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Oops! A Gardener's Story of Trials and Tribulations

Once upon a time, long, long ago, I had a huge garden - two acres. I didn't realize it was huge when I laid it out and started plowing and planting it. It looked exactly the size and shape I had always dreamed of owning and working, raising fruits and berries, and vegetables, lots of fresh vegetables, and tomatoes. Be careful of what you wish!

I lovingly broke ground with a borrowed tractor, and then tilled the soil, worked in some manure, planted the seeds, and waited for harvest. One of the first things I planted was strawberries. I love strawberries. The next day, the neighbor's cow got out and ate all my new little strawberry plants. The cow never got out, but once a year, the day after I planted strawberry plants, every year for ten years, the cow ate my strawberry plants. After ten years, I gave up on strawberries.

I not only planted a two-acre garden, I also decided to plant some corn. I love corn. I planted over an acre of corn, and was quite impressed with myself, for a month or so, how much I had accomplished. The corn sprouted quickly and it was such a beautiful sight, it made me want to sing. It was very early in the morning, with no one around, so I sang, "The corn is as high as an elephant's eye, and it looks."

My neighbor also planted some corn, but wasn't doing as well as mine. He was visiting one day, along with his wife, as neighbors often do, and asked, "So, how come your corn is doing so well, and mine is just barely poking through the soil."

"I sing to it," I answered. "Every morning, I sing, and it seems to work. Look at it. Isn't it beautiful?" I was so proud, then. They laughed at me, and went home.

One morning, about a week later, I called him about some welding he was doing for me. "Where's Jim?" I asked, when his wife answered.

"He's out singing to the corn," she answered. It may have been nature's timing and had nothing to do with the singing, but his corn began to look better, soon after that.

The summer was unusually hot that year, and his corn burned badly, later. I managed to keep mine watered and it was still doing okay. He came up one morning while I was cultivating and said, "I guess you sing better than I do."

It became a running joke around our little town. When someone was having a bad crop, someone would inevitably say, "Yo're singin' must be perty bad."

The tomatoes that I was so proud of, began to take over. See, they came in six-packs, and I wanted some Early Girls, some

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