But his reverie was interrupted by T'Pol escaping through the open kitchen door and racing through the wet grass. His former son-in-law's damned ferret needed more babysitting than the grandchildren Gil didn't have. And why Jennifer's broken marriage resulted in his having custody of Jason was beyond him. Gil had a newfound respect for Archie Bunker's nickname for his son-in-law, "Meathead."

T'Pol was headed straight for the perennial bed. Apparently the ferret considered the garden his own personal version of the all-you-can-eat salad bar. "Anything but the tree peonies!" Gil muttered under his breath, dashing towards T'Pol. Just then, Gil heard the scream of a red-tailed hawk, and felt a rush of air against his face as the large bird swooped in front of him and...

swooped again, Gil felt a further rush, this time it was of the richest fertiliser known to man. It was enough to have him rushing back in doors to look up T'pol and joyus in his Vietnamese dictionary but in stead of words his dictionary was packed with...

Tribbles! The furry creatures came spilling out of the dictionary. More were peeking out from behind other shelved books. With a deep sense of foreboding, Gil yanked the cushions off the sofa - yes, more tribbles! "Meathead!" he bellowed. "Did you bring a tribble into the house?"

"Uh, yeah, what the trouble?" A sleepy voice rose from within the depths of the Laz-Y-Boy.

"Trouble? The trouble with tribbles is...

tripley troubling when you take these tribulations into account. First was the wet ground, second was a furry Foo King ferret (the Chinese ones are the worst) and third was the bird. Gil dashed after the ferret but slipped and ended up flat on his back before he could grab it, when he came too he opened his eyes only to be greated by yet another...

disaster that being the wide open eyes of Mabel from...

...Jersey City; his ex-wife, mother of his children and the bane of his existence these last three decades. Since their separation 32 years ago, Dil had managed to remain under the radar, out of site of the ever present gaze of "Big Brother" and Mabel.

In a resigned gesture of defeat, shoulders slumped and head lowered, he admitted the truth: she had found him again! "It was great while it lasted," Dil thought as he resigned himself to the horrid fact that his life would forever...

mean that he would have to change his name if only the first letter. Perhaps it would leave a trail, perhaps this is what he wanted deep down perhaps he wanted to be found, even discovered for the person she really was, not forgetting the rainbow that was..

... a rainbow. Gil pondered his life and his garden. Gil pondered his life and his garden. Gil pondered his life and his garden. Yes! he was a garden writer after all. Gil pondered his life and his garden. Gil pondered his life and his garden. I must make a note. Gil pondered his life and his garden.

"Why is my mind caught in this loop of triply troubling tribulations?" said Gil, as he wondered if his introspection had anything to do with the fact he was standing downwind from his burning brushpile where he had just tossed on odd plant with maple-shaped leaves. A profound thought began to dawn on him...

...the past slid away...the present fogged in the swirling smoky haze. The distractions that detrailed and detained him from creating a garden of his very life, became increasing clear. He had to act...

And act he did, only it wasn't an act it was real. He went inside and began writing in his journal but his entries were far from planting a garden and more about planting the seeds of a new beginning. He wrote "If only I could meet someone who loved gardening as much as I do......."

...I would be happy...I would be fulfilled." But he realized he had to take it further. He searched for a muse that would guide him closer to himself...quiet the swirling waters of confusion and confliction in his life...help him discover the peace he could imagine, but that slipped from his fingers like the petals of 'Gloire de Dijon' each time he tried to grasp them, however tenderly, however quickly...

Here is a link that might be useful: Old Garden Roses and Beyond

...and then Meathead wandered by cradling the retrieved ferret and said in that nasal monotone of his, "Hope you remember that my step-mother's sister's coming by later on to get some cuttings from your garden. Remember I told you what a great gardener she is? And this is the first time since her husband died that she's taken an interest in much of anything." Dil formerly known as Gil turned toward Meathead and...

spat. If my life gets any more complicated, he soliliquized (I think) I shall pack a bag and leave for....

