Shopping Tips and Guidance by Mandy Claire

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," giving a whole new meaning to the term "green thumb!"

Everyone else brags about his or her garden, so let me tell you all about mine. It's an anti-garden.

Instead of planting pretty stuff and fussing over it, I just let everything grow wherever it wants to grow. Even the little plot I had set aside for tomatoes is now clogged with some plant that likes New Jersey soil.

I love the idea of gardening, but when I get out there to do it, it seems like so much work. Better to hop in the hammock and spend that time being a vegetable, rather than planting one.

Actually I have done some planting in my yard. When the city of Baltimore tore down the old Memorial Stadium where the Orioles used to play, I went into the wreckage and took some seeds off the wildflowers growing up through the rubble. That's what's now growing in my so-called garden.

Remember the old adage: weeds are plants that are growing where you don't want them to grow. In my yard, there's no such thing as a weed.

My neighbors envy me. I often see them staring across the fence. I try not to be vain about my fabulous anti-garden. No use stirring up jealousy in suburban New Jersey.