After kicking around for 60 years, I should know better than to run off half-cocked. Maybe I’m just a slow learner.
About a month ago, my life Liz bought a very large pot of rose-colored mums, which we placed on one of the two sets of stairs leading up to the front of our house. In the weeks that followed, I watered the mums virtually every morning, pruned them from time to time, and watched them blossom into an even larger, more luxurious plant than the one we first brought home.
So you can imagine my chagrin when I took Aquinnah, our chocolate lab, out for his walk at 5:15 the other morning and noticed with dismay that the mums were gone. Over the course of the next 10 minutes or so, as Aquinnah and I meandered up the sidewalk in the pre-dawn darkness, crossed the street and headed back toward the house, I sank into a funk, fuming about sticky-fingered sociopaths, evil-minded vandals and the general demise of civilization as we know it.
Who would steal a pot of mums? And why? My fevered imagination quickly conjured up a mental image of some ne-er-do-well grabbing the mums in the dead of night and spiriting them home to his rat-infested apartment, where he gave them to his drug-addled girlfriend as a twisted token of his esteem.
My foul mood deepened.
As Aquinnah and I approached the house, I took a peek behind the hedges near the front steps, just in case. Sure enough, there was the pot of flowers, resting on its side and tucked so tightly against the back of the hedges that it was barely visible in the dark.
It’s possible that someone had grabbed the mums and tossed them aside as a prank. But it had been quite windy during the night, and the mums, despite their impressive size, weigh very little in their plastic pot. So the most likely explanation is that the wind blew the pot off the steps, and the flowers came to rest against the hedges. Where dark thoughts grow wild.
About a month ago, my life Liz bought a very large pot of rose-colored mums, which we placed on one of the two sets of stairs leading up to the front of our house. In the weeks that followed, I watered the mums virtually every morning, pruned them from time to time, and watched them blossom into an even larger, more luxurious plant than the one we first brought home.
So you can imagine my chagrin when I took Aquinnah, our chocolate lab, out for his walk at 5:15 the other morning and noticed with dismay that the mums were gone. Over the course of the next 10 minutes or so, as Aquinnah and I meandered up the sidewalk in the pre-dawn darkness, crossed the street and headed back toward the house, I sank into a funk, fuming about sticky-fingered sociopaths, evil-minded vandals and the general demise of civilization as we know it.
Who would steal a pot of mums? And why? My fevered imagination quickly conjured up a mental image of some ne-er-do-well grabbing the mums in the dead of night and spiriting them home to his rat-infested apartment, where he gave them to his drug-addled girlfriend as a twisted token of his esteem.
My foul mood deepened.
As Aquinnah and I approached the house, I took a peek behind the hedges near the front steps, just in case. Sure enough, there was the pot of flowers, resting on its side and tucked so tightly against the back of the hedges that it was barely visible in the dark.
It’s possible that someone had grabbed the mums and tossed them aside as a prank. But it had been quite windy during the night, and the mums, despite their impressive size, weigh very little in their plastic pot. So the most likely explanation is that the wind blew the pot off the steps, and the flowers came to rest against the hedges. Where dark thoughts grow wild.
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