Confessions of a serial Eco-terrorist.

  Yah, I'm an Eco-terrorist.

  I plant flowers. (oh, the humanity.)

  I'm good at it.  To give you an example, I had a job when I was fifteen. It was cutting down trees and bush in Winnipeg. (Look around the area sometime. I did a good job. True story, too.)

    What  I really got done that time was cutting a path to a secluded (totally isolated) meadow in a city park instead of what I was supposed to be doing. The path I cut thru the bush was the ONLY way in. I'm betting rowdies took it over after I left.

   Been doing plants ever since I was a sprout, myself. A color-blind uncle wanted red holly-hocks and I was recruited in on the prank.

    It got me started. Using Disney as a teacher, I cross-pollinated, marked, saved, planted and bred hollies before I even got into school.

   That was about the time I discovered bees like me, but that's another story.

   The prank worked, by-the-by. So did my cross-breeding experiments.

   Cat-tail fights next to the school.

   Next was love-trees. (Two maples saplings twisted together. I have a 300 year old love-tree not far from where I live at the moment. (That was third grade. No luck, as far as I know.)

  The second grade was about the time I invented drip-a-gation to keep my tomatoes watered.  (The psychologist next door (who cemented the forms into place while building a curved, colored cement patio) stole that idea. That was '62.

   It was just a dripping garden hose. It saved his garden and like me, he never had to water anything again.

   One year (when I was about 9) I spread 4 o'clock seeds all down the whole town-house row.  It was an improvement, believe me.

  I used pea-shooters in vacant lots in DT Van (replica guns work too), and spread both fertilizer and seeds around the buildings I worked. (That was kind-of cheating, 'cause in Van you can throw a rock on the ground and crop moss off it 6 months later.)

   Most supers had a habit of cutting water off to kill weeds. There was LOTS of room to move. (pansies, dafs, tomatoes, seeds from the flower shop. (whole dead flowers, actually. Most I never knew the name of, but they came up.)

   As security, I waited till the filming was done, then pointed out the planters were full of weeds, not flowers. (They got replanted real fast.)

   I hit empty lots in Ottawa too, and watched  little old ladies run out and spread poison right behind me. Store managers turned freshly seeded lots into snow-dumps, bull-dozing my little projects flat.

   I snuck back and planted pumpkins, (It was right across the road from a high-school)  then got nasty.

   Using a few catnip plants  (After they seeded. A fight to the death over the possession of a stick with my dog.) resolved that salt. I got a couple acres of cap-nip the next year, the store got a couple summers of the smelliest weeds going right next door.

  One of my most cherished memories is being in that field in the morning sun, watching insects congregate over the damp, steaming  flowers...  Birds dive-bombing the insects...  And very stoned tom-cats erupting out of the cat-nip after the birds.

  Yes, I did have my dog with me. (You don't want to hear about the rest of this, really.)

  The empty planters at university. (cheapo student admin) made opportunity.  (22 yrs old )

  Catnip and dill at the trailer. (mom's summer home and environs.)

   Attempting pot in the south-side hills. (16)

   Hydroponics and closet-growing when I was 19.

   That was 40 years ago. Monsanto has corrupted the earth since. Very few harvested seeds grow anymore.

   I bumped into Monsanto wheat experiments in Iceland.  (See how long it takes to starve a lamb to death on our crop kinda-thing. Still posionous, low-yeild, non-nutrious and unstable as far as I can tell. )

   These days, I pick red things from the the Alberta roses at my bus-stop and throw them about various empty places.  It'll take 5 years or more to come, but the effort is there.

   Yes, I still garden, but not hard.

    I can't walk very far, or very much anymore, (too damn painful with the arthritis)  but I still see things to do.

   Violets spread VERY well. Grandma knew, I guess.

   Packrat.