Maybe I put too much fertilizer. I’ll never know.

We planted the garden as usual in mid-April. The first few weeks are always touch and go. One heavy thunderstorm can flatten the tiny plants and ruin all of our work.

June arrived and most of the plants were still scrawny and underdeveloped. I saw lots of yellow leaves. It was obvious, we needed to add some fertilizer.

Maybe it had magic dust in it. Or maybe the fertilizer manufacturer made a mistake and put rocket fuel in it.

A week later the back yard was a jungle. Tomatoes as tall as redwoods towered over all. Squash blossoms the size of a man’s head peeked around the tomato stems. Each cherry tomato was the size of a basketball and the beefsteaks, well, I just dug my way through the ripe red flesh where they lay.

You might think that it was a gardener’s dream but it wasn’t. The giant milkweed made a terrible mess when it dispersed its seeds. But worst of all was the effect it had on animals.

One night I heard a persistent thumping noise from the back door. I grabbed a flashlight and peered out the window trying to see what could be making that terrible racket.  Pressed up against the glass I saw the mouth parts of a giant slug. Every time it rasped over the wood door the whole house shook.

The next morning I found that bag of fertilizer. I put it out with the trash.

Sometimes I worry about that bag. I assume they dropped it at the landfill with the other trash. The landfill is only ten miles away from our house.