Change is in the Air

I know they’re plotting. Plotting and scheming about how they’ll get the upper hand. I could just hear them in the garden today.

“Oh Persicaria,” asks Wood sorrel, “do you think I have time to set another round of seed?”

“Go for it!” replies Persicaria. “The Homo scapians aren’t watching now that it’s October.”

“That’s Hom escapians, I think,” Wood sorrel corrects.

“I’ve been sneaking seedheads in everywhere I can find an opening,” volunteers Foxtail. “All summer she’s been yanking out my babies and tossing ‘em in that big pile over there, but lately I’ve been getting a free pass! Oh, and it’s Home-too-lateagins, least that’s what I’m hearin.”

“You all are such losers,” pipes up Grandpa Ott. “She’s been after me like white on rice for months. Just three weeks ago she was in here searching out every last little seedling. Soon as she turns her back I say ‘Hit it guys!’ Look at us rippin—we’re up on top of the forsythia and reachin for the roof. No way she’s gonna git us off the branches before we finish makin seed. We’re wrapped around those branches so tight she’s bound to miss at least a thousand seeds! And isn’t it Oh-no-its-fateagains?”

Suddenly there’s a thump.

“Whazzat?” Foxtail, who was hit right in the seed head with a big black walnut, yells.

Everyone looks up. The oak and the walnut trees whisper calmly, so quietly no one can hear. No need for them to get excited. For the past 50 years they’ve been feeling the change in the air. Their plan is set. You can hear it in the breeze. “Shady days, shady days, shady days.” When the Too-little-too-late-agains have done and said all that they can say or do, nuts will sprout; trees will grow wherever their roots can find a spot of soil. Forests will happen and every critter and bug that climbs around in them and eats their leaves will prosper. Weedy little plants will weaken and disappear.

And no one will be there to care.

note: This is what happens when a gardener reads too much environmental literature.