Strange Happenings on West Drive
By Margery McCurdy Plummer
Strange things happen on West Drive where we live. I’ve observed them mostly outside the house on the lawn. However, I think they seem strange only because we don’t stop to reason that these mysterious happenings are mostly the works of nature. If one doesn’t understand that, as I didn’t for a while, it would seem that as we sleep, plants are quietly moving about the yard, changing places or just popping up out of the ground. The most dramatic phenomenon to me occurred this summer when I went into the back yard and saw a tall hollyhock plant with beautiful pink blossoms marching all the way to the top. We had not planted it there, but when someone told me that, since a bird feeder was near it, a bird had probably brought seed from a nearby hollyhock plant in another part of the yard. It was understandable, but had never happened before.

And there was the time about a year after the death of our precious dog, Sheeba, that we saw surprise lilies, or amaryllis growing on her grave. It seemed appropriate, but we finally decided that perhaps in moving some dirt from around an exiting plant, some bulbs had taken root on the grave. It comes up and blooms every year, reminding us of the pleasure Sheeba brought to us. Amaryllis plants have been blooming all around this year. For the first time I’ve seen them a good distance from the grave and in a deeply wooded section of our back yard.

One day when I was walking down the greenway behind our house I walked by a neighbor’s house. Beside a little garden house, a row of fragrant lilies were in full bloom. I told the owner, who was working in the yard about the lilies in our yard, and he told me that he had heard them called surprise lilies, amaryllis and appropriately, resurrection lilies. It may be no mystery that the bulbs he thought he bought were not what he got. Maybe it was a mix up in bagging bulbs.

We have many species of birds around here, but there’s one that’s more friendly than the others. I call her Mrs. Cardinal, because she is a female cardinal, and I say she is friendly, because she walks around the patio pecking at the concrete and paying not much attention to anyone nearby. She even walks up close to the back door and I expect her any day to walk right into the house when the door is opened.

We have a hummingbird feeder this year and are enjoying watching the helicopter-like birds moving in place for what seems quite a while. One might wonder where those little birds get all that energy. Of course it comes from the nectar that we put in the feeder. It’s loaded with sugar, like Gatorade that athletes drink.

We’re on to most of the “mysteries” of Skippy’s behavior, but we wonder why he will not go the bathroom in his own back yard or on any of our property... but I have seen him slip across West Drive to a lot that we own on the other side and use it. Does he not know that it is his place, too, or does he think that West Drive ends it? It’s a mystery!