[gardeners] Home!
asidv@fbg.net (gardeners@globalgarden.com)
Wed, 17 Jun 1998 10:40:31 +0000
To all who expressed sympathy and commiseration on the subject of
squash, many thanks. So far, we are well. Safe? Well, you tell us.
Getting home from a nine day trip, I went out to inspect the various
parts of the garden. There were a number of mysterious failures of
plants that, hitherto, have prospered: winter savory, Obedient plant,
papyrus, etc. It has been dry, I wasn't here to water, these things
must be expected.
The six squash plants that were here before we left had become
five (a rabbit, no doubt) but the five were only about six inches
high with an eight inch spread. Ah Ha, I thought, the threatened
stinging squash invasion was just a leg-pull, a joke, a fiction.
Digging up the winter savory to consign it to the compost, I saw some
very strange roots . . . large, succulent, tenacious. Tracing them
back to the point of origin, I came to the squash. Oh My! Hurriedly,
I dug up the spot where the absent squash had been -- the same
tenacle roots and they resist even my honed-to-a-fine-sharpness
Dutch hoe.
Gardeners know that plant & root have roughly the same ratio as
visible to invisible iceberg. My squash -- fighting the rocky soil
have determined to use their roots to FIRST CONQUER THE ROCKS and
then put on their top growth. But I can't pull up the roots and five
remaining plants resist any effort to pull them up.
THIS is what I was doing when my NGP told Catharine not to call for a
while. The situation had us both frightened! And, to add to our
miseries, the local telephone company was working nearby to install a
new pole for a new neighbor. Apparently they came upon some of the
roots -- and running for their lives inadvertently put our phone on
"unlisted" status. We are thankful to all the gardening gods that the
modem is on a separate line since we now have no voice-phone to call
for help. Please stand by; if things become desperate, you on the
gardener's list are our only hope.
Will our troubles never end? Is this how our civilization will fall?
This morning I've put defoliant on the rest of the squash plants, but
as I exited the fenced area (I AM a responsible neighbor! There are
small children across the road, and I didn't want them to wander onto
squash) I heard a low chuckle. There is no one on the place but me
and the dog, and he looks troubled -- he wouldn't be chuckling. I
didn't chuckle. COULD IT HAVE BEEN THE SQUASH?
Pat (aka Catharine's Ma) who sill send a coded message if we are in
imminent danger: "SA,SA,Adieu", translated, squash alert, squash
attack, Goodbye!