Re: [gardeners] Home!
George Shirley (gardeners@globalgarden.com)
Wed, 17 Jun 1998 10:42:35
At 10:40 AM 6/17/98 +0000, you wrote:
>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!
>
Aha, now we know where Catharine gets her weird sense of humor. <VBG>
George