Guess what? I am now A Gardener. Yes, in my mind, and presently in my body, I am A Gardener. It all started ages ago when I read in the newspaper how you should drive over the Sunshine Skyway Bridge to Ellenton and visit the people who will educate you on Box Gardening and then sell you a . . . Box Garden. A Box Garden is . . . ummm . . . a box in which you grow your garden, you know, lettuce and okra and patty pan squash. It's only around 3 feet long and a foot wide. It comes with fertilized dirt, a built in rubber pipe where you pour in your water and a plastic cover that the plants grow through . . . something like that. Folk, this is about my speed, because NO WAY in God's green earth am I going to drum up the ambition to take anemic Florida sand and nurse it into nutrient-rich, garden-growing soil. Or convert my table scraps (I don't have any) into a compost heap. Or stake out a big plot and till the land, and, in short, turn my backyard into a mini-Iverson's farm. NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS. So, since we are all talking about getting our life MANAGEABLE, a Box Garden would seem to fit the bill.

Along the way, you know, thinking about this, I've read where NOTHING tastes as good as your own just-picked produce, where you just sit down in the dirt and eat it right there on the spot. All of this, see, is whetting my appetite. Then last Sunday, Mike came home from church with one of those green plastic bags that's going to keep your greens green for a very long time. A wonderful couple in his church filled that bag with turnip greens, green onions, SPINACH, cucumber, kale, curly green leaf lettuce (or something), purple stuff, all kinds of other stuff, nameless to me, and, last but without question, America's Pastime, Which is Not Baseball but Starts with a "B". If you don't know what that is, then you have not been reading my blog, Naughty, Naughty. So I will tell you. BASIL. GOBS OF BASIL. GOBS OF PERFECT GREEN GORGEOUS BASIL. Black it was not. Listen, making a salad out of these flawless greens was pure delight. No time wasted tearing off the brown spots. What brown spots? When I took my first bite, HELLO???, I thought I had just died and gone to Michigan. It tasted just EXACTLY like the earth of Iverson's Farm smelt. I'm telling you, grocery store vegetables have long lost their "just picked" scent a month of Sundays ago. They left it on some truck 49 states back. Or in some behemoth packing house two months of Sundays before that. This FRESH and SCRUMPTIOUS salad just gave me a whole new lease on life, that's all.

So, of course I had to call my friend and say, Hello?, we are coming to see your magnificent garden. Turns out most of her stuff was grown in Box Gardens, of which she has many. She had, naturally, more Basil than anything, supporting my Basil Theory IN FULL. Her Basil was going wild, Baby, growing lush and tall and proud. SHE won't be needing to phone the Basil Hotline anytime soon. Quite the contrary, desperate Basil Failures everywhere should be calling HER! Oh man, Connie grows tomatoes, broccoli, cabbage, carrots, celery, green beans, radishes, etc. Her yard boasts lemon trees, even Ponderosa lemons, key limes, limes, mangoes, papaya, figs (bless her), avocadoes, oranges, grapefruit, tangerines, etc. Oh for Pete's sake, she grows darling little bananas, you ought to taste her wholesome banana bread with chocolate chips. I tasted the whole loaf in two days flat. It was breakfast, lunch and dinner, six consecutive meals and snacks in-between. I'm not kidding. Ask Mike.

So then, after I got to twist off my own personal cucumber right off the vine, Connie invited me to go with her to Ellenton so I can get my own Box Garden and become A Box Gardener. She will help me. It's going to happen, People. I promise you. My life has just been Revolutionized. No telling what is next. First A Gardener, then A ________. Wow, I shall fill in that blank with . . . WHAT??

