What I don't understand is, I thought I'd got rid of all my zucchini by the end of August, but I found more last week and again I had to take a detour on the way to work. I thought I was getting the hang of it, leaving before daylight and stopping on a quiet street, but this time I'd only just heaved one out of the trunk when I spotted someone writing down my license number. I put the zucchini back and took off real fast. I ended up leaving them on an elevator at city hall. It was either there or on a bus leaving town.
Then it happened again. The other morning, I discovered three more in the garden -- monsters. I couldn't understand where they'd come from. After the last episode I'd made a point of ripping out anything that resembled a zucchini plant, and yet here were more hiding out under the tomatoes, almost hidden under the foliage. This was impossible; zucchini may grow fast, but they are lazy travellers: They certainly don't drag themselves thirty feet across the veggie patch to lurk under tomato plants. I had a sneaky suspicion these were alien zucchinis -- that is, not grown in my yard.
I figured someone was using my place as a zucchini dump, and I had a darn good idea who it was -- Shirl from down the street. Whenever I see her, she's walking around with a zucchini under each arm, and I overheard her at the garden centre a while back complaining that her place was overrun with them. She was blaming the folks there for selling her zucchini plants instead of cantaloupe. She gave me a real zucchini-shrinking look when I muttered something about it serving her right for not knowing the difference. I would have kept my mouth if I'd known she'd bear a grudge. It had to be Shirl.
Guess where I took those latest zucchinis -- right down to her place, but not until after dark. Although there was a full moon that night, I wasn't worried. I figured Shirl would be asleep because, like me, she's an early riser, always up early puttering around the yard. I simply walked confidently through the gate and down into her veggie patch. I planned to be in and out in a flash. I shoved the zucchinis in beside her others and was about to leave when I spotted a slug. It didn't matter that it was one of Shirl's slugs; I automatically squished it. Then I saw another, and another. Next thing you know, I'm so busy squishing slugs I forget about the time.
I was still there when a light came on and Shirl appeared on the deck. I realized where I was and made a dive for cover -- right into a tangle of raspberry canes. It was all I could do not to scream, but I did whine a bit, which was a mistake because she thought I was a cat. She hollered something nasty and began throwing rocks -- beaned me right in the head. I still have the bruise -- and a lot of scratches. I lay there for three hours waiting for her to go back to bed so that I could go home. And if that wasn't enough, next morning I discovered two more ^&^$% zucchini in my own garden.
That evening I almost bumped into Shirl as she was coming around the corner carrying a zucchini as usual. I had my little red wagon and was hauling the ones she'd left in my yard the previous night. As we passed, we both smiled and said hello. I don't know where she was headed, but it wasn't my yard because I'd bolted the gate and, as a deterrent, floodlit the veggie garden. I didn't go anywhere near her backyard; getting beaned once is enough, but her car was parked in the driveway -- locked, of course. Actually, it's not a car it's a huge 4x4 with real big wheels -- that's all I'm saying.
From the Diary of a Mad Gardener -- see Amazon
1 comment:
Hysterical
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