Every year around this time, this humid, wet, hot time, I get the notion that, once again, who I really am has nothing to do with theatre, writing, or teaching. No, who I am, in fact, is a Farmer. I drag out the tools from the side of the house and cultivate the small patch of earth I have laid claim to, over by the magnolia.

I also track down a few unfortunate terra cotta pots that, for most of the year until spring rolls back around, lay dormant around the house, full of aged dirt and some off-shoot Christmas ornaments that I, at some point, thought would look good if decoratively situated and carefully placed inside them.

Everything gets wiped down, cleaned out, and reconfigured.

It is no surpise then that last week, I found myself standing in my front yard, doing my garden-thinking: What will you plant this year, Kris? I thought.

My answer? Squash, cucumber, peppers, dill (always dill), rosemary, oregano, but above all, mint.

I love me some mint.

Amanda and I, thus, found our way to Lowe’s…after we came up mint-empty at the Co-Op. I don’t want you thinking that I automatically go first to the big franchises for all my gardening needs. I go there second.

The Co-Op having disappointed us in the mint department, left us with only Lowe’s as a next-best choice. I suppose we could have fingered the pitiful flora at Wal-Mart, but why.

As we’d checked off our list, again mostly at the Co-Op, I began to have a few second doubts at Lowe’s. The tomato plants seemed a tad bigger here. So, we bought a couple of them.  And here, at Lowe’s, I also found Greek oregano, not originally on my list, so we added that as well. But, where on earth was the mint?

Finally, after digging through rows and rows of sage, thyme, mosquito plants, lamb’s ear (which I still can’t understand, as an herb) and stevia (which I think is manmade), Amanda located the one mint plant left in the entire store.

She cried, “Eureka!” (We really say things like Eureka!, Egads!, Heavens to Betsy!, Cease and desist!,  etc. as a means of self-entertaining) and from way back of the rolling piece of scaffold on which the herbs were placed, out came a mint plant.

I think.

It was beat-up, diseased-looking, and half-dead, but I’m pretty sure it was, indeed, a mint plant.

And here I’d thought you couldn’t kill mint.

Nevertheless, we took it up to the counter to be purchased because we really like mint; it goes well in juleps, you know.

But, then, as Andrew, the store clerk, began scanning our items, I had a change of heart. I just didn’t want us to pay for a plant that was, for all intents and purposes, stupid. I mean, all this thing had to do was sit in a biodegradable container and grow.

It seems that it was unable to do even this much.

I told Andrew, No thanks. We wanted good mint. And this was all they had, but I didn’t want it, anymore. Sorry.

Andrew cast about several suspicious glances a la the original Law and Order, and leaned in over the Miracle Gro Seed Starter Mulch with Miracle Gro. (Not a company known for its marketing skill, I guess).  He gestured that we should lean in as well.

So, we did.

“You really want some mint?” He whispered.

“Yes, we do,” I whispered back.

“All right, then forget this.” He pitched the life-support mint off to the side, where I noticed other untouchables had also been discarded. (This reminded me to start a compost pile).

“I live over at the apartments across from the Baptist church by the hospital? Apartment number 4. I’ve got the best mint around, I’m not lying, and you can have as much as you want, no strings attached. If the lady next door comes out, asking who you are, just tell her Andrew sent you.”

“Are you kidding.” I started to ask, but Amanda had already pulled out her iPhone to Google map his address. She wanted mint even more than I did.

Twenty minutes later, we had a plastic grocery sack, our trusty trowel, and were being led by GPS to Andrew’s mint-ridden front yard where, true to his word, there was enough mint to beat the band.

(We also say things like “to beat the band” though I have no idea what it means).

We got into stealth-mode, despite the fact that it was broad daylight and located in a part of the yard that made being inconspicuous impossible, and we dug up all the mint our hearts desired. We contemplated leaving Andrew a note, saying Thanks.

But, we didn’t.

