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Copyrights reserved by the author. If you are in doubt, please click on 'Copyrights' and read the details. At harvest time, to the victor go the spoils By J. G. Fabiano
I love the months of September through November. The humidity that hangs over the summer months disappears, to be replaced by the refreshing breezes of fall. The temperature range of cool nights and warm days must mimic the weather found in heaven. My favorite activity at this time of year has always concerned my garden. After months of planting, weeding, watering, and just basic pampering my little backyard farm the fruits and vegetables of my efforts are ready to be harvested. My peppers and tomatoes are now juicy, full sized and red. My eggplants are too heavy to be held up by their stems and my squash plants are the perfect size and ready to become delicious headline servings on my dinner table. The other day my wife and I walked out to our garden with wicker basket in hand. Because the growing season was long and wet I purchased a larger basket in which to carry the mother-load of my efforts into our kitchen. The first part of my garden to be harvested was the squash plants. The leaves were enormous, big enough to be used as umbrellas over my picnic table. The bright yellow flowers promised future crops of summer squash and zucchini. Looking down into the massive flora of the plant I noticed a giant summer squash just waiting for me to harvest it. It was bright yellow and had to be at least five inches in diameter and a foot long. Reaching down I could almost taste its freshness. The only question I had was how I was going to cook it. I could grill it with olive oil and garlic or I could just steam it and then cover it with fresh butter and pepper. My mouth started to water, but, something wasn’t right. Although the squash was huge, when I picked it up it had little weight. Turning the beautiful vegetable over I was shocked to see that it had been hollowed out by some sort of varmit that had beaten me to a hearty dinner. Squash after squash, zucchini after zucchini had been pillaged. All had been half-eaten or hollowed out, leaving only the perfect outward appearance to fool me into thinking I had a fall feast coming.Then I heard a scream from amidst the tomato plants. My wife showed me tomato after tomato that had been half-eaten by something that obviously loved the taste of tomatoes. Most looked like the sickle shape of a quarter moon. Quickly I surveyed my eggplants to discover that they had also been attacked by critters that had left large holes, bored into the bottom where the pulp had been sucked out. My green beans had also been ravaged with most half-eaten, as thought the predator responsible hoped that they would grow back to full size and deliver another meal. My lettuce had big beautiful leaves on the outside but no bulk left at the center. My wife and I stood there in shock, staring at what we hoped would be a cornucopia of produce, hanging onto our new and still empty wicker basket. As my wife walked back to the house with her head down I stayed at the garden vowing that whatever had ravaged my property would pay dearly for its dastardly deed. My neighbor, seeing my despair, walked over and told me that on many occasions, when he passed my house at night, it looked as though there were hundreds of pairs of eyes staring out of my garden. He said it reminded him of the old horror flick, "Children of the Damned." At that point I decided that the following evening would be my time to get rid of whatever had damned my garden. At first I thought I might put some poison down to get rid of the plague but covering stuff that you hoped to eat with stuff that might kill you was probably not a good idea. Then I thought I might put down some traps to catch the critters that had made my garden their food pantry but, since there were so many of them, I knew I couldn’t afford enough traps to catch them all. I then decided to hide in the middle of my garden with a baseball bat before the sun went down. I wore my blackest of clothes and put on a black fisherman’s cap I had bought when I moved to Maine nearly 29 years ago, but had never worn. Finally, I smeared my face with black shoe polish then took up position in the midst of my squash plants. For three hours I waited in the garden for the varmints to return for their midnight snack. After a while I began to feel faint and thought it might have been because most of the blood had been sucked out of me by the thousands of mosquitoes that decided to use me as their own personal drinking fountain. Then, right before I was about to lose consciousness, I heard something moving under the bean plants. I watched as one after another of the bean plants bent down to allow the attacker better access to the bounty. I watched as tomatoes fell from the vines and eggplant bobbed up and down on their stems. Whatever it was it was heading toward the squash plants and directly toward me. My hands tightened around my Louisville Slugger as I watched the giant leaves of squash sway back and forth as the invader made its way toward me. As soon as the leaves in front of me moved I jumped up and swung the bat, only to be confronted by the sight of a bushy black and white tail. I held the bat in mid-swing and tried not to make another sound but then I was engulfed by a stench that I will never forget as long as I live and which, I can assure you, is a million times worse than anything you have ever smelled passing it two days dead on the highway at 60 miles an hour! The mosquitoes that covered my body deserted me like rats on a sinking ship. Gasping for air I dropped the baseball bat and staggered backwards out of the garden, leaving the skunk to devour what was left of my garden vegetables. I ran up onto the back deck and reached for the door handle only to hear the lock turn from the other side. Then the deck light went on and I heard my wife call from inside: "You’re not coming into this house tonight smelling like that." Then the deck light went off again. I stood there in the dark, stinking to high heaven, thoroughly humiliated by a common garden pest and abandoned to my fate by my own wife. I went around to the garage thinking that might be where I’d be spending the night, because I couldn’t imagine any friends or motel taking me in either. The light was on in the garage and outside the door to the kitchen were a couple of cans of tomato juice and a quart of V8. I took off all my clothes and spent the next hour scrubbing myself from head to toe with tomato juice and V8 before my wife would even let me into the house to use the shower. Before I went to bed I looked out the window to survey the battlefield from which I had been so completely vanquished - and I swear I saw a little black and white ball curled up on the end of my patio lounge chair, sleeping off its supper! The End
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