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...

                                                 

THE ME SQUAD

As if the panic of that very morning's weedwhacker incident weren't enough (that 40 minutes had used up a day's worth of energy), I'd finally begun settling down with a good cup of coffee in the loft, savoring the fact that at least I'd managed to show my harried face out there and do a couple of useless things to assert and maintain my part in the community effort, vowing that I would do better next time - maybe even use an alarm clock, just in case - and was getting back into the mood for some editing work at my computer when, having just finished a couple of paragraphs, I heard the sinister sound of my chain alarm.

Some time before, in apishly devious fashion (am I now I aping the apes?) I had draped a long length of chain over the upper transverse poles of my garden cube so that when any totally unscrupulous life form such as - and pretty much only - hairy red-faced marauders climbed up the supports, the chain would rattle against the metal piping, bringing the Antisimian Commando Squad (i.e., Me) on the run, ancient hi-tech weaponry (i.e., rocks) at the ready.

Not surprisingly, my unpatented chain alarm has the major flaw of only being effective when the Me is at home. (If a chain moves against metal tubing in a forest, does it make a sound?) But I was at home this time, so is there no rest for the weary, I ran downstairs and looked out the window, gathering crucial combat data. The chain alarm had been set off by a teenage monkey who, like teenage humans, was in a hurry to arrive. He and his buddy were already hefting the green tomatoes.

A big healthy female, infant on her back (monkeys teach rampant brigandage right from birth) was ambling slowly toward the open gate, taking the easy way (she'd clearly been here before, and was sharing her wisdom with the little one) when I burst from the doorway hissing and screeching like... like... a monkey, I guess, would be the closest thing, we're not really that far apart, if you think about it; it hasn't been that long since we came to that fork in the road and took it...

My tactics worked, the female took off like a carnival monkey shot from a cannon, the infant loved the ride and will no doubt be back one day, the teenagers were hairy blurs that were there only a second ago... Thanks to the prompt action of the Me squad I only lost a couple of the bigger green tomatoes, and grabbed the rest for myself. I'll let them redden in the kitchen window, where I hope the monkeys can see them.

SIMPLE VEGETARIAN RECIPES


Thinly Sliced Tomatoes

Ingredients: tomatoes
Slice thinly.
Stare at slices until satisfied.

**

Onions comme ça

Ingredients: onions
Do whatever you want,
they're your onions.

**

Fresh Green Beans

Ingredients: green beans, fresh.
Serve while fresh.
Discard immediately.

**

Carrots aux Terre

Ingredients: carrots
Pull carrots from ground;
eat with dirt still on.

**

Green Peppers In Situ

Ingredients: green peppers
Kneel on ground;
eat peppers from plant.

**

Okra a la Gravité

Ingredients: okra plant
Lie on ground beneath plant
until desired okra pod falls into open mouth.
Change position for additional servings.

**

Corn on the Cob

Ingredients: corn; cobs
Just make sure the corn stays on the cob.
Nothing more is required of you.

**

Aubergines a la Idée Fixe

Ingredients: none
Think of nothing but eggplants.

**

Zucchini sans souci

Ingredients: none
Don't even think about it.

**

THE BARON PREFERS ORGANIC

In a post a couple of days ago concerning the fact that I had been robbed blind in the night by a wild ruminant with major horn action, aka The Baron, I was amazed that the stag had eaten all my tomato leaves, when it had been my impression that nothing ate tomato leaves, excepting perhaps a species or two of seriously misguided insects who didn't yet realize what they were eating, or were simply insane.

Then this morning I read a headline that led to an article saying that a ten-year study - already being attacked by other scientists (perhaps Monsanto-funded, judging by my scientific snide index) - alleging that organic tomatoes have much more of certain important flavonoids, specifically quercetin and kaempferol, names that do not as yet rock the world.

To the weight of that study can now be added the expert opinion of The Baron, creature of great repute and renowned connoisseur of vegetation, who relished every single leaf on my tomato plants, because of course my tomatoes are – I mean were - 100% organic.

