Monday, June 30, 2008

And one Peanut

My daughter Stephanie is eight, and she's been helping out around the garden. About the time we'd gotten the main beds in and planted, she comes over to me one afternoon dangling the most mangled thing you'd ever seen - - one peanut plant.

We'd been feeding some raw peanuts I had to the squirrels and I guess they buried one in the mulch pile. Stephanie had found it and, thinking it a weed or something, ripped it out of the mulch. And not too kindly at that. Most of the foliage was shredded, and the roots consisted of a single peanut in the shell with a few of the roots still intact. I'm not sure if I could have done that much damage to it with a weed whacker.

"Daddy, can we plant it?"

What could I say? "Of course dear, we'll put it in this special square right over here", and of course that's what we did. I gave it an hour in ICU before the peanut Gods came to take it away to that happy peanut heaven, but amazingly it survives.

We'll see what the yield is on "One Peanut".

The next day, Stephanie pops back up: "Daddy, look at these onions I found ...".

Tragically, they died a mysterious death and were later discarded.

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