I know it's a little late in the season to start a garden, but since it was something I meant to do this year, I am going to give it a try anyway. I am told by some people who should know (know better?) that there are still a few things that can be planted this late. And the fewer the better, I say.

Truth be told, I am not sure exactly what it is that motivates me to do something this foreign to my nature, which is no relation to Mother Nature. Perhaps a desire to conform with all the neighbors that have gardens.

Neighbor: "Nice weather we're havin'."

Grumpy: "Yeah, nice."

Neighbor:"Better'n yessterday."

Grumpy: "Yeah, better."

Neighbor: "S'posed ta be colder tamarra."

Grumpy: "Yeah colder."

Neighbor: "How's yer garden?"

Grumpy: "Whut?"

Neighbor: "Yer garden. Howwzzit doin'?"

Grumpy: "Yeah, doin'."

Neighbor: "Whut?"

Grumpy: "Doin' fine."

Neighbor: "Whatcha growin' innit?"

Grumpy: "Uh grass."

Neighbor: "Grass?"

Grumpy: "Uh, and dandelions."

Neighbor: "Oh."

I think it's conversations like that that motivate me to put in a garden. I don't expect the conversations to get much better, but I'd like to be able to give better answers.

On the other hand, it's probably nothing more than a desire to do anything to get out of cleaning the attic.

So, armed with my newly purchased copy of "Gardening for the Intellectually Challenged," which I hope is not written over my head, I step out into the great unknown wilderness my backyard.

It seems that the first thing I need to do is to stake out the boundaries of my new garden. I don't have any little wooden stakes or string like it shows in the book so I use some old dirty socks to stake out my garden. This has the effect of causing the grass within the aforementioned boundaries to turn brown, wither to dust and blow away (pat.pend.).

The next step is to prepare the ground. The book describes a number of procedures using several gardening tools. It seems to me that this could be more easily accomplished with a couple of sticks of dynamite. Of course it occurs to me that this would get dirt all over the back deck, the car, the neighbor's back deck, the neighbor's car, up my nose, up my neighbor's nose, well, you get the idea. Still it's tempting. I don't think I have most of the tools mentioned in the book but I'm pretty sure that I have a stick or two of dynamite left over from spring cleaning a couple of years ago.

This project is actually beginning to look like a lot of work. I think it might be a good idea to make sure I can buy the seeds I want before I put a lot of effort into it.

That turned out to be on of the best decisions I ever made. Nobody had beer nut tree seeds in stock. Or marshmallow vines or Spam plants for that matter.

To be honest, this was something of a relief. It was starting to look like the garden was going to take up a lot of my time and I am not sure that I have the stamina or incentive to avoid working in the garden and cleaning the attic at the same time. That's a lot of sloth for just one person.

What I am going to do with that burned out patch in the backyard, I don't know. At least I won't have to mow it for a while, if ever.

Little did I know that the answer to that question awaited my return home. The Gnxrnrnian starship "Fungal Dawn" had used it as a landing marker. And they had a big surprise in store for me!

NEXT WEEK: The Gnxrnrnian surprise (unless I think of something better, like cleaning the attic.).

George Breithaupt is a photographer, copy editor, reporter and weakly columnist for the Mount Vernon News. We don't know why we keep telling you this. You'd probably forget it if we didn't put this here every week ... Uh, OK! Where's the delete key?