I would have enjoyed the tomatoes, too, but royalty takes precedence in certain areas.

PRIMAL DIMNESS

At around dawn this morning, just as I was stirring back into to consciousness, in the quiet primal dimness of world and mind I heard some monkeys chatting upmountain in their screechy language about the state of the world and at once thought nightmarily of my just-burgeoning tomatoes and my new bean plants out there just beginning to stand on their own so as to produce my beans, and that it has been raining pretty hard for the past day or two, so the simians must be hungry and restive after being hunched up in drippy clammy treetops for so long with nothing but screeches for entertainment, and might just for the spite of it go around pulling up the new bean plants and biting the tiny green tomatoes of creatures fortunate enough to live dryly and well-fed in houses, so I decided the best thing I could do was go back to sleep and think about it later. There are times when you've just got to pull your foot up.

MOUNTAIN LANDLADY

We have a nice big flat-topped rock next to the tall old oak in the garden, with daffodils growing around it, it's a great place to sit in the shade on a hot-day break from gardening or woodpslitting, and while I was in the house taking a lunch break the shemonkey came out of the bamboo and headed straight for the rock in all familiarity, sat down casually and looked around like she owned it all, landlady taking inventory, relaxing there on her comfy rock amid her daffodils in the cool shade of her oak as calmly as you or I might sit there with our arms around our knees and scanned the garden in all serenity, itemizing, thinking to herself 'hmmm... I notice my human tenant has put in some tomatoes for me, they should be due in 4-6 weeks…' and making a note in the mental palm pilot they all carry, when I stepped quietly out onto the deck and grabbed a couple of egg-sized rocks from the monkey ammo basket.

She didn't see me or hear me, she was so engrossed in the new assets I had generated on her behalf '...we finished what few mushrooms there were last time, but now where are the onions, cucumbers, pumpkins I require...' and was puzzling over what to do with all that pointless firewood ‘…maybe the kids could play on it...,' so deep in her audit she didn't notice me until I pounded the rocks on the deck railing and made like a New York landlord yelling in monkey. She levitated about three feet in the air, legs already running in the away direction.

That's when I noticed that at least half a dozen henchmonkeys had been hunching quietly up in the trees above the hairy landlady and in the underbrush behind her, where they'd been awaiting the results of her inventory, ready to carry off whatever of her assets she indicated. They all took off at once in a loud cloud of brown fur, discussing tomato due dates.

Reminded me of the IRS, somehow...

A PUZZLING LACK OF RUBBER SNAKES

I’ve given up on growing slow-swelling onions, at least until (if ever) I move or build my mountain garden stalag, but some kind of madness comes over me each Spring and I cannot help myself: I plant tomatoes, the first garden plant I grew when I was a kid. For me, there is no kitchen garden without tomatoes, even if I don't get any of them. According to my careful statistical calculations, there's a reasonable (but not necessary) possibility that I'll get to the tomatoes before the monkeys do; it happens sometimes, the same way people find large gold nuggets sometimes, as earlier this Spring with my mushrooms.

Tomatoes grow fast and abundantly, and even though there's a good chance I'll get some of them, maybe even most of them, to better my odds I surrounded the tomato plants with takanotsume (hawk's talon) plants, the small but prolific hot Japanese red pepper, just to see if their flaming presence had any deterrent effect on the red-faced monkey tomato thieves.

Another trick I think would work is to put one or two brightly realistic rubber snakes among the tomato plants, since monkeys go bats at the sight of snakes (love to be on hand to see the effect of that!), but for some interesting reason, realistic rubber snakes are not easy to come by in Japan, where it would appear they could be most beneficial. This brings to mind Japan's serious lack of cherry pie. Now that I think of it, I have never seen a realistic rubber snake in Japan. Rubber snakes of whatever kind have never played any noticeable part in Japanese society that I can recall, as they do in the West, from the toy and practical joke level to serious realistic snake collecting. I must investigate this, not only for the cultural aspect, but more importantly for the sake of access to the tomatoes of tomorrow.