FEAR OF STRING BEANS

                                                             (from future archives)

Remember those simpler, innocent times, before the “Not In My Garden” movement (when it was already too late), when you could still say “Some of my best friends are root vegetables”? Before tomatoes had a temper? When cabbages had nothing to hide? When an onion could be trusted? Before the great genetic disaster fully empowered rutabagas? Back when you’d never think of using an uzi on potatoes?

 

Well, that was the old past. The authorities still assured us it was ok: "The tomato won’t hurt you, just don’t make any sudden moves." They told us not to be afraid, they assured us that horned zucchini weren’t dangerous, so long as you grabbed the right end; they told us we could eat foods with a few odd genes and safely glow in the dark, that we needn't worry about deformities in our children or mutations compounding in future generations, but those assurances always sounded Monsantoish to me. 

   

By the time I came of age it was still considered unnatural for an adult to be afraid of fanged string beans, but when as a child I got caught in the bean patch— no, I can't get into that, there's little time left...  

   

It’s been half a century since the first rogue DNA escaped into what they used to call the "wild"-- back then you could distinguish cultivated areas, and it was still safe to travel through most gardens, though I’m not sure how they did that. I think they used fences or something, but the sudden emergence of metal-devouring tyrannocorn caught us all by surprise, made short work of barriers. Not long after, the brontomelons began to roll over everything. 

   

I hope someone finds this note someday, if there's ever anyone left, so at least they'll know that vegetables weren't  always ruthless, that there was a time when fiber was passive, that we humans once had a stronghold at the top of the food chain...

    

Have to end here; a squadron of turnip drones has just spotted me; wish I didn't glow in the dark...

                                                 

PARALLELS CAN BE DRAWN HERE

Woke up this morning and as my head came out of my sweatshirt neck I saw out in the garden something that looked as though a large crowd of monkeys had raided my potato patch yesterday, but this wasn't possible, had to be a trick of the morning light, I hadn't seen a monkey for months and months! I rubbed my eyes, but still...

So I got dressed, went downstairs and out there, saw that yes, it must have been at least a dozen monkeys, going along the rows carefully pulling up the plants and scarfing the dirt-encrusted tubers right there on the spot, laying the stems neatly aside and moving along from Brady possession to Brady possession, no doubt noting the greening tomatoes nearby, the baby cucumbers just over there and duly entering the relevant data into their Mpads for about the 12th of the month.

I of course will harvest whatever's even remotely ready before it can ever fall into their thieving paws! But the monkeys already know I'll do that don't they, and have factored that in, you see? Which means that I'll have to act even sooner than soon, and eat my produce way before it's ready, or else! You see what is happening, don't you, as we humans go blithely about our daily lives while... Parallels can be drawn here, you know, but I won't draw them, I have to live here.

[This paragraph is whispered, over in a corner] Yes, there are obvious parallels between this agroeconomic microevent and the global activities of Wall Street, the privately owned US Fed and the US Treasury Department, in re the inside-out pockets of the held-upside-down-and-shaken US taxpayer/pensioner, not to mention the shenanigans of the unnamed country of my current residence, and like the monkeys those entities know where I live, plus now and then I am at the tender mercies of picky-picky immigration and the intimate gropings of the TSA, so I won't go there, you can if you want.

In any case, like the US taxpayer I had once again been suckered by foxy simians who somehow knew I was going to be harvesting some of my hard-earned bounty this weekend - they have spies everywhere, of course, especially in offices, where among many other roles they play pointy-haired bosses and feral officials, you'd swear they were human. I told no one I was growing potatoes, but despite my precautions the ferals found out and got to the tubers yesterday, had me penciled in for the brief window while I was at the office in the big city and Echo was out shopping in the afternoon. They were so efficient as to afford a note of sarcasm, in all the big ravage-patch leaving me one golfball-sized potato, as a kind of fillip.

As I said, I hadn't seen a monkey for months, until a couple days ago I saw from the kitchen window a large male monkey hotfooting it away from my property across the open field on the other side of the road. I figured maybe I had finally put the fear of Bob into those redfaced brigands, until just proximity to my garden was enough to send them packing.. I admit, I relaxed my guard a little at the sight. But that's all part of their plan, don't you see? That's the way they work! They keep you in the dark until one day, just before harvest, all your potatoes are gone.

Globally, quite a few pensioners are about to understand this.

DEJA VU AND POTATOES

Came out last Saturday morning and found that an eccentric monkey had gotten into one row of my potatoes, but only slightly-- pulled up just a few plants, simply laid them down in place without even taking a bite of the egg-sized potatoes on them and went away, ignoring the much taller potato plants in the next row! I at once harvested the now exposed small potatoes, replanted the stalks and enjoyed potatoes in the soup I made for lunch.

