Allen the Alien, Chapter 8

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At the end of the day when Allen met Ellie and all of the other happenings, Allen sat down at the side of the bed (Yes, even aliens must rest like all other creatures) and contemplated what had unfolded. 

Was Tommy right and Ellie was a sort of villain who wanted to hold power over the flock? Or was Duckula correct in saying her intentions were for a greater good? Or were both half-right and half-wrong? There was still much to be learned about these strange creatures of Earth.

Earth! Allen still found it hard to believe he was halfway across the galaxy. He looked out the window and up to the stars. Fearless Leader or one of the scientists would probably be able to point out their home star up there in the firmament, among the millions of pinpricks of light in the sky, but Allen was only a diplomat and all he could do was stare in wonder at how vast this universe is.

And to find yet another planet capable of supporting life as they knew it! He thought about the first time his people had encountered such a world, all that time ago — how excited everyone was to learn they were not all alone in the universe and there were other planets where billions of beings lived, loved and died.

Allen and his aide TriSight would meet with Fearless Leader in the morning to discuss all that had happened so far. The clever and suspicious young one, Tommy, had cornered Allen into revealing his mission sooner than he had planned, but he could not lie when asked a direct question — it would have gone against all that he and the Federation believed. Still, the question he had journeyed all this way to answer was still not fully answered. Were these Earth beings truly ready to join the interplanetary coalition? In so many ways they were still childlike as a species. Their little game of lining up in a row was so primitive, and they had so much fun at it.

Fearless Leader needed an answer fairly soon, and Allen was not sure he had enough information to make a recommendation.

“Time enough to talk about it in the morning,” Allen said out loud, yawning. “A little rest will help clear my mind.”

And as he drifted off into dreamland, he could not have known that the events of the next day would have such a profound impact on the fate of Earth and perhaps the universe itself.

A legacy of life

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My master gardener spent time digging in the dirt just about every day she could from springtime through the summer, and as she approached 70 years old, she began to talk about her mortality, saying, “I don’t know how many more gardens I have left, so I’m going to enjoy this while I can.”

It turned out that her last gardens were the year she turned 70, in 2022. Carol Jean was in the hospital and then hospice the following spring, and lymphoma stole her from us on the seventh day of summer.

The perennials and wildflowers she had planted hardly noticed. When I came home after saying goodbye that day, the first echinacea of the summer had bloomed, as perfect a coneflower as I have ever seen. The daffodils, daisies, black-eyed Susans, day lilies, roses, lilacs, hydrangeas, and all the rest have been reminders of dear Red every season. 

But I let the vegetable gardens go fallow. And the apple trees in the front yard? The first year I packed as many apples as I could in bags and put them away in the garage refrigerator. After using a handful and eventually leaving the rest in the neighboring meadow for the deer, I left the fruit on the trees in 2024, and they “rewarded” me by refusing to produce apples in ’25. 

This summer, they’re giving me another chance. Branches laden with hundreds of apples are drooping towards the ground. Bugs and worms and other critters are taking their toll on most of them, but I have more pretty good apples than I can use. I pulled down a half-dozen or so on Thursday afternoon, and I sliced one up and ate it while composing this blog post.

I also took a baby step and bought a couple of tomato plants, and they have been getting morning to midday sun in planters on my front porch. And so, for the first time in four years, I’ve been able to sample a little taste of homegrown sunshine this month. There is nothing like the taste of a tomato fresh off the vine.

Gardening was Carol Jean’s passion. I would help out now and then, especially around planting time, but she was the one who relished working the soil. My main contribution to the effort was enjoying the fruits of her labor at harvest time.

But those tomatoes have reminded me why she did it. I started thinking about what to grow next spring: Tomatoes, of course, but I remember savoring fresh Swiss chard, snap peas, green beans, radishes and carrots, and more. Mary says she wants to help, and so we will do our best to approximate what Cj left with her legacy of life.

It’s long past time to start digging again. After all, I don’t know how many gardens I have left.

Evidence right in front of us

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From the archives

When Summer was a puppy and stairs were a strange and mysterious mystery, I would hook her up to a leash and take her out front to do her doggie business rather than force her to negotiate the 10 steps down from the deck to our fenced-in backyard.

Now closer to her fourth birthday than her third, she has long ago grown accustomed to stairs, but after numerous bouts of hesitation at the patio door, I finally realized that first thing in the morning, she prefers to harken back to her puppyhood and go out front.

Since I am still at least 30 pounds heavier than I would consider my ideal weight, in recent months I have capitulated to my goofy dog’s preference and taken her on a 10- to 15-minute walk up and down the road and/or through the big field next to the house. (Summer, Dejah and I live on a little more than three acres of land not far from the beautiful shores of Green Bay — the body of water where the city gets its name.)

Saturday morning, after my usual morning surf through comic strips, familiar blogs and word games, I dabbled briefly on social media and even stuck my toe into the debate du jour involving heads of state. That’s a little unusual given that I ultimately view our present crisis as the state versus the individual, rather than any state-versus-state or party-versus-party.

Be that as it may, people took sides and expressed their anger and dismay at whichever head of state they viewed as being mainly at fault. At that point Summer expressed her dismay that we had not gone for our walk yet, so I pocketed the phone and grabbed the leash.

It was a cold but beautiful sunny morning. Sunny days help my depth perception — you may recall the story of when I first got glasses, the doctor added a prism that forced my two eyes to work better together — and so I stopped a time or two just to enjoy the sights of clouds racing across the sky, our three willow trees and the house standing behind them, and the bay peeking through the woods. (For three seasons, you can’t see the water from here because of the greenery.)

Summer paused mid-walk and sat down in the field, and I stood next to her and thanked God for a life that has lasted 72 years (as of later this month) and brought me to this beautiful corner of the universe. Eventually I coaxed her to continue and we headed back to the house.

I pulled out my phone again and considered leaping back into the fray, but I was pulled up short by a meme a friend had posted. It was a photo of a sunny woods with a river running through it, and these words:

“If you want evidence that the world is a terrible place, watch the news and surf the web. But if you want to remember how incredible this planet is, go out into nature. Unlike social media and the news, nature has no incentive to keep us agitated, angry and anxious.”

I reposted the meme and got on with my day, making a point to look out my window and up at the sky as often as possible.

It was a good day.

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March 2, 2025 — This post is also collected in my book See the World! Ask your favorite bookseller to order ISBN number 978-0-9910107-1-4