In Which I Hyperlink Way Too Much

I think, tonight, I would like to talk about anything but refrigerators. And Germans. Not that there is anything wrong with either of them. I just need a change.

First, a reminder that if you would like a chance to win a copy of Fifty Acres and a Poodle by Jeanne Marie Laskas, please leave a comment on this post by Saturday evening. I may even mail out all these books I've promised to people, one of these days. I'd hate to be accused of blog fraud. That would dash my last hope of Amazon ever giving me a Kindle.

David convinced me to visit our garden plot this evening. It was a disheartening sight. We bushwhacked our way in there and found one dead zucchini plant (our last), flowering basil, flowering cilantro, 5 tomato plants doing surprisingly well, and some struggling cukes.

The box full of strawberry plants is thriving, though I don't know how. I also don't know what to do with all the runners they are putting out (I type coyly, knowing that at least 16 people will volunteer the proper information)(please?). The marigold plants I threw in the corners of 2 of the boxes are also looking splendid. So, I'm not a total failure.

Still, any day now we may receive an eviction notice from the horticulture Nazis who run the community gardening association. From the way people there look at me, you'd think I had built a shantytown on my little plot. I can't imagine what's bugging them, unless it's the piles of old newspapers I put down as a weed barrier. Or the weeds themselves that still cover over a third of the plot. Or perhaps it's the full-length window lying in the middle of the weeds and the newspapers, the one I had meant to make into a cold-frame for my winter crops.

People are so picky, aren't they?

You know, I was just now going to go off on an amusing tangent about how half the bugs in the world must live in my 400-square-foot plot; and in an effort to garner hard statistics (I'm not an amateur, you know), I Googled "bug population."

My friends, do not try this at home. Now I'm itchy. And I can go to bed worrying that Global Warming Could Trigger Insect Population Boom.

Like, there isn't one already?