Came out Saturday morning a week later and found that the thief had come again (as per his scheduler, he apparently comes on days when neither of us is home), pulled up just a few more plants in the same row, simply laid them down in place without even taking a bite of the egg-sized potatoes on them and went away, ignoring the now even taller potato plants in the next row! I at once etc. in the stew I made for lunch.

This odd monkey is apparently a stranger and, unlike your average marauding redfaced beast (who throws stuff everywhere after taking at least sample bites of everything just to spoil it for whoever has wasted their time growing it ha ha ha!), has some deja vuey obsession involving potatoes and fastidiousness (e.g., I don't like to eat them but I do like to pull them up and watch them in private). He's quite neat and organized, and maybe each week will do a few more plants until he's finished with that row, then he'll move on to the next row with the much taller potato plants and harvest some more tasty tubers for me on Saturdays.

I wonder what he does for a living.

VEGETABLE TRAFFIC

OK, OK, so I overdid it on the tubers. That can happen at the farm store when you stand in front of 10 different potato varieties to choose from quick before they're all sold out, but now my garden is full of stuff growing anew or just finishing up while I tap my foot beside the rows because I still have three bags of planting potatoes sprouting in the tool shed.

Potatoes never heard of wristwatches, understandably, but they always know what time it is; you can't fool them even in the dark, they're right at home in there tapping their own little sprouty feet while I'm out here telling my spinach and other greens to get cracking, urging my onions on toward bulbhood, what do they think this is, a public park, get them to hurry up and bolt or bulb so I can pull them up for lunch or dinner or storage and have new room for potatoes, but impatience has no place in gardeners, only in vegetables, and the potatoes are impatient.

They're on a fixed schedule after all, it's built in, they're on their hardwired way down the long and endless potato road, they have their destination all planned out and can't stop for my little traffic problems, they're not gonna restrain themselves for my convenience, they have their job to do and that's all that matters to a potato; they're gonna do it with or without me. There's nothing more dedicated than a tuber whose time has come.

So it's too angsty now, opening the tool shed door and seeing those eager wide-eyed sprouts ready to go, just pushing their pale way out through the net bags, purpling as they reach for the garden, so I don't open the tool shed much anymore I can't bear it, at night I toss and turn and it's not just potatoes you know, its beans, cucumbers, squash, tomatoes, it's a long alphabet and it doesn't end with zucchini.

I've got a vegetable traffic jam going here, and I'm not used to being a vegetable cop. Maybe I need a uniform...

TRUE EVOLUTION

Hope is good, though not as good as potatoes. Anyway, I think I'm getting better at this. Yesterday morning I was doing something in the kitchen when I happened to look out the big window and saw, beyond the cord of firewood, the head of a monkey. In a familiar landscape, random monkey heads sort of jump out at you.

I instantly deduced that the monkey wasn't hanging out on the other side of the woodpile like a teenager at the mall, but was in the vegetable garden. I knew this because on the monkey head was a monkey face and on that face was a monkey mouth, and in that mouth was not a monkey potato, but a Brady potato. Monkeys are too dumb to grow potatoes.

At that point I ran out and threw a smartstone at the instantly distant monkeys. There were three I could see now, where they stopped to pause and look back upon their thieving past (to ponder and perhaps begin to repent their evil ways, turn upon a righteous path, now there's a laugh, though some of our species have allegedly managed to do it), two females and a troublesome youngster they were welcome to.

I went out to the garden to assess the damage and found that only one beast had gotten a potato; the others had been distracted by the leftover and finally reddened tomatoes I'd left hanging from the fence netting for just that purpose, and it had worked: two of the three brigands had opted for the right-there easy and old tomatoes, rather than the underground dirt-covered maybe potatoes, onions or carrots. That little margin of extra time and monkeybelly fullness, plus my increasingly acute sensitivity regarding simian proximity - I like to think of it as a sort of monkey radar - had enabled my prompt response in chasing them off.

As I watched them watching me from across the road, though, it occurred to me that although I might offhandedly think that monkeys are too stupid to grow potatoes, it may be that, since they can have my potatoes even when I'm home, they may in fact simply be not dumb enough to need to grow potatoes, and they know it. There's always that unsettling quality in their eyes, when they look back from a distance beyond reach of my mere stones, their cheeks stuffed with one of my big new potatoes.

The course of true evolution does not run smooth.

ODE TO THE POTATO

O homely spud
muddied orphan
lumpish ragamuffin
from the far side of the furrows,
poor relation to noble Eggplant
Cardinal Tomato
Magical Mandrake
and elegant Belladonna,
though often mistaken
for a clod of dirt
you have a soul as pure
as any Irish saint's -
you send up for blossoms
white stars from the ground.

