Mayhem Amid The Vegetables
Warning - this article contains scenes of disturbing nature. Also murder. Oh, and also fairies.
Today, thanks to the miracle of modern science, my phone app identified one of the mystery plants growing in my raised bed as "black cohosh", otherwise known as "bugbane", "snakeroot" or... "FAIRY CANDLE". I was all set to remove this sinister-sounding shrub from an otherwise positive and pleasant vegetable garden, when that last name gave me pause for thought. How in the world did this plant acquire three evil-sounding names, and one pink and fluffy one that the pixie and elf communities might use to make their homes look charming and magical? I imagined some attempt way back in "ye olden days" to poison a king:
- "Here your majesty. Drink this."
"What is it?"
- "It's black cohosh... I mean bugbane... no, it's er... snake...no, wait," (thinks for a second). "Actually, it's... FAIRY CANDLE your majesty. Yes, that's it, try some fairy candle. It's lovely, sweet and sugary, and you should definitely drink it all down in one..."
If poison actually is growing in my garden, for a fleeting moment I was tempted to use the plant in order to rid myself of my own mortal enemy. Last year was heading for a bumper crop in my back yard. The air had been humid and the rain perfectly timed, and as a result my tomato plants were hanging heavy with fruit; and then the squirrels moved in.
I honestly don't mind sharing my produce with the creatures of the forest. For example I love parsley, and when the caterpillars first appear among the leaves they are very welcome guests and a marvel to behold. They chomp away and double in size every day until they are extraordinarily large, and greener than the food they live on. Then at some point we transfer them to a protected terrarium filled with enough greenery to feed them to their fattest, until the magical moment when the caterpillars do their fantastic thing, and suddenly we are all clapping like thrilled children as the butterflies flutter away to continue their circle of life.
Last year I looked out of the window and watched a squirrel pluck a tomato from one of my plants. As the cute little creature took a bite, I basked in a warm and comforting connection to nature, overtaken by the whole "David Attenborough-ness" of life. Then the squirrel dropped the fruit, took another one, bit it, and tossed this one also, before picking off two more and doing the same. My affinity to nature waned with every pluck, as I watched the selfish little pest take a single bite out of tomato after tomato. I knocked on the window to shoo it away, and while this did catch the creature's attention, it served only to make him more determined to destroy as many tomatoes as possible before this mad Englishman could run out of his house, flailing around making weird: "Go away!" noises. By the time I reached the crime scene the squirrel had run off, but at this point the full extent of his destruction became clear, as I noticed all the other plants that had been vandalized in a similar way.
This year with a work from home order giving me time on my hands to plot a comprehensive protection plan for my plants, I will admit that my first thought was murderous and evil - particularly with a potentially poisonous plant growing conveniently nearby. However, in this often stressful and negative world we find ourselves in right now, I put vengeance aside and turned my attention instead to a more positive approach. I Googled words like "humane" and "environmentally friendly", and discovered that even worse than "Fairy Candles", squirrels hate a mixture of mint and castor oil - packaged and sold on Amazon in a convenient spray called "Squirrel Mace"! Within days it was delivered to my doorstep, and my ever-patient and long-suffering wife watched in bemusement as her strange husband set up a test to see if this concoction would work. I put a small dish of (delicious-to-squirrels) seeds on the ground and surrounded it with a white rag that I infused with Squirrel Mace. Then I retreated back to the house to see if my "ring of fire" repellant would work.
Meanwhile, I have some very good news on the kitchen scraps front.
At the end of my previous posting, I was holding out a (some might say slim and crazy) hope that I would ever see life emerge from slices of an old tomato that I planted in a pot weeks ago. Every day I watered the seeds, and every day I scrutinized the surface of the dirt in vain for signs of life, and then suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, I woke up to a bunch of beautiful little shoots springing their tiny green leaves up and stretching into life. My new baby plants were born, and I don't mind admitting in this crazy, often humdrum world of closed movie theaters and canceled concerts, that the sight was absolutely thrilling!
As I personify my "new baby" tomato shoots, I realize something else that I love about gardening is its terminology. When searching for the best way to grow things, I often read advice like: "Tomato plants like to be watered from the base of their stems," or: "Raspberry bushes love to grow in about 6-8 hours of full sun per day". What they mean is that these conditions will get you the best and healthiest results, but I like the image, that fruits and vegetables can "like" or "love" something. This way of phrasing things focuses the mind on a sensitivity to even the smaller details of life.
Growing up, my Rabbi followed an old Jewish tradition to put on his right shoe first and then the left; and then when he removed them, he took the left one off first followed by the right. When asked why, he explained that he didn't want to be unfair to his limbs by favoring one foot over the other. Of course he didn't actually imagine that one foot could become jealous over another's attention, but there is a great lesson to be learned from the way his mind worked. If a person is careful about seemingly small insignificant details; for example, if a gardener remains sensitive to the "wants" and "desires" of a tomato plant, how much more careful will this person be, not to unfairly favor one person over another? If the current Conronapocalypse has taught us anything, it's that families forced together in the same house for weeks and months need an abundance of patience and positivity, and should remain sensitive and kind to one another.
On the other hand, squirrels are nature's delinquents and hooligans, and must be given a severe dose of mint and castor oil, on the one condition that they hate it very much. About three hours after setting up my delicious dinner surrounded by its raggy ring of Squirrel Mace, I checked back, and to my delight the dish of food remained intact. I then spent a wonderful lunchtime hiding in my house with my eyes perched just above the window ledge, watching excitedly until one of the little critters arrived to explore the free meal. It noticed the food and crept closer, and closer, and...
And if a squirrel could say the word: "Yikes!" this would be the exact thing it would exclaim to accompany the look I saw on its little rodent face, in reaction to the minty smell before it ran away. Success!
In the spirit of positivity I will continue to put out seeds for the squirrels to eat, but the raised bed is off limits. Poison is not necessary to resolve our problems with enemies in 2020; anger has been averted, and my baby tomatoes will be able to grow up happy and safe, protected by their minty cousin.