Mischief

Today!  Write about some mischief you would get into if you could be invisible or unnoticed. This is a fictional you. So just let go!  Here’s my offering:

Mischief

I have seeds left over from last year that I never planted.

Do you think the expiration date on the packets are like the expiration dates on can goods? Just a general guideline? No one is going to die if you eat a can of baked beans that supposedly expired last year. Look at me. I’m an old woman, and I’ve survived.

For fun, I will plant these expired seeds.  I am stiff and cranky. Now that I am unable to get down on my knees, I have a new way of planting. Well, maybe it is the oldest method in the world.

I wait for the soil in my yard to be a bit squishy from the March snows and thaws, and then I poke a hole with a sharp stick. Actually, it is not a stick, it is an orange fiberglass driveway marker, the kind newcomers place right at the very edge of their lawns so the snowplows won’t touch their precious grass. It’s amazing to see what happens when it really does snow around here. Of course, the snow pushed off the road by the plow bends those suckers over and knocks them down. You know, it does snow on Cape Cod. This is not the Carolinas.

I have one of these annoying neighbors. He practically has a fit if the mailman drives too close to his mailbox. Stay off my tulips, he yells from his front door. Well, don’t plant them in the road layout, I think to myself.

Out in my yard, I have poked holes with the pointy end of my orange driveway marker, and I am putting any and all seeds in the ground, all around my yard. I manage to do this while standing, dropping a seed or five down that hole, and then I step on it to cover it up. My average depth of the poked hole is anywhere from a ring finger to a pinky finger deep. This method I find to be good, because the wild turkeys seldom find these plantings. They do however, scratch the hell out of my flower beds where I actually prepare the soil and then hope for a civilized border of flowers. In a dry summer, they also poke my tomatoes for fluids, and they take vigorous dust baths in my grandchildren’s sand pile. I let them be.

So I am playing the game of spring once again. I put those seeds out there and let them take their chances. I am surprised when things pop up and also surprised when they don’t.

My neighbor is also surprised by what comes up in his yard. He does go away for weekends sometimes. And I have decided to gift him with surprises. I have planted a few pumpkin plants along his driveway. And many hollyhock seeds beside his shed. And just for silly fun, because I’m an old lady and like to get my kicks, I have planted peas under his trellis of pinky white star flowers, clematis. I think the peas will marry nicely with the vines.

We did have a conversation about this last year when turnips came up in his raised rose bed.

“Ah, you have a volunteer turnip,” I said. “Cape Cod turnips are famous for their taste. Those birds… they  poop out seeds all summer. Look what they have brought to you.”

He kept the turnip plants going. He ate the turnips in November. He did not share.

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