With Cabin Fever pressing in on me and the deck completely covered in a four foot snow drift, depression is keeping me housebound. Besides the insanity scenes on the streets of Ottawa, at border crossings, and various provincial parliaments is making for entertainment on the tube I can’t rip myself away from. Who’d believed we could out do the ‘True Trump Believers’ in the stupidity department, but we Canadians do seem to underestimate ourselves. Therefore I am forced to reach back into the Squirrel Pie archives to dig out a tale that is considerably more creditable.
…Competitive gardening can reach pretty intense levels. Maybe it even should be an Olympic Sport. And as important as winning is, having an acceptable excuse for losing is just as important. Down here in Rainy River, the all time champion of losing excuses is past President of the Giant Pumpkin Festival, Eltjo ‘Hard Luck’ Wiersema.
After several years of rain, hail, flood, drought and frost excuses for a mediocre showing when the scales were balanced, ‘Hard Luck’ resorted to critters. First the Great Beaver in 04 wiped him out. Then in 05 it was deer, followed by a plague of bears in 06.
This past week I stopped by his punkin patch to see what he had conjured up for the 07 Reason Season.
At first, I couldn’t even see him, then I spotted the barrel of the .22 protruding ominously over an old log. Sure enough there was ‘Hard Luck’ stretched out behind the barricade. His full body camouflage, including a blackened face aptly conveyed his desperate situation.
“Hogs!” he whispered hoarsely, cautioning me with a finger to his lips.
Having heard of a band of marauding wild boars that had terrorized Arbor Vita some years prior, I nervously inquired, “Real, wild tuskers?”
“No, ground hogs. They got five of my punkins, so far and it’s open warfare,” snarled Hard Luck.
“There’s one now,” he cautioned and levelling his weapon, began spraying lead towards the patch. Two lilies, a tomato, and a cornstalk toppled. The sprinkler hose sprang a geyser, and three metallic ‘plinks’ echoed back from the moored pontoon boat.
The ground hog, apparently unharmed, scampered for its den.
Looks like I’ll have to make another ammo run,” mused Hard Luck as he patted his empty pockets and glanced at the empty shell casings littering his redoubt.
As I headed home relieved the only holes in my old pickup were from rust, not stray bullets, I contemplated my own, saner approach to winning- psychological warfare.
It is simple, inexpensive and safe- so far.
A couple years back, Peggy had bragged how her giant sunflowers would beat mine by a good two feet. What to do? Simple?
I wrote a nice piece on Ike’s giant specimens, complete with a doctored photo, showing them towering a good four feet taller than Peggy’s. Peggy took one look at the photo and gave up in disgust, relegating her giants to the garbage heap.
