I’m beginning to think that someone out there does not want me to grow geraniums from seed. Readers may recall that I sowed three packets of seeds at the beginning of July. In the beginning there were twenty-four seeds — plenty, I figured, to assure my success.

Within a week or so, eighteen of the seeds had germinated and I moved them carefully to small, individual pots. I gave four of the little plants away, leaving me with fourteen — still plenty, I figured, to assure my success.

All was going along swimmingly until Tage the Terrible struck in early August. Somehow we managed to avert major disaster, however, and the fourteen small plants thrived in their new home, lined up in a row in a long planter box. Unfortunately, I no longer knew which variety was which, but seeing as I had plenty of plants to assure my success, I wasn’t worried about waiting until bloom-time to get them sorted.

The next six weeks passed by uneventfully enough, and the plants continued to grow well. I had begun thinking about moving them to individual pots but hadn’t gotten around to doing it yet. A couple of days ago I was doing a routine check of my plants, and I noticed that someone or something had been digging in the soil of the planter box and a number of the plants had been uprooted. Nothing was seriously amiss, however, so I righted the plants and put the incident out of my mind for the next couple of days.

Early Friday evening, on our way out the door, I stepped inside the geranium room to flip on the fluorescent lights. When I glanced over at the shelves holding my plants, I didn’t know whether to laugh or tear my hair out.

So this time it was Moa who was terrible, and my little plants are much, much the worse for wear. I was able to salvage only eleven of them, and to be honest, at least half of them look more than a little bedraggled. I’ll be amazed, frankly, if any of them lives long enough for me to determine its variety. Suddenly I no longer have anything close to plenty, I figure, to assure my success.

And suddenly I see the advantages of having a lock on the geranium-room door.