Check-Up

My garden is not even on my property. I don't have enough sun for vegetables, so my in-laws (across the road) allow me to have a garden in their sunny back yard, where their garden once was.

It's kind of nice to have experts on site. They point out ways to do things that would never have occurred to me. Case on point: The Scarecrow.

Last year, wee beasties of the furry variety attacked my garden. My father-in-law, who is disabled with arthritis and can no longer run the business end of a hoe, suggested a scarecrow might help.

A scarecrow. How cool! I began to ponder what kind of scarecrow I wanted, and what materials it would take to make one. I thought and thought.... Days passed. A week. Finally, my husband found in our shed an old Halloween scarecrow, a yard ornament I bought at a craft store a few years ago, and suggested I might make do with it until I could come up with a clever idea. I headed across the road with it.

Meanwhile, Pop-Pop, having seen that the beasties were getting the best of the crop while I pondered, had run a broom handle through the sleeves of an old flannel shirt, affixed it to a stand, and had set it between the rows at one end of the garden. Okay, fine. We could have two scarecrows. I set my store-bought version at the other end of the garden and squatted down to weed the tomato plants.

A few minutes later, I heard Pop-Pop yell something - I caught the words "pee" and "scarecrow" - from the back porch. "WHAT?"

He said, "I said you oughtter pee around you scarecrow while you're squattin' there."

That's what I'd thought he'd said.

I stood up and turned toward the house, hands on my hips. "Now, why do I need to PEE around my scarecrow?"

"Keep the varmints out," he said.

Isn't that what the scarecrows are for? "Well, YOU pee around them," I said. "But wait till I go home."

"I done peed around mine," he said proudly. We dropped the subject.

I did not pee around my scarecrow.

And I still haven't thought up a stunning idea for a scarecrow.