04-28-01
If the weather keeps up like this, I'm going to have to get the air conditioner out of the closet and put it up in the window!
Did we skip spring entirely or something? Criminy.
All of the spring-related flora seems to be equally confused. I would swear that at this time last year, the columbines were flowering. And speaking of the columbines, the horticultural terrorists downstairs did not succeed in entirely annihilating the perennials in the flower bed.
Several people have asked me exactly what happened to my flower bed, and if I ever found the culprits. Of course I did.
Once upon a time, there was a girl that lived in a dank cellar below a lovely pixie's stylish abode. The girl's name was Tara, and she greatly admired the flower garden atop the stone retaining wall attended to by the pixie.
Tara decided one day, after noticing the pixie tending to the garden -- removing leaves and weeds, and coddling the tender shoots that peeped up from the soil -- that she would be happier if she too could have a square of earth to toil over. Mustering her courage, she asked the lord of the keep if she could start a garden. The lord told her the same thing that he had told the pixie many years before, that as long as it was attractive and well maintained, she had his blessing to do a little gardening.
Overjoyed at this, she danced around merrily. The next day, before going to her job as a kitchen drudge, she asked the oaf that she shared the cellar with if he would do her the favor of clearing some ground for a garden while she was away at work. He happily agreed to the task, and she left for the day.
When she got home from the kitchen drudgery, she went straight to her cot and passed out for the night, but awoke the next morning to discover that the oaf had cleared her a large patch of earth -- the very same patch of earth that the pixie was using as a garden. The oaf had torn up the plants that were coming up from the ground because he thought they were weeds, despite the fact that they were growing in orderly rows and were well mulched with red cedar chips. Horrified, she wondered how she could ever make amends with the pixie, but was afraid because the pixie stamped her feet ferociously on their ceiling whenever the oaf played the music box too loud, and she didn't want to get stamped on too.
Because the pixie wasn't a moron, she quickly discovered what had happened, and who was responsible. In a fit of pique, she turned the oaf into a slug and stamped on him until he was a unrecognizable, slimy smear on the ground. The girl apologized profusely and told the pixie that she was forever in her debt, and that she would replace the plants that the oaf had destroyed, but the pixie told her it wasn't necessary. The pixie spared the girl, because it wasn't her fault that the oaf was so oafishly stupid, and told her that she was more than welcome to work the bed atop the stone retaining wall. She even told the girl all of the quirks and problems with the area, and wished her luck.
The pixie decided to stick to container-gardening annuals on the balcony of her tower. The flowers would be easier to admire that way, and wouldn't necessitate the constant plucking of weeds from the garden, or the frequent removal of empty ale receptacles that travelling packs of oafs would leave everywhere.
Fin.