...my love shack in the mountains. Ah, Estreya, could he find her again there...nude peregrine amid the rhododendrons. Three, four years ago, he happened upon her alone in the forest, translating the movement of air through the kalmia latifolia...the light excitations of the forest floor ephemera. He made love to her as easily as the sun passed across the sky...changing bright to shadow...her face glowed in his penumbra...lighting his soul...

But things were complicated in this Soap Opera of a life he led. If he could lure Estreya to the Internet maybe there in some hidden corner of a chat room could his imagination soar as he sought the syllables that would seduce his mistress of the muse. But would the others suspect? His editor read this and said ixnay on all this repetitive stuff, you sound like Spiro Agnew with his "nattering nabobs of negativity."

But a voice in Gil's head exclaimed, "Say there! This too shall pass over. You'll have a good Friday when you go over east there."

Gil pondered whether this was the voice of God or perhaps the voice of...

........Mother Nature, as he was sometimes interchangeable between the two. As Gil sat typing on his manuscript he happened to look up and gaze out the window. Spring was in full flush, greenness and flowers were everywhere, it was pulling him, drawing him to come outdoors to breathe deeply of the fresh air and hear the birds sing. But he had a story to write, deadlines to keep. "It's one thing to actually garden and another to write about it, " thought Gil.

While Gil/Dil contemplated his circumstances, life and publishing deadline, the next step of his journey was about to begin.

"Ding-dong, ding-dong." The doorbell rang.

"Oh, who is that now," GilDil sighed as he pushed his chair away from the desk. The wheels made that flat, squashing sound as he rolled across the plastic chair pad his wife made him buy some years ago. "It'll preserve the finish on the floor," he recalled her saying. Yet, the prickly pegs on the down-side of the pad gouged small divots in his soft pine flooring and now there was no one to which he could say, "Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah! Told you so."

He stubbed his toe on the way to the source of that incessant ringing. Opening the door he was aghast when he found...

The UPS lady leaning against his door. She had browinish-red hair and a few scattered freckles and a half smile on her lips. Gil noticed a faint glow of sweat on her wholesome face. "Hmmm?" he thought, "I wonder just how many freckles she has? Maybe I could offer to count them?" She interupted his thoughts with "You must be a gardener, judging from these packages, I'm a gardener too," she said. Though he was exhausted Gil could feel a certain physical reaction to the vision his eyes beheld.....

Tho immediately intrigued and attracted to this vision before him Gil, in typical male fashion , responded with "Uh yeah, I'm a gardener." The UPS lady , leaning against the doorway , gave an even bigger smile and said "All this heat and humidity sure makes me thirsty."
Gil, the big dummy, just stood there wallowing in his lack of social graces. He was slowly thinking about asking what her name was (even though it said 'Sally' on her nametag) when she said "My name is Sally, can I come back when my shift is over to see your garden? it looks pretty interesting."

"Interesting. You don't know the half of it," he said, but all she heard was the jealous scream of a red-tailed hawk. She froze; Gil leaped, shielding her with a package. The hawk had to be satisfied with a single reddish brown hair and a strip of brown paper. Rhododendron petals spilled from the battered package just as an emaciated woman dressed in black from sneakers to snood got out of a taxi behind the UPS truck and screamed....

I want my MONEY Back! You swine!!!

The magazine, as it were. Seems though, Sally, has a habit of "borrowing" periodicals from her drop offs.

Sheepishly she went back to her truck, bent over, and retrieved the copy of MONEY. The fuming neighbor yanked it away and stormed off to his car.

Gil wondered why brown wasn't in a rainbow. Brown is such a lovely, earthy, garden color. But that only reminded Gil of his troubles. BG, or Before Gardening as he called it. Those days when he would have acted on animal impulse at the sight of Sally. But someone had tought him self control, restraint, and yes gardening. But there was that recent incident, in the garden with Mabel. She was to blame.

"Ah, but one can't have roses without the thorns," he thought. Now where did Brown go?

.......and then there was a big fire and everyone was burned to death.

THE END.

