When gardening begins to co-opt your indoor hobbies, you just might have crossed the line into obsession. I took a pottery class at Feet of Clay Pottery Cooperative in Brookline (feetofclaypottery.com). Nice place, lots of interesting artists -- it seemed the perfect thing to do as our garden approached its blight-ridden, anti-climactic conclusion.

But then came fairy doors. That is, little garden decorations to nestle into cozy corners of your garden. And garden markers. Beautiful, fragile, impractical, glorious garden markers. You see where this is going: Pottery garden accessories, as irresistible to any young-at-heart adult as they are to my 5 year-old son.

And so membership at the co-op followed, and now I'm making berry bowls and wall flower vases for my harvest, giving garden-related gifts of pottery to family and friends, and thinking about items to sell at the open studio sale. And so somehow my garden has surprised me again, winding its way into my life like a pumpkin vine from my neighbor's plot.