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Those of you who have experience with growing mint will guess the punch line, the moment you read the word, "mint." It is prolific, so I'll clue the others in, quickly. See, I didn't know it was prolific, then.

The north side of a house is an interesting place to try to decide what to plant. Because it gets the least amount of sun, and the coldest temperatures, I was at a loss. "Try planting mint," the local nursery owner suggested. Mint? Okay, and I went home.

It was early Spring and the rain and wind were just atrocious. I put off planting it for a few days and it began to look miserable in the house, so I went out in the rain and planted it. I didn't work the soil and add nutrients, build a nice border, or any of the things I should have done. I just dug a few little holes in the mud, stuck them in the bare patch where nothing grew and forgot about it. It was Spring and there were so many things to do.

My son did the mowing and I did the trimming, the major gardening chores like rotor tilling and cultivating. He kept the mint mowed and I didn't notice it or think of it, for the remainder of the summer. There wasn't any trimming to do in that area, since the mint didn't stick up around the edges like grass did, almost everywhere else in the yard, so it got ignored. The next summer, it began to spread. I noticed a pleasant mint smell in the air, as it was being mowed. "Hmmm, maybe I didn't lose the mint, after all," I thought. Sure enough, there was a nice stand of mint around the back patio, on the North side of the house.

"Son, that corner over there, next to the patio. That's mint." I said.

"I know. I can smell it when I mow it down," he answered.

"Well, let's not mow it and maybe it will be a nice place to add some herbs; okay?"

"Okay. Less for me to mow."

I then forgot about it, again, until I got around to trimming the lawn. Weed eaters with monofilament line were new on the market, then. They're a great invention for trimming the edges of a large lawn. I got to the mint bed and to my surprise; there was a huge patch of mint, about a foot high. I hand-cut some and took it inside, quite pleased with myself, truthfully. Then, went back to trim it into some orderly manner. I pulled some out and trimmed it to the ground around the perimeter, shaped it into a rectangular shape, dug a trench around the border of the rectangle, put in some brick edging, shaped an adjoining rectangle, and thought about what other herbs I might add; then got busy with other projects.

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