I can't bite into an ear of corn without picturing Johnny Depp in that 2004 desert island favorite Secret Window based on Stephen King's novella Secret Window, Secret Garden though, Scout's Honor, the rotting remains of my ex-wife and my understudy are not pushing up corn stalks in my garden which, incidentally, is being slowly decimated by deer whose nightly takeaways are notated in the soil by their bifurcated hoof prints which has led me to google ultrasonic pest repeller as touted by my 90-year-old neighbor who, embracing technology, closeted his muzzle loader and bought one of those sonic gizmos at Brookstone in the mall. Deer aside, my immediate concern is preventing the appearance in late fall and early spring of a mud pool in the middle of my path to the wood shed by diverting runoff into a four-inch slotted drain pipe which I have ceremoniously buried in a 40-foot long three-foot deep trench which I carved out manually with a composite-handled pick ax from the local Agway while imagining Steve Jobs on tractor happily mowing my fields of dreams.
