In the depths of winter, I curtail my hunting a bit. The ground in my garden gets too hard to dig, especially for a man with my old bones. For when I can't stop the urge, my root cellar will do, but I must be selective in my prey - fitting new additions into my ossuary can be quite the puzzle!

But I am religious about taking my walks. And often I take them near the school on the hill, keeping an eye out for my little flower, and wondering what's become of her. I haven't seen her, but I can see her handiwork on the school grounds. She has a way with plants, and I'm quite sure that such species as the Creeping Sentient Euonymus, the Sighted Quince, the Slow-Moaning Winterberry, the Maddened Corkscrew Hazel, Enchanted Hellebore, Vatic Snowdrops, and the Floating Camellias are all there due to her gifted hands.

And in the midst of all her beauty, all her gardening wonder, what do I see but some young oaf digging holes in it all! @Dunder Dinstein I heard him called by one of his chums. What kind of vandals are these young people? The horror! No appreciation for the wonders of a beautiful garden.

I am considering creating some space in my root cellar.

Jerome got a job on campus. As a Haunted Driver's Ed instructor.

Ed, the head Haunted Driver, needed an assistant, and I heard about it and next time Jerome and I were out driving around town in his haunted '73 Nova I totally sprung it on him. The car got massively excited and started revving and squealing out at stoplights, green smoke pouring out. It was so cool to watch Jerome talk to it and hold the wheel and keep it calm. He really is like the best ghost car whisperer you ever have seen. And he looks real good doing it in his black leather jacket.

What it means is now he can actually find campus, and like, pick me up, and stuff. It's been kinda hard having a boyfriend who's not a student, but now he's staff so he gets in on all the "mysteries." Ha.

I'm worried about some of the other kids being dicks though. @feelerz is right that there's some class stuff at school. Maybe not so much with "townies" but just anybody who's not a student. I mean, most students will be totally chill.

And once they meet his car, I don't think anybody will mess with him. ;)

I find my psychic abilities to have really sapped the fun out of treasure hunting. Sometimes I like to pretend to be impaired and dig aimlessly for doubloons from opposite realms. Oh, joy!

Even though Jerome isn't psychic, and doesn't go to any kind of special school at all, he does have a haunted car. It's a 1973 Chevy Nova. It's hot. It's black.

It's not clear exactly what it's haunted by. But it definitely has a mind of its own. Have you ever seen that old movie Herbie with Lindsay Lohan? It's like that. But the Nova burps green smoke out of the glove compartment. And growls.

For instance a couple of weeks ago we were just driving around town on a Saturday and all of the sudden the car totally freaks out and peels off by itself (I mean, with us in it) down back streets and dirt alleys and we ended up in some part of town I'd never seen and saw a girl from school totally vomiting her guts out on a curb. The car stopped a sane amount of distance away and opened its doors - obviously wanting me to go over to her.

I got her cleaned up and we drove her back to school. Usually Jerome wouldn't be able to do that - find the school - and I know it's sort of against the rules, or something, but the car drove itself and the girl needed to get back to her room. So what can you do?

Since then I've only seen her around a couple of times. She's been sick. And the car doesn't really answer questions.

So I have been a wee bit under the weather for the past week or so. Really not myself the girls in the hall tell me. It started a couple of weeks ago when I visited the big old garden of that kindly old man @Garden Joe.

It was a humongous old garden, with broken down angels and brambly brambles and weeds growing right up into the trees and obviously it is more than one kindly old man can handle, though there did seem to be fresh little plots here and there where he'd been doing some kind of digging, but he insisted on taking me to a super weedy corner of the place way off by itself and wanted to show me something and before I knew it WOOSH went my little feelers, out of the tips of my own little feelers and WOOSH into the dirt underneath Mr. Kindly Old Man's garden.

But that's when I got sick. Or something.

Can you get sick from old dirt? My little silver shoots have never had trouble before, but something in that old man's dirt was... sick. Or something. Usually I get a pretty good map of a place from my tendrils - like my daddy's little fishfinder sonar on his little boat. But in Mr. Kindly's garden I got all upside down and mixed up and SICK almost right away. And everything tasted like metal.

But I didn't want to worry him so I told him I had to go and when I got outside his gate I BARFED right there on the street and it was horrible. Luckily there's this girl @Singleton671 whose boyfriend has a car and they were driving by and saw me and took me back to school but really I have not been feeling real great till the past day or two.

I do so hope Mr. Kindly isn't worried. But.... I think I will need to avoid that particular garden shop for... ever? Oh but they have such nice things!!!

