Whence Cometh My Help

    Sick most of the week, helpful son out of town, I did my usual babysitting of two-year-old granddaughter, approached weekend with duty of proofreading and assembling PowerPoint presentation for church, editing pastor's sermon outline, studying and assembling materials to teach children's church and preparing for group of 15 or so coming for lunch after church, I wasn't quite sure how this was all going to work out. We dashed home after church to get ready for the lunch. Not long after, another couple arrived. They came early. To help. I was mighty happy to give them some of the last-minute tasks of rounding up plates and cups, hoisting down a pitcher from the back of the highest shelf and helping to concoct a batch of lemonade. Having other hands take some of the hassle made it disappear. I calmed down and turned happy. God does this sort of thing with His people, even when we forget to ask. 
     He uses amphibians too. In Florida, February is time to plant, but I dreaded opening my composter today to replenish the raised bed that was calling out for radishes and tomatoes. It's a big drum with a latching lid, and the last several times I'd opened it, it teemed with sleek, well-fed cockroaches. Shudder. So with the two-year-old's help (loosely defined), I dragged a shovel and rake out of the shed and steeled myself. I popped the latches, flung open the lid and stood back. Not a single insect skittered out of the compost. Not even when I poked it with the shovel. As I started merrily and half-disbelieving to shovel compost into the wheelbarrow, I saw, perched high on the wall of the bin, a big, ugly, beautiful toad. That was where the roaches went: into his warty, gray, bulbous belly.

I have never felt such love for an amphibian in my life. As I shoveled, it crept down into the compost and hid behind an egg shell. "Don't you worry, sweetheart. I wouldn't hurt you for the world," said I. I pointed it out to little Chloe in the same tone I use for hawks and woodpeckers and new blossoms on the lemon tree. I couldn't help thinking it was sent to give me a break, just like the beautiful humans on Sunday. Psalm 121. It's true.                                                                                                                        

Fiend in Fern Form

      When I saw big pots of asparagus fern for sale in BJ's the other day, I had to stifle an "NNNNGH" worthy of Miss Piggy. Asparagus fern. Stores sell it. People pay money for it. And I can't get rid of it in my yard.
It creeps through the fence, as you see on the right.
It luxuriates under the azaleas, as you see below.
 
 
 It sprouts innocent-looking, pale green pioneers which soon send runners out in every direction, like the ones lurking behind the blossoms below. 

 

The stems get thicker, and they produce nasty little thorns that make it impossible to pull the little blighters up without leather gloves. If you don't get the roots, new stems pop up in a trice. Asparagus fern! Did someone actually buy a potful and plant it somewhere near my house? Thanks a lot, unknown person. Couldn't you find any plague-bearing rats to introduce? Or rabid bats? Who thinks this noxious weed is pretty? Who thinks it should be cultivated? Bizarrely enough, biology students-- horticulture students? obnoxiousness students?-- grow the stuff in the greenhouse attached to the Hillsdale College science building. When I saw it during a weekend visit, I nearly collapsed in a paroxysm of irony. Unless they are growing it to find an antidote, (Aside from being invasive, it's poisonous in leaf and berry.) I want to tell them "Noooooooo!" but no one is there to hear my protest.

  If that weren't enough, they also had pots of other green vermin, the "tuberous sword fern," which would take over every yard in Florida if homeowners slacked in their vigilance. Sheesh. I've yanked it out by the bushel and still alarm the neighbors when I attack the ubiquitous new sprouts with a loud "yaaaa!" 
   Please, please, growers of green things, not every plant is your friend. Beware the photosynthetical rabbit, the botanical tribble, the wire coat hanger of the plant world. The sanity you save could be mine.
 

Sweets, Snakes and Walmart Figs

I never knew that sweet potato vines produced flowers, but here they are, looking like morning glories. The net tells me that researchers clip and prune and dry and soak such vines in order to get flowers, and they don't always get them. Hot, wet Florida produces them with one palm tree tied behind its back.                                                                                 Horticulturalists want the seeds so they can breed plants for desired qualities, like color or shape or flavor of the fruit. So I guess I will have to watch for seeds and try planting them next year. I'll be the east-coast Luther Burbank. 

 

 Whoever named the rattlesnake bean either thought the reptile was beautiful, or never saw the blossoms. How do these ethereal beauties relate to the rattlesnake? The bean pods do grow with mottled markings that could resemble a rattler if you squint real tight. I got just a few of them when I planted the beans last summer. They're supposed to like the heat, but to paraphrase garden guru Margaret, there's heat and there's Florida heat. They squeezed out about six beans and shriveled to sticks. In  "cooler" fall weather, they thrive.  

 

Figs! Purchased at a store that otherwise gives me hives: Walmart. Margaret told me to buy plants there. "No, really." So I stopped in to their garden department and discovered gorgeous, vigorous growing things like this fig tree, scarcely a foot tall, but with this pretty fruit on it. To foil the verminous squirrels that get most of my figs, I've ensconced this plant in a tomato cage and wrapped it with bird netting. I will eat those figs. I will.

Peanut Exegesis

 

     Last year, I dug out a nifty little bed for my specially-ordered, organic, super-duper, non-hybrid peanut seeds, George Washington Carver’s happy dream. I added some real soil to the gray sand and raked in the compost. Well, sort of compost. That would be another story. I fertilized, planted and watered and sat back to wait. And wait. Then I had four seedlings and a lot of little holes. Squirrels, adorable, furry balls of malicious evil, had made my sweat-earned plot their own smorgasbord. I called them rude names and ran for my roll of bird netting to cover the remainders. Their little stems unfolded happily, riffling leaves out like playing cards. They got about three inches tall, but not for long. In the next day or two, something snapped the stems of every one of them. I envisioned cackling rodents at midnight, saying “Ha, we’ll show her.” But maybe it was snails.

            So this year I bought a package of raw peanuts at the grocery store for a lot less money, let them dry out, and shelled them for seed. I gave the same dig-deep and compost treatment to a new bed. I just couldn’t use the old one again. The memories… Acting on trusty Internet guidance, I sprinkled the soil with cayenne pepper, and not just a few teaspoons either, nosirree.  Every time it rained, I added another stratum from the enormous warehouse-club jar, emptied one and started another. Rejoicing in the news that oil of peppermint makes tree-climbing vermin feel like they can’t breathe (Really, people, how did anyone find this out? “Here, little squirrel, sniff this cotton ball and tell me how you feel.”), I dripped the stuff around the edges of the patch. Well, two and a half cheers for the advice of Web denizens, because at this point I have a couple dozen energetic-looking peanut plants. My rejoicing is muted, given that this old world is still “subject to futility,” but my hope is rekindled.

The most splendid of the peanut plants.

I think I see purple, but it may be wishful thinking.

Grape tendril, or charismatic preacher?

New leaves of the grapevine are purplish-pink before they unfold.

Butterfly in Two Perspectives

One: 

Mad with life,

a butterfly

greeted me in my garden.

Another:

A butterfly, wild with life,

ignored me in my garden.

A moment's rest was far too long;

it fluttered fast,

drunk on air and sun and wings.

It circled my head

and vanished over the roof. 

"I bear the image of God!" I cried. 

"I bear His whimsy," it answered.