Sharon's blog: Mambo

	Mambo

This isn't about gardening.

Late yesterday afternoon I heard a scratch at my door. I wasn't expecting anyone or anything but I heard it again.

I opened my door and there on my doorstep was a very big black dog, eyes looking a little timid, tail wagging downward, head cocked a little tentatively.

On the other end of his leash was my son.

I stepped outside. My son doesn't have a dog. He gently tugged the dog back and  then he dropped the leash.

One leap from the dog; I landed in the grass with about 70 pounds of black fur leaning against me.

"Hello Mambo," I said.

I don't know where that name came from, it just bounced from my heart to my lips.

"We just picked him up from the shelter; he's had his shots and a bath and the vet pronounced him healthy and well and about 8 months old. What do you think, Mom?"

By this time the dog was fairly well draped over me, neither of us planning to move anytime in the near future.

I knew the dog wasn't for me, my son knows I can't very well handle an animal who is nearly as big as I am. When Mambo finally un-velcroed himself from me, I could only answer my son, "He's so beautiful."

And indeed he was, this gorgeous mix of black lab with the speckled feet of a British spaniel, though the vet had said he looked to have the appearance of some Great Pyrenees blood flowing through.

They visited through the evening, my son, his girlfriend and Mambo. The dog had been 'dropped off' at the shelter that morning because he was getting too big for his 14 year old owner. He was a little hesitant but playful, chasing a ball, afraid to walk on wood flooring, leaping over brick steps, and settling on carpet.  When he began to feel comfortable, he decided to 'mark' his territory. They took him outside again then followed after him with a towel.

By the end of the evening he was a smiling, happy dog.

I wonder about people who 'drop' animals off. Mambo had been dropped off in the morning, left lonely in a place he didn't know. He'd been picked up by my son, taken to a vet to be poked and prodded and bathed. He'd ridden to a strange neighborhood and landed in my lap. Through it all he remained calm, if a little hesitant, and he never said a word.

Over the years I've rescued many birds and animals. They seem drawn to me as if I were magnetic and they land in my lap or on my shoulder or in my arms. And then they settle down in my heart.

Same thing with plants. My neighbor threw a rose away because it wouldn't grow in shade and because it wouldn't bloom and because it 'sprawled'.

I rescued it and planted it in sunshine and gave it a trellis where it lives and blooms and grows boundlessly as the climber it was meant to be.

And the vine that grew spindly and leafless in the dark corner of a friend's home, grows lush and full in the window of my bedroom.

And my cats. One weighed 14 ounces and I rescued her from a man I didn't know whose gun was aimed right at her.

I don't know what it is about gardeners but I think we are all in the rescue business. Who else finds old seeds and soaks and babies and begs till they sprout even if they've been hidden in an old envelope in the back of a drawer for the last 4 years? And who else goes out in the wild windstorm to prop up an over blown iris? And who else picks up a thorny cane from the ground, ties it to a trellis, and walks away with a smile in spite of the blood that drips from thorn pricked hands?

And who else would sit still as a stone and allow a hummingbird to chatter in her ear?

Only a gardener, one who boundlessly loves all of nature and its critters and its plants; we all seem to be in the rescue business.

So Mambo isn't mine, he'll live with my son and tomorrow he might have a different name; but at the end of the day, I think he realized he'd found a home in our hearts.

And I'll bet that owner who dropped Mambo off at the shelter doesn't know a thing about gardening.

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