Oh thank you ONE GREAT BIG DARK SHADOW for saving us from going furthur with this story that surely must have been boring to such a great garden writer as you. I am sure you will make many friends here and teach us a lot and come up with lots of interesting topics that we can all contribute to as I have strove to do. (Please see onedarkshadows post on "Funny Or In Poor Taste")
I am tempted to join acj. Thanks for spreading your sunshine and positive outlook and offering constructive suggestions.

My pleasure, Eddie.

The fireman reached through the cinders and ashes and picked up a book that had somehow made it through the inferno. As he dusted it off he could make out the title......"The Pheonix"

"Hum, the house is a total loss," stated the insurance adjuster as he walked around Gil's burned house. "Looks like the firemen were able to save your gardens and greenhouse. But, what are these green seedlings sprouting all over the charred timbers?"

Gil, who had not noticed the seedlings, knelt to examine them closely. "I'm not certain what they are. Looks like a composite leaf. Must be a plant that needs scarification to germinate. I wonder if they are.....?"

Aralia spinosa, the devil's walking stick? And would this plant have magical, mystical powers to change things?Only one thing to do - dig a few up and take them to the HooDoo .....

and decifer their magical code. AS Gil climbed the stone walk he wondered if a garden could be reduced to one plant that embodied the sole of the entire garden. once burned had his garden been reduced to its most basic form and was that simple remaining growth his gardens purest form.

Out of the devastation, Gil suddenly was imbued with a surge of elation.

With arms stretched out to the clear blue sky he cried aloud, "I can start again, to build my garden and my home, just the way I always wanted it to be. With Meathead and that stinkin' little ferret gone, it'll be even easier this time."

And so began Gil's...

bizarre journey, a journey documented by means of runes daily etched in the posts of the hand-hewn fence he built protectively around the devastated area. Gil was unaware that seen above from a distance the fence would have resembled the decorative boarder on the covers of the remarkably pristine book, "The Phoenix." Odd that he had no memory of it prior to seeing it in the fireman's hands....

Had the book really been in the fire? Or was this something the fireman covertly removed from his blackened gear and gave Gil as a symbol of hope? "What is this trying to tell me?" Gil wondered. "I'm not going to Arizona. Hope, maybe?" he asked himself as he started word associating as he often did to solve problems. "Yes! Hope. Hope Lange. Starred in Peyton Place. Star, place? Yes, stars are placed in Heaven. That's it!" he shouted. "I'll build a heavenly garden, with angel trumpets, and Star of Bethlehem, and Joseph's coat, and Passion vines, and

bluebells all in a row. But I must start now, now..." and he recalled his favorite quotation from Confuscious: THE JOURNEY OF A THOUSAND MILES BEGINS WITH THE FIRST STEP. "I
must take that first step", screamed Gil, "I must take it now, and the second step, also, for I know the two most important things that need to be done, and they are...

number one and number two, most important being number two which you cant do whilst walking. Also, and this may be more important than number twoes, Bill thought,if your poenix ever gets caught in a flame you should

quickly douse it and apply a thick coating of cocoanut butter to avoid the most excrutiating surgery known to mankind, involving the delicate transplant of poenal tissue from the lesser kudu, and removal to one of the uninhabited atolls in the Lesser Antilles, to avoid any possible arousal whilst the seven-month healing process continues. But the first thing I must do is avoid the temptation to refer to myself as Dil or Bill, thought Gil; I
must also put Sally out of my mind for now, and put all deadlines out of my mind until midnight before the day my column is due, and get to the single most important achievement of my lifetime--the construction of the ultimate fence to surround my heavenly garden. I'll start by digging a trench a good foot deep around the perimeter of my garden, then I'll dig postholes and set aluminum posts every eight feet in the trench, and fill the holes with fast-setting cement, so I can quickly move on to the next step, which is to...

...coat the posts and fence with pearls and construct a desk for St. Peter to do his thing. After all, a heavenly garden would not be complete without these items.
After working up a good sweat, I noticed one of the post holes contained...

a hewn hand, hand hewn by none other than the great hand hewner the handsome Silas...