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stuff it'll grow okay."

My wife, Annemarie, gave me a hug. "You'll make it work." She loves that I love to garden. She enjoys it too, but she allows my seasonal obsession to run amok and she enjoys the fruits of said obsession. "Besides, we're in Utah. It's sunny here."

With greater hope, I was back outside every day of the next week, checking for sprouts. It was on a Thursday that it happened. I was sure it wasn't grass. The shape was wrong and it was too far away from the edge of the lawn. "A sprout!" I hollered, bringing my kids running and my wife walking: she was carrying the baby.

"Yay!" my two oldest boys shouted. "Corn sprouts!"

And it was true. There were several tender green shoots poking out of the tough Utah soil. I was elated. We were gonna have corn!

Two months later we were giddily eating raw green beans, raw peas, fresh zucchini and yellow squash, and were pretty sure our pumpkins were going to be big. But the corn stalks were two feet, maybe three feet, high. No sign of the fuzz that comes out the top for pollinating. No sign at all. And the stalks were thin and the roots were visible at the base of the stem. I had no idea what to do.

Then it happened. I came home from work on a blustery day that promised rain. I was beaming at the cloudy heavens, pleased that the sky was going to water for me. I walked in the front door, kicking off my boots and settling into my prized blue easy chair. My two oldest boys came dashing up. I held out my arms for hugs and kisses, but they stopped short, their eyes wide.

"Dad," my oldest boy, Thomas, intoned, "bad news." He was a well-read six and an oldest brother, both of which he took seriously.

His younger brother, Hintze, nodded in agreement. "Bad news!"

"The corn fell down," Thomas said.

Heat and cold tingles fought over my spine and face. "What?" I yelped, my voice cracking. I leapt to my feet, dashed through the house and flung the back door open wide. "No," I whispered. It was true. My small field of light-emerald, three-and-a-half feet high corn was leaning. No, more than leaning. Some of the stalks were practically horizontal. Slipping my feet into my work shoes, I hurried to the corn.

"See?" It was Thomas, coming up behind me, "It fell down. The wind did it."

I nodded, numb. But, never one to give up, I set to feverish action. I waded gently into the garden, my hands tenderly lifting each corn stalk back to its vertical position. The wind blew. The corn fell again. I cursed the wind and straightened my corn

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