We just committed the crime and drove back home.

Which is, in my book, how all crime should be committed.  Do the deed, then go home. And do something with what you stole. In this case, as Lowe’s says, ”Let’s build something together.”

After all that is their mission…and I’m pretty sure it’s Andrew who holds the hammer.

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He didn’t, did he? 

I mean, I’m only peripherally familiar with the hunchback of Richard III. (I think it’s the III, it’s Richard plus some number, that much I know).

A lateral view of the ankle in question.

I still have two more gruelling performances of this play left and last night I…well…I may have compromised my 1000% commitment to my role in this production:  I now possess a badly sprained ankle.

That’s never happened to me before, in my entire acting career.

Truth be told, and gladly, I used to have really good balance and coordination. I really did. I was always very good at walking. And running. And jogging…though walking was where I truly held master’s credentials. I didn’t really care for the other, unless I was in the middle of a tennis match.  And, of course that would only affect running.  So, I guess, it’s jogging that I didn’t care for much at all.

It doesn’t matter, anyway, not now, not after last night.

I think, “post-the-now-infamous-flip-flops-blog,” Fate decided to rear her ugly, unkempt head and spit on me for stepping on Amanda’s toes the night before, toes that were visible from the starboard side of her flip flops, if you wish to recall that blog. 

Or, to be more exact, let’s say Fate spit on the small walkway in my yard that leads to the front door.

I mean, I slipped on something. And when things happen for no reason, the safest person to blame is Fate. Or, sometimes, Sean Hannity, or Don Imus, you know people like that.

Bless poor Amanda, really. I do love her, she is my best friend, but I just keep hurting her, accidentally. Like I have some deeply embedded vendetta against her. Last night, there she was reaching for her keys to unlock the front door, and I…honestly, I have no idea how it happened…but, I just slipped, I fell on something coming down the walkway.

Let me set the scene a little more, for you:  our walkway to the front door is ever so slightly a downhill curved walkway.  At the end of it, there’s our adorable, quaint front porch with its thick wicker chairs and bistro table set, our random potted army of herbs, the small square box garden, which is still doing very well thank you for asking, and this enormous, large floral arrangment my sister gave me for Christmas, which I am now attached to for no real reason at all and have nailed to the front of the house, over the bistro table set, I like an ambience, if you will - I change out the colors in it to give it more of a seasonal appeal (we’re in lime green right now) and of course the treacherous, oversized brick step that leads you up a small flight of space to the front door.

I was several, several feet behind the unsuspecting Amanda. The lovely Amanda who was wearing a brand new blouse, cleverly patterned in a silk material with soft, red flowers, with that ever so polite and alluring cloth tie that good quality blouses are carrying in style these days. She was a real picture, that Amanda, and to add insult to injury, had her back turned to me, she was trying to unlock the door, and so, as cliche as it was (as most truths are, anyway), she really, truly…never saw it coming.

But then, neither did I.

I wish we could grow this mint. But, Mississippi's soil isn't rich enough.

I was in the middle of a sentence, agreeing with her about about our potential cornering of the market on mint syrups, that’s our new harebrained (circa 1564) idea…although, I will admit, it has some credibility to it.  We do make a mean, delicious mint syrup, and it goes well with anything. Except broccoli. (Don’t ask).

We’d been discussing building more box gardens to put up in the back yard, and I don’t know exactly what happened, but the next thing I knew I was falling. Fast. I was absolutely shocked at the amount of speed my upper body was gaining in momentum as I tripped.

Like a satellite gone terribly awry, I was being propelled at terrific speed, a centrifuge of foolishness, and as bodies in motion must have something towards which they are being drawn, thanks to gravity’s apple, I was deadset on my target: Amanda’s back.

I didn’t have time to warn her.

She didn’t have time to turn around.

The brick step and the concrete porch didn’t care one way or the other.

