Botanical Garden?

From one of our home inspectors in the northeast comes this exciting news of an entirely new botanical technology. While on a routine home inspection our savvy inspector found a startling demonstration of previously unheralded ingenuity, a breakthrough which may nudge Daisy, the replicated sheep, from the headlines, or fulfill the promise of ten-pound tomatoes for every pot.

It was just a routine home inspection, nothing in the outward appearance of the home gave any hint of the startling technological breakthrough sheltered inside. Our intrepid veteran had no fear of dark crawlspaces absent humans for decades, or musty attics where time stands still. He had seen Moloch in coal-dust scented fireplaces, braved diabolical electrical service patterned after Dr. Frankenstein's laboratory. But nothing in his experience had prepared him for the amazing display of spontaneous ingenuity he was to encounter one bright New England morning.

The owner had vacated, there was standing room only throughout. Left behind, for posterity, perhaps, or as a gift to mankind, or maybe as a riddle for the University thinkers sure to swarm when the discovery sizzled on the evening news like a Star Wars death ray vaporizing one of Saddam's wobbly SCUDs, was the Mutha of All Inventions. It was awesome. Our man stood agape.

To be sure, a home inspector has to know a lot about a lot. Like a many-headed Hydra, one head must be a carpenter, another an electrician, still another a roofer, yet another an HVAC technician, another a mason, another a plumber. But our expert was humbled by the remarkable synthesis of technology left behind in that living room. He was as in a Holy place, made small by soaring arches reaching heavenward, sensing the presence of the infinite. He took off his hat and scratched his head.

What in tarnation was it?

When we are befuddled by the complex, we do well to fall back on the folk wisdom "one thing at a time." So did our man. It began where a drop of water was about to fall from a blister on the ceiling. For a moment, the drop quivered, then fell. Well, a leaky ceiling is a leaky ceiling.

As it tumbled through space, the drop was intercepted by a funnel fixed to the end of a hollow pipe and suspended from the ceiling. Through this pipe passed a patient multitude of drops, one by one, across the vast empty space below the ceiling to a destination twenty feet away, above a big picture window.

After their long journey the trickle once again separated into drops, again falling one by one, this time into a two-pound coffee can suspended on a string. The coffee can is tapped all the way around with 1/4" plastic tubes, hanging like arms of an octopus. Each of the plastic tubes leads to a potted plant.

One more genius!