Fun Reads by Rich Schram

     Behind our mother-in-law’s hideaway — a humble structure of 650 square feet — we created a plentiful garden. In Year One (2008), which enjoyed a banner tomato-growing season, our 10 by 20 patch produced tomatoes in abundance, and we gave bagsful to a neighbor to share at her church. Our success made me boastful. “I feel agriculturally competent. And beneficent. By sharing with true believers, afterlife points will accrue.”      In Year Two (2009), we hoped to brag, “Our Better Boys are not only tasty, they grow in the bounds of a rustic, dry-stacked stone wall.” I googled famous walls of past millennia and pointed at the screen. “Look, Mary, our wall will be equally famous.” Enthused and optimistic, we took delivery of $400 worth of rocks. More fools were we. Our purchase, clearly discarded by someone more knowledgeable, only humorously formed themselves into something we called a garden wall.      Stone edifice erected, Year Two cre...