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How do your weeds grow?

Burt's Eye View

I do not have a vegetable garden.

I’m not opposed to gardens, nor do I harbor any animosity toward those who engage in such activities. On the contrary, Mary, I ardently support how your garden grows — as long as I’m not drafted to do the weeding.

Some people remember their childhoods as endless summers. I remember mine as endless plant-pullings.

And endless green beans.

Is there any other plant that produces fruit — I mean, vegetables — as rabbit-rapidly as green beans?

Mom would send us kids into the garden with a bundle of peck baskets and expect us to drag them back overflowing with beans. We shook those plants this way and that, and snapped off every bean we found dangling beneath the canopy of broad leaves. We picked those things clean, because we didn’t want to have to have our very important side-yard baseball game interrupted again for gardening.

But two days later — or even the very next day — we and our baskets were sent packing on garden safari again. Those beans busheled. They wouldn’t stop.

Why? Why would someone want to grow something that, you know, grew? It confused us boys.

Mom, with sweat beads rolling off her brow, down her nose and into the giant pot of boiling water on the canning stove, said, “You’ll be happy this winter when there’s a pile of garden-fresh green beans on your supper plate.”

Never once do I recall, while bumper crops of snow howled past the windows, thinking, “Hey! Green beans! Being snowed-in is so worth it!”

Instead, I asked, “Mom, why don’t we grow chocolate cakes instead of green beans? Or hot chocolate with marshmallows? Those would be great things to grow in the garden.”

She never did. Just green beans. And carrots. Squash. Cucumbers. Lettuce. Radishes.

At least peas provided a bit of fun. When you pressed the shells just right, they popped open to reveal free prizes inside — a half dozen or more little green spitballs. They were perfect for pelting your brothers.

Unless Mom was watching. Then we had to dislodge the peas into a shelling bowl. So they could be canned. So we’d be elated to find them on our plates when our farm was buried by a blizzard. Yay.

The parental decree was that every lazy day of summer began thusly — feed the cows, pick green beans, weed the garden.

“Gardening’s easier for you,” Mom and Dad would say. “You’re closer to the ground than we are.”

I got even closer to the ground. I sat down in the dirt and scooted on my behind between the rows. This worked well until I squished too many tomatoes.

I guess I should just be happy that Mom never canned weeds. It’s what our garden grew best.

“Look at how big that weed is, Mom!”

“Why aren’t you kids weeding the garden like I told you to do? The weeds will strangle the beets.”

Exactly. After the green beans and peas, one more thrill on my winter supper plate would make me explode.

— Send gardening tips — like what aisle of the grocery store to harvest chocolate cakes — to Cole at burtseyeview@tribtoday.com or on the Burton W. Cole page on Facebook.

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