THE COLOR OF SKIN
Red, white, brown and
PURPLE?
This is not a human interest story ... the color of people's skin; but the color of potato skin.
Early spring of 2019 I was on my hands and knees poking around in the bottom of a kitchen cabinet and felt a familiar object hiding almost out of reach. Once you've held a potato in your hand you recognize the shape and feel of it instantly.
I pulled out eight potatoes that had green and dark shoots sprouting from shriveled skins. My first thought was to toss them to the chickens ... but on the other hand, why not plant them? So I did.
I found a likely spot at the far end of the Flower Garden to plant the potatoes. I raked the ground in a straight line for about 8 feet, cut each potato with a healthy looking sprout into three or four pieces, and set them on the cleared ground. I piled dirt over the row and watered it. And went off forgetting about the row of 'taters I had planted.
Until one day, while watering the Flower Garden, I noticed a row of green shoots poking through the dirt and remembered the forgotten potatoes I'd planted.
"Well, well, well," I told the pokey little green plants, "You made it! Let's see what lovely little potatoes you will grow into." I usually talk to my flowers and plants - seems they perk up and grow more beautiful.
Talking to the sunflowers in my garden reaped rewards .... they grew and grew until they were 10 feet tall!
Talking to the sunflowers in my garden reaped rewards .... they grew and grew until they were 10 feet tall!
Harvest time: Happy gardens produce tomatoes and carrots, string beans and squash ... a cornucopia of hearty vegetables nurtured by sunshine and rain, hand watering, speaking lovingly to them, and weed patrol, slug control and yellow jacket extinction. No pesticides or weed poisoning allowed in this garden!
Low container filled with cheap beer enticed slugs to "belly up to the bar" and have their fill ... they die in intoxicated bliss.
Yellow jacket traps stuffed with bologna (the brand you wouldn't serve to your family!) and they swarm in ... lulled by the alluring aroma of rot-gut bologna and are trapped!
HARVEST TIME .. FALL IS IN THE AIR
One potato, two potato, three potato, four ...... Just dug up a few potatoes from the Flower Garden patch and they were .... PURPLE! How did I grow purple potatoes? No really .. I don't have a clue how I dug up purple potatoes since I planted only white and red ones; come to think about it .. these were some of the potatoes I found sprouting inside a dark cabinet last spring, so I planted them. Had to have been a purple one in the bunch. I'm going to save them, let them sprout and plant next spring.
And God provides sunshine, spring rains, blue skies ... and rainbows. A perfect blueprint ... life sustaining cooperation between the Master Gardener and Gardener in Training.
