UBERVINE

A week or so ago I noticed a vigorous plant emerging from the edge of the compost pile, it was thick and vigorous, likely an opportunistic pumpkin or some kind of melon, though the leaves seem too big and the plant itself too largish for a canteloupe-type melon; watermelon maybe? In any case, I have never seen a plant that was healthier, and happier to be whatever it is.

Its seeds were thrown out with the kitchen garbage sometime during the last year, and just one of them waited patiently in the perfectly moist warmth and optimal nutrition of natural compost to make its long green sinuous statement across the top of the mouldering leaves, clinging to net here, curlicuing to pole there, bamboo stalk there, probably climb the cherry tree as well, before too long...

No sign yet of a fruiting body and not even an open flower (my butternut squash plants in the garden proper, about the same age, are already showing mini-squashes beneath nascent blossoms) on what looks like a mature plant-- it seems to grow a couple feet in length each day, reaching from its starting point at the front corner of the compost pile (contained in a square by a net, one side open) as it twines through and through and over the net, heading south toward where the most sun is-- being by nature hardy to begin with, the sole survivor from a large family of original seeds.

Also, since it's growing outside my soon-to-be-electrified garden fence, I'm curious to find out what kind of fruit the monkeys will get.