Local Garden Overflows Bed; Neighbors Wonder What Owners Were Thinking.

The garden at Jeff and Aubrey Tell's house continues to grow and is exploding well beyond its designed limits. For the last week neighbors have been gawking and wondering why the garden owners tried to cram so many plants into so small a garden. They say the Tells have typically been model neighbors, quiet and reserved, no one would have expected them to overplant their garden.

The Tells never claimed to have green thumbs. But recent events have left stunned neighbors wondering whether they have any thumbs at all.

At the beginning of the season the Tells prepared a four by eight plot of ground for a new garden. They were excited about the possibilities of growing food right in their own backyard. In their novice enthusiasm, they decided it would be a good idea to plant a row of carrots, a row of lettuce, two rows of spinach, a basil plant, six bell pepper plants, eleven tomato plants, four squash vines and five cantaloupe vines in their humble plot of dirt.

Tell maintains that when they planted the garden the plants were all quite small, and fit comfortably in their spots. "Who knew they would grow like this?" Tell was reportedly overheard wondering.

"What were they thinking?" One neighbor wondered aloud. "Surely they've grown things before."

Tell remains optimistic, "Oh, this is just a rookie mistake," Tell mused, "I bet this happens to everybody."

"Actually no," says an anonymous gardening expert, "This is the first time I've ever seen this happen. You'd think they would have checked out some gardening books before they just went ahead and gardened all willy-nilly."

Tell insists that he did do his homework. "Actually yes, I read the titles and Amazon customer reviews of nearly five gardening books." Which one did he finally buy? "Well, none of them, actually. I got distracted and ended up just adding two more N.T. Wright books to my wishlist. He's really quite readable."