Letters to the Editor - Gardens arent dog parks - Gardens aren’t dog parks

    One recent evening when I was gazing out my window sizing up the gathering clouds, praying for rain, I noticed a young man walking a black lab past my perennial gardens.  Just as the lab was raising his leg to relieve himself on my lovely lupine, I yelled out "Hey don't let your dog pee on my perennials!" The young man pulled his dog away and weakly called out "sorry" like he was an innocent bystander left powerless by the dog's urge to relieve himself wherever he pleased. This ticked me off and I responded with a colorful phrase that I often heard my mother exclaim when I was a child. Yes, my mother taught me that even a "good Christian woman" would swear like a sailor when provoked. 

    I am an avid flower gardener. It is an addiction that I inherited from a grandmother who immigrated from an Norwegian island above the Arctic Circle to Superior, Wisconsin and thought she had landed in gardening paradise. For the past six years I have dug, planted, mulched, fertilized, weeded and watered so that I could enjoy the flower gardens that I have today. I offer them to my neighbors as a small measure of heaven to enjoy on their evening walks. Please slow down your pace, allow your senses to awaken and your children to see the wonders of nature - but keep your dogs on a short leash or you may be greeted, not with a robust "good evening and a how are you today," but with one of the choice phrases that my mother taught me.

Cora Leland

Victory