These days the garden looks vaguely like the scarred battlefield of a teddy bear massacre. The grass is coated in a thick layer of downy white, and tiny bits of fluff cling to the tomato leaves. The cottonwood tree that looms over the airstream is shedding its stuffing. On windy days, a blizzard of cotton balls fills the air.
The cottonwood has certainly developed a sound method of propagation. For inside each of these balls of fluff is a tiny white seed. It's been impossible to pull out every seed and bit of fluff from each of the containers, and when these tiny seeds land on the rich, well-watered soil that I'm providing for the tomatoes, cucumber, and broccoli, its only a matter of a day or two before two tiny leaves emerge from the soil that look suspiciously like a cottonwood seedling.
On some afternoons, when the tomatoes look like they've been draped in the artificial cobwebs that pop up on porches in October, I wonder whether I may end up with a cottonwood nursery.
