One of the first times I met Andy’s family, we played Scrabble. I used the word “orbicular.” One of my not-yet-as-of-then-in-laws challenged this word, looked it up in the dictionary, and made me take back my wonderful word when it wasn’t in the book. For ten years now I have kept that word as my own. Every now and then I would say it just to hear its wonderful sound: orbicular! But I still carried the shame of trying to scrabble a word that did not exist.

Today I am vindicated. In Chapter 1 of my Master Gardener text, I came across that word again. Orbicular, my friends, is one of many leaf blade shapes. When I read that word, I let out a yelp of joy and rolled my chair over to my keyboard to do a dictionary search. Sure enough, orbicular is all over the online dictionaries. What sort of dictionary were Andy’s parents using, anyhow?

I want a recount on that Scrabble match.