What You DON'T Want in Your Flower Bed

**I'm going to start this post with an apology. For some reason, I scheduled this post all wrong with Mr. WordPress, and it didn't post yesterday as it was supposed to. Sad day. If you visited yesterday and had no luck, it's my fault. I'm posting this on Friday, and we'll all have to pretend it was there from the beginning.**

Last weekend, Shannon and I pulled down some of the lattice on the back porch, and tore out the vines that had been growing up the side of it from last summer. It's not that we dislike vines, or lattice for that matter, but we didn't like that it crawled all the way to the roof of the porch. We'd like to see our backyard during the spring and summer months, and I have plans to hang a few flower/vegetable baskets from the porch posts just as soon as I get my tush in gear and buy some potting soil. Long story short, our flower beds at the base of the porch were barren and begging for something to grow there.

My mother popped by today to bring us a few gardening tools. Sadly, I have yet to amass my own collection. I was showing her around the backyard, newly mowed and freshly de-vined, and talking with her about the possibility of acquiring some of her hollyhock seeds when I looked down into my previously barren flower bed.

At first, I thought I was surely going crazy. I mean, it had only been five days. How does a plant spring up in five days?

Then I realized that I definitely did have some new growth in my flower bed.

Then my mouth fell open for a second and my mom looked at me with a rather puzzled expression. She looked down, looked back up and caught my eye right before I said, "What is that?" I pointed. For the record, I pointed at the little green plant in my flower bed.

And my mom laughed and said, "That's a marijuana plant."

Seriously, folks. She said it just like that. Totally deadpan. No shock. No awe. No interrogation of my recreational activity. Simply, that's marijuana.

And so it was.



I'm not really sure who lived in our house before us. I have no knowledge of what he or she did other than grow a giant oregano bush and a single, solitary tomato plant in the corner of the yard. I have no clue why he or she had a penchant for the marigolds that I tore out from behind our garage this fall. I don't know if he or she owned a pet. All I knew, up until this afternoon, was that the person who lived here before hadn't changed their address with all of their billing companies, received updates from the union on occasion, and had a penchant for lattice and vines on the back porch.

Today, though, I realized just what those vines might have been hiding. A stash. A clever, clever stash.

PS - please do not send the DEA to my home. I have torn out said plant and disposed of it properly. No smoking of said plant was involved. Though, if you set fire to the dumpster in my alley, you just might get a contact high.