Hmmph.

My little flower has not returned...

I'd been eyeing her for a few weeks at the garden supply store. Really quite impossible to ignore, if you have a sense for these things, and I certainly do! I realized immediately she must be a student at the school on the hill, and with a passion for the earth no less, so she was really quite perfect for my needs. And her name is @Maryann Tulip. What could be more appropriate?

But a delicate operation, most certainly. To invite someone like that into my garden - my very special garden - and still maintain the level of... privacy... that a man like me is accustomed to, required finesse. And I am not a man without my own unique means...

It was easy enough to entice her to visit. But the trick was getting her to use her skills to help me understand the size and nature of the Very Large Object I have discovered underneath my grounds, without her being distracted by the wide range of other, shall we call them "artifacts" also buried around my garden. And buried quite thick, I'm afraid.

It turns out my little flower has a very interesting skill - the tiniest of roots... no, roots is too coarse a word, they are the thinnest of tendrils - hairs! Antennae! Strong, like wires, but so thin and delicate - that spring from the tips of her fingers and bury themselves in the earth, racing with joy like dogs on the hunt, unspooling endlessly from her fingertips and burrowing, swimming into the earth!

Truly, it was breathtaking. And the look on her face - a radiant angel! - as she guides the filaments through the earth and you can see she feels it throughout her young frame... seeing what they see through feeling it. No doubt it's not only a bit of sonar but tasting alkaline levels, moisture, minerals - the rush of swimming through the very earth, while she stands upon the surface, feeling it all through her wires...

But quickly, before I lost myself in her trembling, quivering, quaking rapture, I used my own inborn gifts and gently maneuvered her mind away from the things I could not allow her to see. And there were certainly a lot of them! I will say it was a very unique experience working with the mind of my little flower. So much information, just shooting up through those tiny fibers and into her unconventional nervous system. However, my usual techniques provided their usual effectiveness, and I merely nipped the unwanted memories in the bud, before they could fully lodge in her delicate brain.

I DO so love this school, and its beautiful setting in these woods, and the rambling gardens that do seem to go on forever, and they've really got a super great Psychic Permaculture program which is totally why I'm here. But I love everything about gardening and digging in the earth, and even though the school has great resources, sometimes a girl just needs a little more! ;)

Which is why sometimes I take the bus into town and visit the garden stores they have there. And they do have one which is heavenly! I've been there like 5 times already. And the thing about gardening is that it really brings people together.

Case in point! I met this really kindly older gentleman there who I think I've seen before, browsing in the greenhouses and the long rows of hanging plants, and he was just so sweet and he could tell how into gardening I was and he says he's got his own very special garden and he'd love to show me!!!

So, I'm so visiting his garden this Saturday - @Garden Joe he said he goes by. He's just so darn sweet and adorable! I can't wait to see his garden.

For all my years working in this garden, all my plots dug and secret little presents planted, I assumed I knew everything about this piece of land - every snag and bush on the surface, and even most every rock and root beneath....

So you can color me quite surprised regarding my latest discovery! Granted, the tip of it lay in the depths of a particularly ancient overgrown copse of bramble that I'd never had need to clear out before, but my little night hunts have been busy and so space is at a premium these days.

Ripping out the spiny bramble and shoveling out the rotted mulch, my hoe clanged what first seemed like an old iron kettle, but as I dug at and around it seemed much larger - an old iron wood stove perhaps... but no, it goes much larger and deeper than that. I'm afraid it's not really possible to dig up - not without excavating the whole of my grounds, and digging a rather enormous hole...

I believe I'll need to enlist the help of a specialist.

People do make fun of me because of my name and that I just love digging around in the dirt and planting and weeding and growing and tending. But it's totally why I'm here, really. When my fingers get into the dirt they get all tingly and it's like I've got these long long long tiny wires or hairs that just shoot out through the undersurface... wiggly tingly through the tree roots and the MYCELIUM (yea! extra credit it bio for using that word in a post!) and the myelin sheaves and oh it just makes me feel like a million bucks!

Take care,

Mary A

Isn't fall the best? Every year I get so excited to come back to Florence Hall (one of the all girl dorms) and see everybody and we hug and scream and go crazy and we stay up late even though we're not supposed to and open all the windows and smell that Fall smell coming out of the woods... It's so earthy!!! All those leaves and rotting trees and the compost piles and the reconstitution grounds. It's like the spirit of fall is just rising out of the ground all around the school. LUV IT!!!

Take care,

Mary A