In a town very much like yours, there was a beautiful two-story house with a shiny white picket fence and a colorful garden in front. There was a boy who lived in the house, and he would spend many hours polishing the shiny white picket fence and tending to the colorful garden.

The house was on a street that the boy would take to school every morning. And on the way, he would pass another house, an old one-story house with no shiny white picket fance and no colorful garden in front. Instead, the yard was covered in weeds, which grew tall and stretched wide, and were not planted in rows. The grown-ups who lived in town said it was the ugliest house in the neighborhood.

Every once in a while, especially when it was raining, the boy would stop at the one-story house and stare at the weeds in the front yard. His eyes grew as he tried to count the different weeds, all of them different sizes and colors. Some of them were taller than he was! The boy thught it was like a jungle, but he knew from school that jungles were large with huge trees that touched the sky. This was a different jungle. This was a kids' jungle. And although the other kids who were on their way to school never noticed, the boy would always smile as he passed the one-story house with the kids' jungle in front.

On the way to school one day, the boy saw a sign in front of the one-story house. The sign said that the house was going to be sold, and somebody was going to move in. The boy knew that the owner would think the weeds are ugly and take them out.


** old ** The boy hoped the new owner was a kid, because he knew the grown-ups didn't like weeds, and the first thing a grown-up would do would be to pull out all the weeds and plant perfect rows of tiny flowers and grow a perfect lawn of bright green grass.