Henry Beard

Boggies are an unattractive but annoying people whose numbers have increased rather precipitously since the bottom fell out of the fairy-tale market. Slow and sullen, and yet dull, they prefer to lead simple lives of pastoral squalor. They don't like machines more complicated than a garotte, a blackjack, or a luger, and they have always been shy of the 'big folk' or 'biggers' as they call us. As a rule they avoid us, except on rare occasions when a hundred or so will get together to dry-gulch a lone farmer or hunter. They seldom exceed three feet in height, but are fully capable of overpowering creatures half their size when they get the drop on them. . . . Their beginnings lie far back in the Good Ole Days when the planet was populated with the kind of colorful creatures you have to drink a quart of Old Overcoat to see nowadays.

Bulb: potential flower buried in Autumn, never to be seen again.

Hoeing: A manual method of severing roots from stems of newly planted flowers and vegetables.