Garden Invasion (A Central Acre Park Adventure)

Trix, the miniature horse, has big dreams. She wants to be the best scientist in the world. She wants to observe everything and know everything. There is just one problem. She has hooves and no hands. How will she record her amazing discoveries?! With the help of all of her animal friends, of course!

Welcome to Central Acre Park! It’s a farm in the middle of a big city surrounded by honking horns, concrete sidewalks, and skyscrapers. It’s full of curious animals who have a lot to learn about the scientific world. Each day is a new adventure. Today, Trix is calling on her friends to help fix the mess she caused in the garden.

***

Trix woke up early with a rumbling tummy. She looked outside. The sky was a cotton candy pink. The sun peeked out over the top of the trees.

Mmm, thought Trix. Cotton candy would be a delicious breakfast.

She nudged the door to the pasture open with her nose and followed the smell of apples all the way to the orchard. She lifted the garden gate rope and tugged until the gate clicked open. She nudged it gently behind her, but it didn’t close all the way.

Trix picked her way down the rows carefully. She didn’t want the farm assistants to know she was visiting the garden to sneak extra treats. She munched happily on the sweet grass at the edges of the orchard between bites of apple.

Trix only ate the fallen apples that weren’t too wormy. Then it would look like the wild critters had snuck under the fence for a nibble during the night.

When her belly was full, she decided to take a quick nap.

When she woke up again, her mouth fell open. The garden was a mess! Some plants had been pushed over and some were chewed down to nubs. Fruits and veggies everywhere had bites taken out of them or were squished with hoofprints.

It looked like the handiwork of Godfrey the Goat. He lived in the stall three doors down from Trix. He was a nuisance. He would always nibble at the edges of her notebooks, swallow her favorite snacks, and slurp liquid out of her science test tubes with his long tongue.

“What happened?!” Trix shrieked. She had only fallen asleep for a second.

Trix jumped as Rory the Rooster crowed across the farm. It announced the start of the farm day and breakfast time. If Trix wasn’t in her stall, she would be in big trouble.

She cleaned up as best she could and rushed back to her stall. She pretended to be asleep when the farm assistant brought the grain to the barn.

***

Later that morning, the farm assistants found the destroyed garden. They looked sad and angry as they picked through trampled plants and ruined vegetables.

Trix felt bad. It was her fault that the garden had been destroyed. It wouldn’t have happened if she hadn’t left the gate open. She had to fix it. And she had to find the animal who destroyed the garden, so that they would help her make it right.

Trix went around to all her animal friends, but none of them seemed to know who had done it — not the cats, ducks, geese, chickens, turtles, sheep, wild birds, or frogs. Most of the animals on the farm were diurnal, which meant they slept at night and were awake during the day.

That evening after the farm assistants left, Trix woke Garbanzo, her raccoon note-taking research assistant. Then she woke Godfrey, the trouble-making goat. They tramped out to the ruined garden.

“Okay, team! We have a lot of work to do,” Trix said, pacing back and forth in front of her gathered helpers. “Godfrey, do you know who did this?”

The goat shook his stubby tail and shook his head. He didn’t know.

Trix sighed. Another dead end.

“What is this?” Garbanzo asked, holding up a smooth dark purple vegetable. He took a bite and spit it out immediately. “Blech! What is this? A purple sponge?”

“Eggplant,” Trix corrected. “It’s actually a fruit. So are peppers, tomatoes, squashes, cucumbers, gourds, green beans, peas, avocados, olives, corn, and okra. Plant scientists describe fruit as anything that can spread seeds into the world.”

Garbanzo bit into a green pepper and spit that out, too. “Gross! It tastes like a ball of grass juice. Not sweet at all.”

Godfrey lapped up Garbanzo’s leftovers cheerfully. He then chomped down on a mouthful of shrubs sticking through the garden fence.

Trix watched Godfrey thoughtfully. “Wow, you’re actually useful. Godfrey, can you help us clean up this mess?”

The goat bleated and took another mouthful of shrubbery.

Trix nudged scraps out of the garden as Godfrey ate up weeds, sticks, and plants whose names she didn’t know. Weeds were any plants that the farm assistants didn’t want in the garden. They ate up all the nutrients and water that should go to the vegetables and fruit that people grew for food. Trix had seen the weeds break up sidewalks and driveways. Weeds even killed other plants.

“What are these?” Trix asked, pawing at the ground. The weed wound its way up the fence and covered it in pretty pink and white flowers.

“That’s a noxious weed or invasive species called bind weed,” Godfrey said, sounding a bit like an encyclopedia. “These ones are like super villains. They really hurt the environment around them.”

“Oh dear! We should pull these out,” Trix said, motioning Garbanzo over. “Thanks, Godfrey.”

The goat pointed out all the noxious weeds: quack grass, Canada thistle, nutsedge, buckthorn, honeysuckle and more. The list went on and on.

“Gosh,” Trix said. “There are so many of them.”

“So many were brought here by accident,” Godfrey replied. “Because they were pretty or because people from far away places missed home. But they’re hurting the plants that grew here in the first place. They taste bad, so I don’t eat ‘em.”

“So we should plant more homegrown plants,” Trix concluded. “What are the best ones?”

Godfrey rattled off some names: “Butterfly weed, cone flower, milkweed, columbine, compass plant, wild geranium, cardinal flower, black-eyed susan, blazing star, false indigo, spiderwort, blue sage, goldenrod, spice bush, rattlesnake master, wild ginger… ”

“UGH!” Garbanzo yelled, interrupting the list.

Trix sighed, trotting down a row of tomatoes to the raccoon. “What did you eat? Spit that out!”

“Foxglove and snakeweed are highly poisonous,” Godfrey pointed out.

Garbanzo made a choking sound and rubbed his tongue.

“... but what you ate isn’t either of those,” the goat added.

The racoon gave a big glare, and Trix giggled. “Let’s get back to work, you two.”

They worked long into the night and took a quick nap. When they woke up, a group of what looked like large, skinny horses peered in at them. It was so foggy and dewy out, it seemed like a dream at first.

“Deer!” Trix exclaimed. “Did you do this to the garden?”

“We were hungry,” a doe sheepishly admitted. “We saw you working and came to apologize. We brought you some seeds to grow new plants.”

One by one, each deer dropped a packet of seeds at Trix’s feet. The crepuscular animals were only awake at dawn and dusk, so it made sense why Trix hadn’t noticed them before. Both times she’d nodded off around dawn.

Trix very politely accepted their gift. “Thank you!” she called as they waved their white tails and galloped away across Central Acre Park in the misty morning.

Trix gave a sleepy smile. She had learned a lot today. Maybe her true calling was to be a scientist who studies plants.