Don't Complain

 "Don't complain," nature seems to say, "or I'll pay you back a hundredfold." Nature knows the Biblical sense of the word "spite".

 I have for some weeks been starting sunflowers. Every now and then one will come up in the garden from a seed the birds have dropped. I have carefully dug each one up, carried it to a row by the woodpile, planted it there with care and watered it copiously.

 I even found a few sunflowers germinating in the new flower bed by Clayton Road. As with their garden brethren I have moved them, replanted them with care and tended them.

 That said. I created an entire row of sunflowers there, just in front of the newly-stacked woodpile. The ground was soft with rotten wood, rich and dark, and the woodpile itself created a nice fence of sorts, something for the towering sunflowers to lean against in their late-summer maturity.

 I have planted a row of seeds there. The seeds were chosen, one by one, from last year's sunflower crop, choosing only the largest, healthiest seeds,

 It was the perfect seed, the perfect seedlings, the perfect spot.

 Each day I dragged a hose around and watered the row. Finally the seeds had sprouted and the transplants had begun to mature. I could begin to see the burgeoning green from the kitchen window. All was well with the sunflower patch.

 Until it wasn't.

 Yesterday I walked over with the hose to supplement the meager rain that had fallen earlier. I immediately saw that many of my prize seedling had been chewed off. Needless to say I was livid. I trust my cussing didn't carry too far.

 What to do? I decided that the row might be made unpalatable to whatever was eating them by sprinkling each plant with Sevin dust (an insecticide). I found the can of dust in the gardening barn and walked along the row sprinkling each plant, one by one, turning it white.

 Now, let them eat that! I said to myself.

 This morning I woke and looked out the window and my heart sunk. Right where my sunflowers stood the wood pile has toppled over. Indeed, this is the meaning of spite.

 So now I have no sunflowers at all.

 Is the moral of this story "if at first you don't succeed try again"? Or is it "if you don't succeed a second time, just give up"?