Garden tales

The Web is a wonderful place to find serious gardener stuff, such as this direct quote from a venerable gardening source: "Take care to make sure the seeds do not grow willy nilly." Unfortunately this is the type of information that too many gardeners ignore, and they let their seeds grow willy nilly, and they soon reap the consequences: too many zucchinis.

No, just kidding. The overabundance often seen with zucchinis occurs because little gnomes secretly carry them into yards, office buildings, etc. during the night when everyone is sleeping.

There is the perennial garden, and the annual garden, and then there is ours, which could be most accurately described as the Willy Nilly Garden. No matter the amount of discipline I try to impose, a few plants have declared themselves independent, and take orders from no one. They roam about the garden at will, poking their tendrils into everyone else's business, not wanting to miss anything exciting going on.

At some point, if they keep growing, they will discover that the real happening place in the yard is not in the dirt, but in the old ladder hanging decoratively on the fence. Well, that used to hang decoratively on the fence.

The ladder is one of those items that has never had a secure home. At first we propped it against our fence, which gave the appearance of the intention on our part of making nighttime raids into our neighbor's yard. It was then retired to a reclining position, propped on the side of the fence. More than once Joe has offered his opinion that the proper place for the ladder is in the trash.

The yard is not a respite for Joe. It contains too much nature, and this nature intrudes upon his senses, making it impossible for him to relax. Recently he finally agreed to sit and enjoy it with me, provided he could have his coffee at the same time, although this does nothing to help with relaxing. But the tranquility was soon interrupted by a sound, picked up by Joe's keen ears, of chewing. This sound was traced to the ladder, which was discovered to be harboring carpenter bees who, judging from the amount of shavings beneath the ladder, were building a small condominium inside the ladder.

The ladder was promptly dislodged from the fence and dumped unceremoniously as far from the house as possible. We did not actually see the bees we supposed were inside, so we could be wrong. It could be little gnomes, growing hydroponic zucchinis.