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    I remember when I was in college that a philosophy professor threw out the proposition that what distinguished humans from all other forms of creation was their ability to be perverse. The man obviously never had either a garden or pets.

    When we moved to the country eleven years ago, the grounds were completely untended - there were no shrubs around the house, no flowers, no cultivation at all. What grew was what nature had planted, and nature seemed to be very fond of Johnson grass.

    When I began to claim areas of the yard as my own I planted fruit trees, vegetables, flowers and shrubs, but I decided against grass. There seemed to be plenty of green stuff out there covering the ground, and grass, as I recalled it, involved a lot of water, fertilizer and mowing.

     So we decided to let whatever grew, grow. It was a good theory and has worked pretty well, except when one really nice little weed started growing around the house. Sally Wasowski gave me a name for it - horse herb - so I decided it was worth encouraging. It grew low and needed mowing only rarely. It liked the shady conditions under the old oak trees. It was pretty and green and had cheery yellow flowers on it. So I started discouraging the other grasses growing there by pulling them up by their roots and encouraging the horse herb by giving it a drink of water now and then.

    That's what made me start thinking about the ability of non-human things to be perverse.

    Once I started encouraging the horse herb, it made a bee-line to my flower beds. It sprawled over the barriers and under the mulch. It overran the existing ground cover and smothered the edging plants. I pulled it up, dug it up, chopped it up.

    I am not a gentle weeder. I even bought one of those nifty Japanese hand hoes with a very sharp curved blade that could reach into a hidden spot and whack the plants off at the roots. But so what? The horse herb didn't want to grow where I wanted it to grow. It wanted to grow in the flower beds. Now it's a pitched battle, and you can guess who's winning.

    It's too hot to go out and spend hours weeding, and I don't care enough to start my garden chores at 4 a.m., so by the time fall comes I'll have a great bunch of horse herb in my beds around the house.

    I've found this principle to be true of many plants. Bermuda grass is famous for growing where you don't want it to grow. Mint, if it is happy, will attempt to conquer the world. I have a nice big pot of Homestead verbena that I set out in a front bed as an accent piece. It promptly leapt out of the pot and asserted itself in the bed, covering up the daisies, the iris, and the coneflowers that were already growing there.

    I see those beautiful gardens on television and wonder how many gardeners they have on staff just to control plants who choose to exercise their right to be perverse. Their roses ramble in just the right place. You never see signs of unseemly pushing and shoving and jostling in their plant world. Obviously, their plants went to Miss Hybrid's School of Plant Manners. Mine are just roughneck rowdies with a lot of garden smarts.

    The same is true of my dogs and cats. The dogs choose the nicest flowering plant as the spot where they must take an afternoon nap. Even though I keep a plastic pool full of water to keep them cool and water spots in the yard where they can lie, they prefer the flower beds.

    The cats, of course, always try to establish a new litter area each spring in freshly dug beds.

    We have three acres here, most of which is available for any amount of messing up by the canine and feline population. We only cultivate a very small part, but that is the part they have a perverse need to mess up.

    I buy huge jars of cayenne pepper, give long speeches (which always gives my husband a big laugh), and resort to unlady-like hollering from time to time, just to discourage their ability to be perverse. I do not believe they don't know better. I can see in their eyes that they know better. Actually, I can see in their actions that they know better. If a dog is sitting in the grass when I go out the front door, he continues to sit. If a dog is sitting in a flower bed when I go out the front door, he jumps and runs. Is that animal ignorance or pure perversity?

    Gardeners have a lot of challenges - bugs, weeds, disease, drought, famine, and such. We ought to be able to trust our friendly plants and animal companions to work with us. I wish I knew that professor now. I'd like to tell him a few things I've learned about the ability to be perverse - and suggest he get out in the world now and then!