The Village Squire, 1981-10, Page 331
Six Achers
by Yvonne Reynolds
It's a jungle out there
I can hardly believe the summer is over
and past; I'm still waiting for August. I've
completely missed September, my favor-
ite month. All October can boast is nude
trees, Hallowe'en and my sister's birth-
day. As my personal 1981 had no August,
I'm giving myself two Septembers.
September has two things going for it -
the kids go back to school, and the first
killing frost of autumn wipes out the
garden.
Gardening. ploughing, cultivating,
planting, fertilizing, watering, weeding
and hoeing. And for what? Bigger and
better weeds. If redroot pigweed were a
saleable commodity, the Reynolds family
would be milionaires.
Only the peas were happy in our
garden this year. Finding themselves with
no legitimate means of support, they
curled their little tendrils around the
nearest goldenrod or chickory and never
looked back. Or down.
We neglected to stake the tomatoes.
The unfettered plants sprawled out like
old ladies without their corsets, relaxed
and complacent, quite uncaring that most
of their fruit was on the ground. easy prey
for blossom end rot, slugs, grubs, and sap
bugs.
I couldn't even find the asparagus
spears in the long grass this spring. Now,
delicate green ferns mark the location -
indelibly and inedibly. However, they do
add that elegant extra touch to a floral
bouquet.
We could have pulled our potatoes out
of the ground like grotesque necklaces:
the twitch grass roots had penetrated one
Sebago and pushed right on through to the
next one...Our baby carrots never did
grow up, the lettuce bolted and the
snowball cauliflower turned purple. Beans
snapped, onions bunched and beets bled.
Despite my warning to Don that vine
crops would cross-pollinate if planted too
close, he put all members of the
cucurbilaceae family in one cosy little
corner, and we ended up with squapumps
and cuculoupes.
One couple we know have hands that
are all thumbs. Green ones. Their garden
is a showplace of well -weeded, lush
vegetation. We have forbidden these
particulars friends to visit us during
daylight hours from May until Jack Frost
puts our garden out of its misery in Lie
fall. _
One dark summer night a car roared
into our driveway and began to richochet
back and forth in front of the garage. We
looked out the kitchen window to see
headlights shining directly onto our
hoticultural nightmare, and a shadowy
figure armed with a powerful flashlight
skulking through the tangle. Soon we
heard a strange cry, half laugh, half sob,
th car roared into life and sped away. The
next day we found a large box on our front
verandah, heaped high with vegetables
that would have taken the blue ribbon at
any fall fair in the county.
We warned our other friends to go
nowhere near the jungle unles they were
equipped with high energy rations, a
machete and a compass.
Preserving, freezing, canning and pick
ling this cornucopia of abundance is
another story. I have shed many a tear into
a sinkfull of onions, or mourned a slice of
thumb which had inadvertently added an
unorthodox piquancy to a jar of peaches.
I can picture Geroge Gershwin cosily
cocooned in his New York penthouse.
dreamily writing in elegant copperplate.
ommiTO
"Summertime, and the livin' is easy..."
What a dreamer. Down here on earth, one
has to work like a slave all summer in order
to eat like a king all winter.
Recently we have heard rumours that
we will be eligible for a special grant if we
promise not to put a single, solitary seed
into the earth next year.
By the way, have you heard about the
two parsnips who were strolling down a
country lane when one of them was hit and
badly injured by a hit and run driver? The
uninjured parsnip rushed his friend to the
nearest hospital, and anxiously paced
back and forth in the waiting room while
waiting for diagnosis and prognosis. After
an eternity, a man in a white coat
appeared and made his way slowly to the
waiting parchip. "Sir", he said, "we have
good news and bad. Your friend will live,
but he'll always be a vegetable!"
Yvonne Reynolds and husband (a retired CAF officer)
share six rural acres with one hastily bred part Sheltie,
one Himalayan aristocat, one peasant cat, and an
ever-changing number of Bantie chickens and
Saanen and Nubian goats
Winter Clothing
1 11 'ia,r \
VISA
SNOW SUITS
PARKAS
COATS
TIGHTS
HATS , MITTS
CORDS
ALL FASHIONS FOR
0 TO 14 YEARS
THE
CAMPUS SHOP
92 WELLINGTON ST. •
STRATFORD
PHONE 271-3720
Open every day till 5:30
Friday evening tW 9
VILLAGE SQUIRE/OCTOBER 1981 PG. 27