Of course, not too long ago I bought a Basil plant. I forgot to tell you about it. See, I really wanted to buy just some Basil leaves, but the store only had Basil in a pot. It was not a selection of very robust plants, so I picked what did not appear to be the runt of the litter. I promptly came home and plucked every last leaf off for my recipe. Maybe you aren't supposed to do that?? Even though the tag strongly urged leaf plucking. Remember, when I do something, I do it thoroughly. So, really, though, you can't blame my thoroughness this time, there were so few leaves to begin with. At any rate, I was left with a bare naked thin stick of a Basil plant. Very unnatural looking indeed. So, the plant sat on the kitchen counter until one day I thought it might enjoy a little sunshine out on the deck. A few new modest (runty) leaves came out, nothing to write home about. I tried to keep it watered, but the water just ran right through and out the bottom of the pot. Then it came back inside where it suffered total neglect, and one day the stem had bowed itself over, as if in pain. It was broken . . . as in, SNAP. Next thing you know, the stem turned into brown straw. And that, my dears, was the end of the Basil plant. I certainly expect to have better luck with my Box Garden.

I am VERY happy to announce that I just noticed a comment on one of my posts. A comment from a complete and total stranger. This is a GENUINE FIRST. How fun is that, a person out in the whole wide world actually glancing at my blog? I call it THE SPREAD. It was a REAL thrill and it came from a very polite young man who has blogs on Boston Red Sox Sweatshirts and Callaway Golf Bags. He says, "Thanks for sharing that! Nice post. I just glanced through it." I responded, "Yeah, well, I get a little carried away. Thanks for glancing and commenting." See, this is how the modern world works. See, I got a little smart and am in the process of going back and LABELING my posts. This is very time consuming and precludes any and all housework, eating, sleeping, whatever. There is a box by the post to insert your labels and everything. And there is a box (word of the night) to type a Title, too. Now, when I type CREST WHITESTRIPS into the label box, someone who might be fishing around for information on tooth whitening, like this poor unsuspecting young man, might just happen upon my blog. Don't ask me how this connection really works, 'cause it's all a gray dense fog to me, a path of mystery. All I know is that an unknown-to-me Boston Red Sox fan glanced at an unknown-to-him blogger's Whitestrips post, and now we we can't say we've never heard of each other. GO FIGURE. My, but it's a brand new world.

I hope DTD will be impressed with this, that someone in her age bracket could say something nice to me, a used up old horse. He was being nice, right? Oh no, what if it's all a joke? Maybe he LOATHED my blog and was being facetious. I am so ULTRA paranoid. When DTD was a silly school age girl, maybe a preteen, DPD, I took her and her silly best friend to Target. We wound up in the hotdog stand. The girls wanted Icees. This turned into a spectacle because the cashier was silly enough to give them an empty cup. The girls go to the Icee machine and start pulling levers and layering in the different flavors. In short order they are filling the cups to overflowing -- and in complete hysterics. I'm sitting at a table across the way, shaking my head, marveling. The girls look over to make sure they have an audience. They do. But I'm NUMBED OUT and incapable of action. The head shakes send them into renewed fits of hysteria. I don't want to quench the spirit, but I have a feeling I'm a pitiful, incompetent parent. So, a teenage boy who was sweeping the floor said to me, Those are lucky girls. Hmmm. What was THAT supposed to mean? I couldn't take it at face value because he said it with just a smidge of sarcasm, I think. This will be one of those things I'll never know for sure. Was he saying they really were lucky girls to have a "laid-back" (she gave up) Mom, one who wasn't toasting her wig over a little spilt Icee? OR, was he deeply disgusted that I wasn't jumping up to impose order and discipline, you know, throw a wet blanket?

Okay, I have decided the nice Whitestrip commenting young man was sincere. Why look a gift horse in the mouth, right? But I still don't know about the Target busboy. He gave me a not-so-great feeling, or I self-imposed the feeling, which was akin to flat sails. I should have said, YOUNG MAN, and just exactly what do you mean by THAT? Then I would have known. But a little too late, eh?, and so life goes on.

Meanwhile, I THANK HEARTILY all my friends who have posted comments on the blog. It is very pleasant, for sure, to know this little blog is not just between me and my computer screen. Others of my friends have encouraged me through emails, for which I am equally grateful. And my sister through texts, too. You are most kind.

Move Over, Mr. McGregor,
KEM