I slammed into Amanda at whiplash speed. She was thrown, prostrate, to the ground – there went her purse, there went the house keys, and there went my cell phone, there went my keys, there went my glasses. The left leg of my pants were nearly ripped off at the knee, and a gash taking its place, my right wrist, ever ready for a chance at being a reflex, shot out to catch myself from falling head long into the light-iron pillar, one of four twisted metal pole designs that hold our porch awning up, most of the time…and there went “something” from my right ankle.

There was a definite pop.

And I immediately became nauseous. Sweating, clammy. I was going to throw up. I was in severe pain. I look over at Amanda, and she was in shock, her first response was to laugh.  She does that sometimes when her nerves take over.

I do too.  I often laugh in the face of violence.

She stood up, very slowly, asking me why I tackled her. Did I disagree with some point in her argument for putting the mint in the backyard, and if so, couldn’t I have just told her instead of jumping her?

I wasn’t quite able to offer a witty rebuttal. My body was on a completely different wavelength, sending out its worker cells to check all sections of the injured, subcutaneous parties. I was on high alert; I could have heard a dog whistle. I was primed for something…fearing (and hoping against) the inevitable: the emergency room and a broken ankle. I’ve never broken any bone in my body. In kindergarten, once, for show-and-tell, I bragged about two things: never having broken any bones in my body, and never having been bitten by a rattlesnake.

I was terrified that my record was about to be less one bragging right.

I was also filthy. Amanda, you see, fell flat onto the concrete. A scratch or two (actually, the event itself was more damaging than the aftermath. The real irony: she merely re-injured, no lie, the exact same sore I’d caused the night before by stepping on her toe. The very same place. Not another scratch on her.  This is why Fate is in trouble, in my book).

I, however, never made it all the way onto the concrete porch. My right hand, wrist, arm, cell phone and keys did. But the rest of me fell into our lovely flower bed, ringed so preciously with large chunks of flintstone. Those sharp, sweet edges nestled themselves into my right side and took the wind out of me. The very soil I’d watered, fed, and given shelter to smeared their thanks all down my pants and my Zara jacket.

I'm no angel, but this is what it felt like.

My right ankle stayed, turned outwardly at an angle not meant fully for the human foot, in its own little self-made trench, beside the walkway. A picture should have been taken. And further, a scientific note should be made, here, as well. Until last night, I didn’t know there was a subcategory of an out-of-body experience.  I knew there were some people, mainly those who believe in angels a million times over, who had near death experiences.  I suppose that would certainly shock a body out of itself.

But, that’s not what I had. I don’t think. And yet, somehow, I threw my body out of myself…I mean, that’s what it felt like. I didn’t pass out, I saw no light other than the bug light that hangs over the door (well, that and the street light that doesn’t work – I need to call the city about that)…but, I still felt like my right leg and ankle weren’t a part of my right side and arm, which wasn’t a part of the left side of my body at all. It felt like I had to stand up and retrieve my body parts and put them back together.

Which, for all intents and purposes, I did. And then I tested my ankle, which at the time, I was still in enough shock to think all was well. So, I took myself inside and to the bathroom. I had to have a bath, I mean, like right then.

It was there that I saw the size my ankle had taken on: I never knew the human body could swell so much and so quickly. The skin across my ankle is among the tautest (or is it most taut?) on my body. And yet, it appeared that somehow, someone had inserted a cantalope, or half of Dolly Parton, into the space previously occupied by my ankle bone.

I was grotesquely intrigued. But rather than stare all night at it, I did what I remembered you should do when an edema, or swelling, occurs; I also became somewhat tickled at the word “edema” – I may have known a drag queen by that name, once - I put heat on it, first, for several hours. And then, ice.

It almost looks normal-sized now.

Next, comes the real test, though, because I have to go to the bathroom. I’ve not stood on it yet, today. But, now is the hour that something’s going to have to give.

I’m just hoping Fate realizes I gave enough last night.

I’ll let you know, later, if I’m right or wrong.

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