By MAUREEN GILMER, Scripps Howard News Service

South of the border the chupacabra haunts the night. Far-flung farms and ranches of rural Mexico live in fear of a predator described a great living creature that is half-animal and half-bat. It flies with bat wings, baring fangs and claws used to mutilate livestock. Some believe that bats are somehow linked to this rarely seen predator, and roosting caves may be its ultimate lair.

You can't kill it with drought. Fire only makes it stronger. Bury it in a sand dune and it thrives. Dig it out, and the roots come back with a vengeance.

Plants are gifts of nature, asking for little and giving a lot. There's no reason for anyone to say they're too poor to garden. With succulents, you plug into a limitless source of free and easy plants indoors or out.

Necessity is the mother of invention. When every penny counts, making gardens on the cheap yields some of the most inventive solutions. These are the times when thinking outside the box can turn your garden from an ordinary one into something truly interesting. It's all about how you look at materials, how creatively you recycle, reuse and reclaim.

Yes, parrot tulips are just weird and may turn off traditional gardeners. But for the lover of new and exciting forms, they are the most coveted of all.

Clay is the Jekyll and Hyde of soils.It constitutes some of our most fertile agricultural soils, but even these turn rock-hard when dry. Tiny particles pack down so tightly that the ground virtually defies water absorption. Once saturated, it becomes a sticky morass taking forever to dry out. Many a garden failure is directly related to an abundance of clay in the soil.

Wildflowers are among Nature's greatest gifts, and yet they can be the most difficult plants to grow in gardens. The problem is that we aren't observing nature. We try to impose our own ideas of when and how to plant them.

The only thing we can really count on in life is change. When the challenges come hard and fast, it's time to get back to basics. That's why households everywhere are realizing that a home kitchen garden is a great idea. Not only does it offer us fresh-picked produce, it's cultivated chemical-free with no dependence on oil to get it to market.

If you can grow but one plant, let it be lavender. Whether it's in a pot on a New York City balcony or sprawling across a California wine country estate, there is no rival to its beauty and scent. Trace its lineage into the mists of time and you'll uncover Egyptians and Romans who treasured the oil extracted from leaves and flowers.

They are the flower thief's favorite quarry. Hydrangea blossoms have been known to vanish overnight from front-yard gardens and public parks. With just a few dried stems selling for over $10, it's no wonder these fabulous clusters known as "mopheads" are so highly coveted.