Yesterday morning I finished walking Shadow and took my coffee into the little morning room at the back of the house. I love to curl up there for a bit before my workday begins, sipping coffee and enjoying the bright sunshine and my beloved plants. I sat down and gazed out across the garden area towards the autumn landscape. A flash of red streaked through the raised beds. To my astonishment, not one but two red foxes raced across the frost bitten grass. One was slightly larger, the other a bit smaller and thinner. I followed their progress across the fields. They raced up the mound of black compost, stopped to mark the pile, then began playing tag. One would race around the pile, peek over the top, then flick his tail to encourage the other to chase. Around and around they raced, playing, dashing, leaping. I got the camera but couldn’t get a good shot through the windows – the sun glare was too strong. After watching their antics for ten minutes, I tried to sneak outside to snap a photo, but by the time I got around the corner of the house they’d vanished back into the woods. John heard foxes in the woods from where my two entered the field. Do we have a den of reds? Our neighbors tell us reds are rare here – it’s all gray foxes. I am always thrilled when I see my beloved red foxes!
Jeanne Grunert is a certified Virginia Master Gardener and the author of several gardening books. Her garden articles, photographs, and interviews have been featured in The Herb Companion, Virginia Gardener, and Cultivate, the magazine of the National Farm Bureau. She is the founder of The Christian Herbalists group and a popular local lecturer on culinary herbs and herbs for health, raised bed gardening, and horticulture therapy.
