So Jim planted … 13 baby creeping figs whose job it was to soften the harshness of the new walls. Twelve of those new figs dutifully shot out their magic fingers and began a friendly possession of the wall. One plant, however, slowly withered, shrank, dried up, and finally died. Coming home from work on a Friday afternoon, Jim picked up a replacement plant at the nursery, changed clothes, got out our shovel, and bent over the dead vine, fully prepared to work at digging it out of the ground so