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It was April and the last snow of the season had come and gone. The back yard of my home in central Utah was beginning to show signs of life, with the green of grass warring with the yellow of budding dandelions. My garden plot was looking good. Really good. I had taken pains to put it to bed properly at the end of the previous season, and I had been planning this year's garden for five months! Five months of sketching designs and plans, layouts and trestles for beans. And now the time was fast approaching.

I turned to my wife. "Hey," I said, all innocent and completely ignorant of the pain I was about to commit myself to, "why don't we plant some corn?"

"Great idea." She squinted in thought. "Is it hard to grow?"

I shrugged. "No way. Everybody does corn."

Three weeks later I was ready. I had tilled the plot again, mixing in some nice steer manure and keeping it watered to get the worms excited. On a perfect, sunny Spring day, with a packet of seeds in hand, I dashed outside and planted four rows of corn in the southern end of the garden. I splashed some water on the five by ten foot area of future cobs and then moved north up the plot to put in some beans and zucchini.

Two weeks later I stared morosely at the bare plot. No corn sprouts. None. No future maize. Glaring at the dirt, then the sky, I asked, "Why?" Nobody answered. I jerked open the shed door and dug through my box of seed packets, finally coming up with the packet of corn seeds. Having only cursorily skimmed the planting instructions, I had not actually read all of the information available. Two lines down, I found the problem: Plant in warm ground in a sunny area.

I looked up and glared again. But this time, I glared at the trees that shaded the southern end of my garden for about six hours of the day. Muttering to myself, "Too early. Planted them too early. Gotta have warm ground," I made my way to my healthy tomato plants and took solace in their rough stems and fuzzy leaves. I broke a leaf off and inhaled that wonderful sharp aroma of the tomato plant's foliage. Recharged, re-energized and renewed, I weeded around my zucchini then went inside.

"Yeah, so we planted that corn in the wrong place," I said, stepping through the back door into my small home. "Needs to be in direct sunlight."

"What do you mean 'We'?" my wife asked, grinning at me.

I muttered something witty and rude and stalked off to the kitchen, in search of a drink of water. "Yeah, well we'll give it some time. Maybe as it warms up and

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