Surprise Gardens
By JARED PUTNAM

Buddy Kelly, husband of Sentinel columnist "The Living Lady" Nancy Kelly, uses a hoe to prop up over a row of corn beside his garage. The corn grew out of seeds that fell from a bird feeder.

In a year where droughts have stretched across the United States, a number of aspiring gardeners have been left struggling just to grow a little garden. Even with fertilizer, careful watering, and hours of work, some efforts go fruitless.

That's why it can be frustrating, but comical, when nature produces crops all on its own, sometimes even in what seem like the most inhospitable of conditions.

At the edge of the parking lot of The Hair Shoppe in Blairsville, a crack in the cement was all one little tomato plant needed to sprout up and climb over the curb. The little plant sports seven tomatoes and as it is flanked by a concrete curb on each side, it might be safer there than in any garden.

At the home of Sentinel columnist "The Living Lady" Nancy Kelly and her husband Buddy, an unanticipated row of corn lines the side of their garage. "A redbird planted that," said Buddy jokingly, though in reality, telling the truth about how the corn came to be.

A tomato plant grows out of a crack in the cement at the edge of the parking lot of The Hair Shoppe in Blairsville.

The kernels were originally put in a birdfeeder below the garage window. But for birds, half the fun of eating seems to be the part where they scratch in the dirt. The redbirds scratched the kernels out of the feeder, which then landed on the ground and produced the row of corn.

Sometimes it seems as though Mother Nature is just rubbing it in.