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noggin and telephone pole. Maybe we should call the phone company. That telephone pole has clearly become a hazard to the neighborhood.”
    It only took a half glass of Sagelands to burn off the mild vexation of the Mrs. Daffodil mystery. As the wine supplanted pure mental acuity with a much less taxing disembodied buzz, George and Nan looked out upon their backyard and reflected on what a treasure it was. What they had created was a modest chip of hypercultivated real estate, constituting two-thirds of their three-quarter-acre lot in a solid and unassuming neighborhood populated by Livia’s middle ranks. If a pale imitation of Delaware’s Winterthur, Alabama’s Bellingrath, and Pennsylvania’s Longwood, it was still a marvel of the gardener’s craft, not only to them, but to a small, enthusiastic segment of Livia’s aging population.
    Neighbors in awe of the handiwork bursting everywhere through the ground approached them meekly for gardening tips and any other dribs and drabs of wisdom that might bring comfort to their otherwise distressed lives. They included such luminaries as Jeff Fitch, Livia’s plenipotentiary liaison to sister city Ogbomosho, Nigeria, and mondo bizarro hard-drinking local songstress and composer Pat Veattle, who wrote the often-misinterpreted official city song, “Livia Is for Livers.”
    No one was as magically transformed in the Fremonts’ backyard as Deanne and Sievert Mikkelson. The Mikkelsons were a timid, brittle, childless couple on the cusp of middle age, but seeming much older. Their faces sagged and their bodies bowed with unspoken cares and unseen burdens that no one could identify.
    It was one day in midsummer last year when they approached hesitantly from the street at the Fremonts’ beckoning. George and Nan, fortified into a heightened sociability by a tall glass of strongly mixed gin and tonic featuring the magnificent Bombay Sapphire gin, had to shout, cajole, and almost threaten the Mikkelsons to cause them to swerve from their appointed route, walk slowly up the driveway, and delicately negotiate the pea gravel steps on their approach to what they feared was sure perdition.
    Lowering themselves gingerly onto the Fremonts’ deck chairs, the Mikkelsons initially waved off all offers of refreshment. They soon discovered, however, that a bombardment of bonhomie coming from the Fremonts was darned near irresistible.
    â€œWell, I suppose just a touch wouldn’t hurt us,” Sievert said. Deanne nodded meekly. With that, George uncorked a bottle of Sagelands, which the Mikkelsons proceeded to treat like ice water served up in a sauna. They knocked down their first glasses in one big concurrent glug, both of them wiping their mouths with the back of their hands and sighing contentedly, in harmony.
    â€œCould we be so bold as to ask for a refresher?” Sievert asked.
    â€œOh, yes!” Deanne said. “Oh, yes!” The second glass went down the same as the first. So did a third, which Nan tried to fill only halfway to the lip of their wineglasses.
    â€œOh, no you don’t,” Deanne gurgled. “I see what you’re up to. Fill mine to the brim!”
    â€œMine, too!” cried Sievert. “No stinting now. We’re your guests.”
    Nan and George weren’t quite sure whether to be pleased and amused, or somewhat alarmed. Here, clearly, was a couple unaccustomed to the grape, but who, given the opportunity, could guzzle it down like Roman sybarites. They could well be perched on the precarious precipice of alcohol poisoning. But how did you cut off these Mikkelsons? They’d been transformed by three glasses of merlot from the shy, vulnerable mice to the bold, blustering lions of the neighborhood. They might be capable of anything!
    â€œMore wine, spody-ody!” yelled Sievert, on polishing off his third glass in two big, violent gulps. He slammed the wineglass down on the table, sending a