrangea plant tag–it had been carefully deposited in that spot and a brick moved over towards it.

So am I expected to light up the grill and fire up an offering to the squirrel gods with it, or what?