Squirrel was running out of room. He had stashed as many nuts as he could in his leafy tree nest, and he’d filled all seventeen of his newly-dug holes in the garden.

And yet tree nuts and berries and crabapples and seed pods continued to drop from the trees, fly through the air (especially on blustery days like today), and pile up on the ground.

So Squirrel kept gathering, all the while looking forward to what his friends might create with all the nuts and dried berries he was stashing away.

Thankfully, Old Possum had agreed to make tiny signs for all of Squirrel’s hidey-holes — labeling each one in his distinctive, looping cursive — so that Squirrel might (for a change, this year) be able to remember where he’d put everything.

(Mid-October 2023)

Story © Jennifer Singleton / Read+Purr

This is another vignette in my ongoing series of Tiny Garden Stories: peaceful 1-minute tales that let you read like a kid again. Click one of the first two buttons below to go to (or back to, if that’s where you fell down the rabbit hole) either the “Public Garden” archive page or (if you’re a Story Club member) to the members-only “Private Garden” page. Or click the third button to learn more about my Tiny Garden Stories. If you’re new to Tiny Garden Story-land and would like 10 days’ worth of stories from our first year, visit ReadPurrNewsletter.com.