O subterranean emissary
earth-ivory
friend to the poor
when helped from your homespun jacket
you are welcomed as well
by the well-to-do
who love your symphonies of starch
your crisp gold coins,
invite you to their tables
as formal white companion
to the tawny mignon.

O egalitarian tuber
like us you are a child of earth,
that yet contains the stuff of heaven -
when mashed into clouds
with a bit of cream,
the peaks you achieve
from such lowly beginnings
nourish and inspire us all.

THE FIVE PLUM PIPS

By Wednesday the ripening plums had hung there long enough. I was surprised to have gotten away with it thus far this year, given the quantity of fragrant plums and the precise plum awareness of monkeys in years past, when simians all around had "Brady Plums Ready" clearly marked in their organizers. So even though it was raining hard I got the ladder and harvested all the plums that were even slightly ripe, put them in a big basket by the window in the living room to finish ripening. I left the half dozen or so still fully green ones on the tree, to get on Saturday.

On Thursday and Friday I worked in the big city, coming back after dark, so it wasn't until Saturday morning that I went out on the deck to check the green plums and saw a row of well-chewed plum pits arranged along the deck railing and no plums left on the tree. Later, when I went out into the garden, I found that the potato patch had been dug up, and one patch of baby carrots had been plucked and eaten. Oddly enough, though, it was all done very neatly.

In the potato patch it looked as though the perp, more than seeking potatoes, had enjoyed the sensation of digging in the dirt and pulling up the plants, which were not tossed monkily everywhere, but merely laid down neatly at the edge of the patch, with many of the potatoes left showing in the dirt, only a couple of the small ones eaten; there were none with big bites taken out and then just tossed aside anywhere as per monkey behavioral norms. The baby carrots as well had been neatly pulled up, one by one (not in handfuls!), they'd been neatly bitten off and neatly laid out on the ground with all the carrot leaves in one direction, making a nicely arranged pile, quite convenient for me to gather and carry to the compost heap.

The ready-to-eat turnips right next to the potatoes were completely untouched (not ripped up and tossed around just for the hell of it, like at a monkey garden party)-- as were the ready green beans, though the perp had apparently napped atop a couple of the plants. He had sampled but one little green tomato, not tossing every single tomato everywhere as if angry at their unreadiness and then pulling up the plants for the simian inyerface anarchy of it all. The tomatoes were otherwise untouched.

In fact, the perp had done a lot of potato digging work for me; it took but a few moments to harvest the remainder (98%!) (and the biggest!) of the potatoes; in light of this, it's beginning to appear as though the polite perp might in fact have waited for me to harvest the distinctly ripe and fragrant plums, which had hung there for some days(!), and had then eaten the few unripe ones remaining, leaving the pits for me to find... Littlefoot, you are a strange one... So fastidious, with a bit of integrity, even somewhat honest... We could use a few like you on Wall Street... Anyway, better there than here... With my tomatoes and pumpkins now emerging, it's time to implement Plan T...

THIS WILL ALL MAKE SENSE ONE DAY

The meaning we find in our lives depends on what we look for. Some look for onions, some look for potatoes, some seek to enjoy simple living on a mountainside, say, in a foreign country, with both onions and potatoes. Others look for things of little physical or spiritual nourishment, like money, fame, power etc., which contain no enzymes. For me during the past few years, the meaning of life on a mountainside in a foreign country has focused a little bit on potatoes, but more on onions, thanks to monkeys. This will all make sense one day.

Striving for simplicity can be complicated. I suppose I should be at least a little bit grateful to the unconscionable beasts for my onion focus; were it not for them, I'd probably have piles of mere money or be everywhere nanos deep on teevee, whoopee, and onions wouldn't be so simply symbolic of life's meaning for me - they'd be of no more particular interest than, say, pieces of paper bearing pictures of deceased officials - but having distant relatives of your species purloin the fruits of your labor is sort of like what's happening on Wall Street. This will all make sense one day.

One morning last week Echo was entertaining some visiting lady friends downstairs (I was working upstairs) when she took them outside to show them the garden and saw the dim shape of a beast moving off among the trees shaking some branches, that from her description of his slowness, vagueness, vocal silence and otherwise odd behavior sounded a lot like Littlefoot. When I later went out to the garden I found that he had come and stood right next to my purple onions, such as they are - they show above the ground and everything - but he ignored them completely! He stood there and TURNED HIS BACK on my onions and instead dug down into the ground, to get at my still minipotatoes! This will all make sense one day.

