by Veritas Merit

Created on: August 19, 2009   Last Updated: October 23, 2009

Yes, Dear, etc...

My wife has a garden. That means I have a garden too.

Her garden, um... mean OUR garden , this time, because you have to know there have been other gardens, this time is in Michigan, mostly in the sand of the beach left over from retreating glaciers 50,000 years ago or so. You know, give or take an eon.

We have other parts of the yard that might grow a better garden too. We have soil areas around the house, and my wife has helped me tend to portions of weed growth that blossoms there, a few cornflowers, chipmunk-hidden sunflower sprouts a few feet high, and the occasional thistle. Those parts are for show as people drive by our rural patch and admire the splotches around the house that resemble gardens.

I get to crawl out of bed on summer mornings to admire the drive-by gardens too. In my skivvies, I say hello to the same bee that visits the cornflower in front of my wife's drinking-coffee-in chair, maybe catch a swallowtail or hummer flitting and flashing past too, but mostly I get to awaken to my wife telling me how our drive-by garden needs just a bit more of this and a little less of that.

Our drive-by garden also is protected in areas by deer fencing, plastic tangly stuff that if it were a plant , would be a weed. This helps keep the rabbits away from the cornflowers. The cornflowers are for the bees, so we wrap them in deer fencing.

But, I digress.

Depending upon the hour we rise and the position of the summer sun, we also sit out back where the Avoca natrure trail and our property intersect on an angle. We get to greet, wave, smile, and curse the bike riders, hikers, children, horses, dogs, and wild animals that come down the trail.

Beyond this, most mornings we sit on the porch admiring our sand garden; you know, the ancient beach left by the retreating glaciers. We admire the butterfly bushes, of which there are two. We rarely see butterflies land or linger on the butterfly bushes, but we do get to coach the butterflies to visit and stay a while. They rarely do, but it entertains the people on the trail as we gyrate, cajole, bend, twist, and even shout for the butterflies to take up residence.

Of all the gardens my wife (read "we") ever cultivated, the sand garden is the strangest. It was there when we bought the house, already hding in its sandy grave all the junk a bulldozer could doze under so that the railroad storage area we now call home could be cleared. In Michigan, land clearing often begins with burying all the

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