The Grinch — the real one — was in Forest last week a couple of days prior to the Christmas parade, and for reasons unbeknownst to me, decided he really liked the Christmas wreath on our front door and took it home with him...or her...or someone. Fact of the matter is, it is gone, and it didn’t blow away in a storm. It was also not tossed in the park across the street, or anywhere up or down Smith Avenue, or even in the ally behind the building — yes, I looked. It is gone, likely for good.
Mr., Miss, Mrs., Grinch, whomever you may be, if your heart grows larger and you choose to return it, I’m fine with that too. Just hang it back on the hook from which you took it. I don’t plan to replace it, but to just use the message I left for you in its place.
Thanks in advance and Merry Christmas anyway!
Now on to the more pressing issues of the day. I picked a ripe tomato on Saturday, December 2. I ate it on a sandwich on Monday, December 4 and it was very, very good.
The garden started off fairly well this past season, but when the drought began to dry up everything around these parts, it did the same to the tomatoes. I, or I should say we, me and my wife Danny, watered, and watered, and watered, and everything just kept dying, and dying, and dying.
Except, that is, for this one tomato plant that happens to be in a large flower pot. Like everything else it turned yellow, then brown, and started to look blistered, and burnt, and dry, and then by some miracle of nature it began to put back on new growth from the root base.
I fertilized, and watered some more, and slowly but surely it grew back into a nice-sized vine. Then it started blooming and putting on fruit and before long it had about a dozen small tomatoes on it — eleven now — then we had a freeze. I put a big patio umbrella over it for that challenge and sure enough it worked.
Granted these are not the one slice covers a piece of bread variety at this point — more like one tomato sliced up covers a half of a piece of bread, but cover it, it does, and that makes me happy, unlike how that Grinch makes me feel.
Take that Grinch!
I don’t know about you all, but to me it seems like the weather forecasters on the television change the forecast from day to day — Danny says broadcast to broadcast, — but Monday morning they were saying frost returning in the coming days and I thought it was going to be warm all week. May have to get that umbrella popped back up!
We do have a decent patch of collard greens, cabbage, and Brussels sprouts. We had collards with dinner last week and they are young, and tender, and delicious. The cabbage is just starting to head and I don’t know what those sprouts are supposed to look like or how they make those little bitty cabbage looking heads.
I’ve never planted them before, but after some Grinchy varmints desecrated my mustard green patch, not once, but twice, I turned to the only plants left at the store which was Brussels sprouts.
I like Brussels sprouts, and we eat them all the time, I’ve just never grown any so I have no idea how long it takes them to make enough for a meal.
Mustard, now I knew all about that, and I suppose so did whatever got them before they even sprouted good and grew into big leafy plants. I’m guessing the Armadillo Grinch. After the first mustard green robbery I added a little fence thinking Armadillos can’t jump, but either this one can or it was something else all together that was munching on my baby greens.
A couple of the mustard plants did survive, and they are growing really fast now that we’ve had a bit of rain and cooler temperatures. Maybe by Christmas, barring any other Grinch-type attacks on the garden, we can have a serving — might even get two — on the side for dinner.
It won’t be Christmas dinner, however, because we host a bigger group than I can provide mustard for, and several of my friends, not saying they are Grinches or anything like that, but they don’t care for the greens. Greens of any kind.
Isn’t that ironic? A Grinch that doesn’t like greens?
Well, they will have a Merry Christmas that night, greens or no greens, Grinch or no Grinch, and of that, I am most certain!
