A buddy came to me a while back with a home repair problem.

Her toilets, she said, were flushing themselves.

Now, I am no expert on plumbing (I don't even play one in the newspaper), but I was pretty confident in telling her that toilets do not flush themselves.

Anyone who's spent time with a 2-year-old will back me up on this.

It turned out that only one of her toilets had a problem, and the problem, of course, was that its flapper had become so worn it no longer sealed, so the tank was slowly -- and continually -- emptying itself.

The "flushing" sound she'd detected, apparently after several months, was the tank refilling. Again and again and again.

I told her a $6 part and 10 minutes' work would bring it to rights.

She did me one better and turned off the water. It was a basement toilet that seldom had been used anyway.

Often the simplest answer is the best.

A volunteer maple tree sprouted in the "woodland" section of my backyard and grew during the next four years into a fine little sapling.

Sadly, it was growing just six feet from a volunteer redbud, and I really wanted that redbud. I have plenty of maples.

I started looking for adoptive parents back in May, suggesting to any and all that a 12-foot maple tree would cost at least $50 in a nursery and this one could be had for nothing but the digging.

I had a couple of nibbles over the summer, but no one showed up with a shovel, so in September, I reluctantly cut the maple down.

Rest in peace, little tree.

I came home from the office one evening to find that the dishwasher I had put to work on my way out the door didn't … work, I mean.

Dead to the world.

Now, this was a new dishwasher, a replacement just a few months earlier for the one that had come with the new-new house.

I punched buttons, I checked the breakers, I poked at everything I could think to poke at and still nothing. It just sat there like a large, expensive drain rack.

Finally, it dawned on me that the dishwasher and garbage disposal had one odd thing in common. They share a tiny fuse box -- about the size of five slices of bread -- under the kitchen sink.

Two fuses, one for each appliance. The only fuses in the house, in fact, since I had the old box replaced with a breaker panel shortly after I moved in.

Luckily, I had a replacement fuse.

Simple, huh?

Finally, I've been growing strawberries nearly every summer since I bought the old-old house in 1981. In fact, I've been growing Earliglows all those years. It's a June-bearing variety originally bred for the East Coast, but it's winter-tough and does well on the Great American Desert, too.

At least it always has.

Three years ago, the whole middle of my bed died out. I ordered new plants and put them in the next spring, but again they died -- along with most of the older ones.

I replanted again last spring, but by fall, I was down to two lone plants.

So I spaded up the entire bed in October, amended the soil with considerable compost and bone meal, and this spring, I'll give it one more try.

Maybe not so simple, but I hope it turns out to be the answer.

If not, I'm thinking rhubarb.