THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, August 3, 1994 TAG: 9408020122
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 02 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: Coastal Journal
SOURCE: Mary Reid Barrow
LENGTH: Medium: 95 lines
My garden's a ruin.
Every year, August shatters the great expectations of April around this place.
But I'll never learn.
No matter how far ahead of me the insects and weeds are now, come next spring, I'll be dreaming again of cocktail tomatoes so sweet you can eat them like candy, of sliced tomatoes, olive oil and fresh basil or of a vegetable goulash of more tomatoes, peppers and eggplant. Come next spring, visions of blueberry muffins and sliced figs in sugar and cream will again be dancing in my head.
But in August, reality sets in.
The cocktail tomatoes have all turned yellow and died.
The Roma tomatoes are prolific, but there's not enough sun for them to ripen. They are half yellow, half red and hard as rocks.
The pepper plant leaves are lacy webs of green. The peppers that are strong enough to make it through the insect onslaught have worm holes.
The second crop of potato beetles is out in full force on the eggplants. They lay their orange eggs on the underside of the leaves and their ugly, sticky gray larvae eat up their own birth place.
The eggplants I do harvest are misshapen and wormy.
Aphids are in my basil, the cruelest fate of all, for me. Images of tomato slices draped in strips of basil fade away as the aromatic leaves curl up and die from the inside out.
The robins, mockingbirds and brown thrashers are teaching their offspring the gymnastic maneuvers they need to snag a blueberry from a slender flexible twig.
The squirrels are keeping a close watch on the fig trees as the first fruits are showing signs of ripening. Since the squirrels are not as discriminating as I when it comes to the perfect stage of ripeness, they will get those figs before I will. I know. They do it every year.
The same is true of the raccoons and the grapes. Before long, raccoons will be visiting each night to squeeze the grapes to test their ripeness. One morning I'll wake up and all the grapes will be gone, just days before I'd be satisfied that they were sweet enough to eat.
The only plants that are performing true to form are the hot peppers and the cucumbers. I have scads of each, through no fault of mine. I doubt any bug would be caught dead munching on a hot pepper. And so far no creature in my yard has yet come to like cucumbers, but they will, they will.
It's hard to believe now that I was as enthusiastic a gardener as I was last spring. I was in a fever. I spent every spare penny during the week at garden centers and worked all weekend every weekend in the yard.
And all for what?
Now, as I do every August, I'm talking to myself about the wisdom of trying to grow vegetables next year. Practical Thinker sits on one shoulder and Wishful Thinker on the other, both bending my ears.
You don't have enough sun, Practical Thinker says.
But if you cut down that tree, you'll get more sun, Wishful Thinker argues back, and the Romas would be fine.
The soil is so sandy, Practical Thinker responds, that it's really impossible for you to grow anything unless you work a lot harder.
You knew you should have added more topsoil last spring, Wishful Thinker replies.
You'll never get rid of the insects unless you spray and you don't want to spray, Practical Thinker says.
Oh, it was stupid of you not to rotate your crops last spring, answers Wishful Thinker. If you rotate your crops next year, you will surely outfox those aphids and potato beetles.
Maybe next year you should just give up and plant some shade-loving perennials, Practical Thinker says. They do well in your yard.
On the other hand, says Wishful Thinker, as much as you neglected your garden this year, no wonder it isn't doing well.
Wishful Thinker will get her way next spring, I know that right now.
But I also know that Practical Thinker will say, I told you so, in August.
P.S. THERE WAS AN ERROR in the column about Sally and Dean Carroll who are writing a book on old grave sites in Virginia Beach. The couple have recorded information from close to 1,000 (not 200) individual tombstones. They have uncovered more than 200 tombstones that were actually buried under the ground.
TAKE THE CHILDREN to learn about early American cooking techniques at a Colonial Cooking Demonstration at 2 p.m. Saturday at the Adam Thoroughgood House. The fee is $2. MEMO: What unusual nature have you seen this week? And what do you know about
Tidewater traditions and lore? Call me on INFOLINE, 640-5555. Enter
category 2290. Or, send a computer message to my Internet address:
mbarrow(AT)infi.net.
ILLUSTRATION: Drawing
Colorado potato beetle
by CNB