This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Health & Fitness

The Vegetable Garden

This past Saturday after walking the dogs in Mingo, I drove to my parents house in Peters Township to visit my parents and also to score some fresh vegetables from their prolific garden.  I had been promised kale, swiss chard and some coveted heirloom tomatoes.  As I pulled into their driveway, I could see my mother in her garden.  I smiled and waved. Wisely, I had brought an extra pair of shoes to change into after what I knew would be a muddy dog walk.  I was concerned with tracking dirt into their house.  I knew the dogs wouldn't be a problem as the water in Mingo creek is deep enough for them to swim and get rinsed off.  As I'm changing my shoes in the car, I hear a muffled voice.   At first, I didn't think much about it as I assumed that my mom had not looked up and had mistakenly started chatting with me.  This time of year, she often tends to her garden with pulling weeds, harvesting vegetables and so on.  Suddenly, her calls for me became more and more frantic.  

"Vicky, come and help me!" she is shouting.  

Bear in mind, I can clearly see her.  She looks perfectly fine.  No visible blood or bruises.  She hasn't accidentally fallen and there appears to be nobody within miles.  She is standing hunched over something.  

"What the heck is going on?" I ask myself, and then her, as I quickly finish tying my fresh shoes and shoot out the car door.  

"Run inside the garage and get a bat!"  she commands.  For those of you who have never been to my parent's house, they have a 3 car garage loaded not only with cars but also my dad's various tools.  Tools acquired over a 92 year lifetime of working with his hands.  Trying to find anything in there could take days, maybe even weeks. The garage has not had the sigma six treatment of a twisted corporation.  From the way she was behaving, she wanted that bat and she wanted it STAT.  She was acting like an ER doctor barking orders to a nurse for the proper life saving instrument.  I'm certain that I had a deer caught in the headlights look.  

"Or, Or, a piece of wood (pause) or metal!" (Another short pause). "A stick!"  she shrieks in a eureka like moment as she finds the word she is searching for in her second language and simultaneously points emphatically to the fire wood pile.  Once again, bear in mind, I still have no idea what she intends to do with said stick or why the urgency.  As crazy as it sounds, my dad inexplicably has long sticks of metal stacked in amongst the fire wood.  So long, in fact, that they are heavy and not easily lifted one handed by me.  

"Here!  Here!"  She deftly passes me a shovel designed to clean out the fireplace, a gift that my husband and I had purchased them several Christmases ago.  

"KILL IT!  KILL IT!" she orders me in rapid fire staccato.  Finally, I see what all the fuss is about.  There, in the grass, on the opposite side of the fence that is supposed to protect the garden from intruders is a wide eyed, bushy tailed bunny rabbit twitching its nose at me.  My mother wants me to bludgeon to death an innocent bunny rabbit!  In my 46 years, I have never killed ANY animal with my hands.  Sure, I've accidentally killed a squirrel with my car.  But that's different than hand to hand combat, the kind where you are forced to look your opponent in the eye.  I buy my meat at the grocery store where it's presented neatly on styrofoam trays and wrapped in plastic.  I have often thought that if I had to personally kill and butcher my own food, I would quickly become a vegetarian.  I am, after all, a true suburban American.  I refuse to obey my mother, opting instead to chase the bunny out of the large yard while awkwardly waving the shovel in the air to help scare it.  It's a bold bunny rabbit and doesn't scare easily.  It takes me a while to get it moving.  It's only after chasing it to the edge of the property line that I learn why it's so bold.  It is the mother of the 4 baby bunnies that my own 83 year old Italian mother has recently dispatched, two on Friday and two on Saturday.  She found it's nest in her green beans.  Remember how she was hunched over something in the garden?  Poor momma bunny rabbit was looking for her babies. Ironically, my own mother couldn't understand why momma bunny was so persistent.  Afterwards, while eating lunch at her kitchen table she expressed remorse for the killings.  "Why did it make me do it?" she questioned over a bowl of garden fresh minestrone.  "I would have left it alone if it had made it's nest anywhere else in my yard.  Why the garden?" she asked as though the bunny crossed an invisible line in the sand.   "I dreamed of rabbits all night long."  

Half under my  breath I commented that momma bunny was probably revisiting the garden at that very moment looking for her babies.  

"In all my years I've never had to do something like that," my mother continued.  "Your father has always taken care of these things for me but his vision with the macular degeneration...he can't see as well."  Then, in the next breath, she asked, "Isn't the soup good? Those are my tomatoes, my green beans and my zucchini.  All fresh veggies from the garden," she boasted with pride.

The next day, I returned to my mom's house to drop off some zucchini bread that I had baked from the home grown zucchini.  Luckily, she didn't ask me to kill a woodchuck for her.  

I hope you all are enjoying the bounty of the season.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?