Now, I know you’re asking yourself, what is she talking about? How does she know she has been visited by aliens? I’ll tell you how – we have crop circles in our backyard. Yes, that’s right. Crop circles.

Recently, my wonderful husband came up to me and said, “Honey, have you noticed those odd patches of grass in the backyard?” I tried not to smile, keep a straight face. He continued, now with a grin on his face… “You know, the dead patches of grass that look like crop circles?” At this point, I racked my brain to try and think of a funny come back that would make him laugh. Because, let’s face it, I love making him laugh. But this time, the only thing that came to mind is… “Yep, they’re crop circles alright.”

Maybe I should start a little further back in my story.

Recently I decided to do some spring cleaning in the backyard. Yes, I know, it’s now fall, but look at it this way – I could just as easily be early with my spring clean, as late.

My husband and I have this corner in our backyard, where everything “unwanted” piles up. I like to call it “Junk Central.â€? I’m sure you have one of these corners too. Our little area contains piles of gardening pots, parts of rake handles and shovel heads laying broken and rusted like a Home Depot graveyard, cages for tomato plants that died years ago, mangled hanging baskets, and various lawn mower parts. Added to this mix, thanks to my parents, are half used bags of potting soil, weed killers of various sorts, fertilizer and cow manure.

To be honest, I am probably blaming my parents unfairly. However, all these various bags of goodies were donated when my parents downsized to a condo a while back. The age of the various bags are unknown, but, being a good daughter, and having every intention of using at least part of them, I gladly accepted.

I recently decided it was time to clean up at Junk Central. The horrible, putrid smell of chemicals wafting in the breeze, pretty much made that decision for me.

So, I pulled on my leather gloves and started for the corner of the yard. I grabbed a broken rake handle, mainly so that I would have something to poke around in the pile, so that whatever snakes may have taken up residency in Junk Central, would be mad at the stick, and not me. Slowly, I started picking my way through the junk. The mangled hanging baskets and flower pots were now a home to roaches and maggots, don’t ask me why. They were dragged to the side so that the water hose could blast them into oblivion. The tomato cages and landscape fabric had made quite a home for the neighborhood spiders. I was beginning to realize that I was going to have most of the population in the backyard mad at me in no time. But, I persevered.

The next thing was the donation pile. As I began to carefully lift up the bags of fertilizer and “bug-be-gone granules,� I realized that the bags were a lot heavier than they should be. Interesting, I thought. The next bag was actually sloshing. Uh oh, that’s not a good sign. I began to notice that the smell coming from the bags was getting stronger, and the neighbors were likely to turn me in to the police for burying a body in the backyard.

Then I noticed that some of the bags had actually started fusing together. I wondered at this point if I needed to call in some type of scientist in the event that I had created a new plastic. I began thinking about how many chemicals were co-mingling in this backyard nightmare, and was beginning to wish I had asked my husband to do this job instead of me.

I looked around to see where my husband was. He was still on the lawnmower, now in the front yard. He had already completed the backyard where I was working, which was now littered with pieces parts of gardening gear and lots of disgruntled, evicted families from Junk Central.

I finally managed to get the bags of “stuffâ€? separated as best I could, and started opening the bags. I’m not going to tell you what I saw in the bags, because my nightmares are still haunted by images of putrid goo and sludge. And let’s just say the reason why I keep describing the bag contents as “stuffâ€? is because they no longer looked anything like what they were originally, and the sun had faded the names off the bags so that I really didn’t know what they were anyway.

I wondered at this point what to do with them. If I heaped them into the garbage cans, first, I would end up covered in radioactive goo-stuff. Second, my husband and probably the garbage people, would want to kill me, not to mention the neighbors. That’s too long of a list. So, I decided I was going to spread the stuff on the lawn. After all, that’s where it was intended to go originally, right?

Wishing that my leather gloves were steel-reinforced, I picked up the bottoms of the bags and started dragging them around the backyard, emptying the contents as I went. Slowly, one by one, those heavy, smelly, repulsive bags were emptied out. My husband came by on the lawnmower just as I was finishing, with a questioning look on his face. I just smiled and waved.

It didn’t take long for the crop circles to appear after that. As you can imagine, from me dragging the bags around the backyard, I had left cute little circles all throughout the yard. I had to come clean with my husband and admit what I had done. It made him laugh. I love my husband.

Still wondering about the aliens? Well, there is no doubt in my mind that all that sludge and radioactive soup created some type of new life form. How else am I going to explain the crop circles to the neighbors?