Later that morning I heard a truck stop briefly out front. When I went in for lunch I saw that the farmer who had earlier this year seen my attempt at making the earth say onions better than it did last year had brought us a basketful of just-harvested large, healthy, firm, strong-necked onions. Then the very next day the elder farmer we buy our organic rice from stopped by to deliver the bags of rice we ordered, and with them left us a basketful of just-harvested large, healthy, firm, strong-necked onions. Word of my wimpy onions was getting around. Next year I'll do better, like I did this year. Next year, by damn, I'm gonna grow onions that are worth stealing! This will all make sense one day.

GODS IN THE GARDEN

You know how it is when you garden with no fence yet, but with deer, wild pigs and monkeys around, plus you're an eclectic kind of person, all sorts of stuff going on in head and out, you try any number of things, and in the nature of eclecticity often rather haphazardly-- depends on the day and whether you've had coffee or what, all matters of interest somehow, and now and then - almost inevitably - you forget some of all that stuff, like what specific carrots or where kinds of potatoes?

Well early last autumn I planted a few different kinds of interesting but uncommunicative carrot seeds and intriguing but mute seed potatoes here and there where space was available at the time - this was all pro tem back then in the imminent garden - and covered them all with hoops and netting.

Then a few months later during the grandgirls' visit they plucked some of the carrots and I weeded the potatoes once, then as winter passed and the snow deepened my mind drifted hibernationally away from the garden and closer to the woodstove, and I became somehow of the impression that the potatoes would revive in spring, send up new leaves and grow some more, to be harvested maybe somewhen early to mid-summer or maybe later, there would be a sign from a benevolent garden deity or something, gardening can be vague in a lot of ways; a bag of seed potatoes is not very communicative. Queries such as 'And where are you from, little potato?' or 'How do I grow you and when will your progeny be ready?' are met with that profound spud silence.

So I figured six months or thereabouts, what do I know, I could look it up on the net but they're already planted, I'll find out, what's the hurry, the gods will speak. You laugh. Well, I was out there a couple days ago learning what the edge of spring does to winter spinach, and through the netting noticed in one of the barren-topped potato mounds alongside there what looked like the skin of a potato showing through, where the Baron had been trying to push a hoof through the net and get at the spinach (which appears to be speeding up). I went out there later with the pitchfork to investigate the potato innuendo, and to my late winter amazement, from that one mound dug up 4 softball-sized potatoes. There are lots of ready potatoes out there in the ground, right now.

That's how I learned that the Baron is a garden deity.

MINUTES FILLED WITH DAYS

Kids can fill minutes with anything, like when Kaya came for the holidays and one of her big wants was to play in some leaves, as she always does in autumns at our house - which was still possible since there's been no snow - so I took her out into the garden to where all the late-fallen oak and cherry leaves had been gathered by the rake-assisted wind.

She gathered bunches of leaves in her arms, threw them high in the air and ran through them squealing, storing up days worth of wish-fulfillment in no time at all, then I suggested that since it was growing dark we should get busy on another big want of hers and use a bunch of these leaves to roast some potatoes, so we got lots of leaves together in a pile and Kaya lit them like a little priestess at an altar; then we got some oak twigs and threw them on, then more leaves and in very short order the heat was ready for potatoes, which in 20 minutes of additional leaf-cavorting were perfect for eating with some salt while sitting on warm rocks by the embers in the falling dark.

Then yesterday we went out to trim the plum tree (Kaya always has some house and garden tasks when she comes to stay) and I got the ladder and saws and pruning shears and of course the wheelbarrow-- Kaya loves the wheelbarrow, so she was in charge of that. The plan as we initially set it up was, as I trimmed the branches from the plum tree, Kaya would take them, clip them down to size and put them in the wheelbarrow; then when it was full, she would wheel the twigs over to the garden, where she would dump them onto the compost pile.

So there we were, I up on the ladder among the bare plum branches and Kaya standing next to the wheelbarrow with everything -- ready to go, but something wasn't quite right, some essential was missing... after a moment's thought, Kaya realized what it was, ran into the house and came back out a few seconds later carrying her toy mouse, which she placed just where it belonged in the wheelbarrow. Now everything was ready.

But with all plans, we must be prepared for change. As Kaya was doing her part, she suddenly had an even better idea than our original one: she began to use the ideally sized twigs to build a fine house in the wheelbarrow for her mouse to live in, using the larger twigs for the frame and the smaller ones for the roof, with some nice roundish green leaves for shingles against the rain and snow, and who was I to object from way up in a plum tree with such a godly perspective? Indeed, from my point of view the new architecture looked attractive and functional. By the time the structure was completed the plum tree had been trimmed, the mouse was snug in the newly named Wheelbarrow Mousehouse and it was time for tea.

Though the new plan took quite a bit more time to carry out than the old plan, we're always asking heaven for more time, aren't we-- and there it is right in front of us, all along.