Don't Talk To Me About Mulch!

I was at the gardening center the other day. I like a good tomato once in a while, which means growing them. I ran into a guy I know there, someone really into gardening, environmental stuff, etc., who suggested I should use mulch.

I'm sorry but this is a very sore point with me, whether he knew it or not. In fact, he was probably innocent, I don't know. But I totally lost it. I recoiled, and nearly went into a three-alarm meltdown. I felt such a rush of anger, it was palpable, I flushed, I was beside myself, in just a total crazed state.

"Don't talk to me about mulch!" I shouted, bringing a ton of unwanted attention to myself.

"Why?" you ask...

Years ago, it was a day very much like today, sky, earth, people doing things. I was in traffic downtown, sitting there waiting at a light. A guy with a pickup truck full of mulch, but with no gate, was right ahead of me. When the light turned green, either he was a very careless driver, or somehow his foot hit the gas and it went down too far accidentally, he roared ahead, with the mulch spilling out in a big pile just in front of me, with me also having already proceeded toward the intersection.

My car would go no further, I was lodged on top of the mulch! Now I know I should have immediately turned the car off, but being in shock, I jumped out. The car still running, the engine being hot, and mulch being essentially gaseous weeds, the whole thing went up in flames. Of course the fire followed the gas line back to the tank, and the whole back end exploded, killing the three people in the car right behind me. The flames were so random and so hot that I myself was burnt, scarred, I thought, for life.

In the years since, I submitted myself to very expensive reconstructive surgery, so that I am not so bad off, except for the monthly payments I still make. But enough about me, the families of the corpses behind me saw an opening for a quick payday. My insurance company presented me with a copy of the policy which, hard to understand, did not specifically cover mulch fires, so I was on my own. They wanted $5 million apiece, but since they couldn't get blood from a turnip, they settled for monthly payments of $1,000 for life, so that's three thousand bucks down the drain every month.

You may be wondering how I was liable in all this, since I was quite innocent. That's true, but this is what a fool gets, the court settlement he gets, when he's stupid enough to represent himself. A little plug there for lawyers. They've cornered the market on legally representing people, and they deserve it.

All this time, believe it or not, the original mulch truck driver, who dumped and ran, was never apprehended. I couldn't identify the truck. I was so focused on the mulch, that's all I saw. That, and the driver had a bright red mohawk and a tattoo of Satan on the back of his neck, but that could be anyone.

Ever since, life has been hard for me, virtually impossible in fact, but I plod along as best as I can, with occasional moments of happiness, like a slice of a halfway decent tomato. Is that so much? It's just that -- call it a sore point, something that easily repulses me -- I don't want anything to do with mulch.

The guy in the gardening center had a look of astonishment on his face. "I- I- I didn't know. But I now see that mulch is definitely a mixed blessing, good for some things, not so good for others..." He trailed off sheepishly. I thought about pursuing him in argument, with many smart alecky things I could have said, like, "Mulch, my friend, is good for nothing!" But I let it go. Being so persecuted myself, I've gained in mercy by leaps and bounds.

Anyway, he had his hands up, as if to say, "Let's drop the whole thing, let's call it even, you go your way, I'll go mine, live and let live, let me crawl into a ditch somewhere and die, I'm so embarrassed." Like I said, I let the whole thing go, with my mercy and all, and put my hand up, more or less as a gesture of consolation and dismissing the whole subject, but really I was thinking simultaneously that my intent behind the gesture was as if to say, "Please, don't ever talk to me about mulch. You've now had fair warning. I've been through more than you can ever understand. Go preach environmentalism and mulching gardens to someone without the benefit of real world experience."

Raising Cage-Free Tomatoes

Well, the long wait is over, with Mother's Day it's time to plant tomatoes!

I went out and bought a bunch of plants last night, and got my garden spot all plowed, the best I could do with a hoe and shovel.

There's so many different kinds of tomatoes to get, it's unbelievable. It makes you wonder which one is just the plain old tomato, not putting on airs. Instead, there's the Early Girl, the Big Boy, the Beefsteak, the Beer Belly, not to mention the many smaller ones, the Cherry, the Marble, and the Pellet. I don't know what the ones they sell at the grocery store are called, but whatever, if you get nine guys together they make terrific baseballs.

This year, though, I'm doing something different, very different for me. I've been getting into the whole "No Cruelty Against Plants" movement, where they're agitating against any kind of restraint on plants, even including fences! Personally, I think a fence around a field is a nice look; it lets you know where the ditch ends; but apparently for the more radical members, a fence is the same as telling a plant, "That's as far as you go," which to me sounds very logical; why would you want your plants running across the road where they might get hit?

So, while I may not endorse everything about it, I do think it's a good idea to keep away the restraints that are closer to where the plants actually call home. Meaning, this year I won't be using tomato cages. I threw them all away after last season -- totally gone -- and I'm proud to say I wasn't even tempted to get new ones when I was at the garden center. In fact, an elderly couple was picking up some cages and I gave them a dirty look, as if to say, "At your age? Someday they'll lock you up, and don't be surprised if a tomato isn't there to help."

Anyway, I got home with my plants and lovingly set them in their garden space. I put them under the dirt just enough to get their roots soiled, not enough to tie them to one spot, in case they feel like migrating to a different place. And not only that, if they need to get in on a stormy, rainy night, I'm leaving the garage door open, and I've arranged some nice dry dirty blankets they can sleep on. Of course they need water, so I put out a little bowl for them to drink from.

You know how tomatoes have seeds when you slice one? They get them from pecking on the ground, like chickens*. That's why your free-ranging tomatoes will have a lot more seeds, and that's where the flavor is. That's why the grocery store tomatoes taste something like chalk, not enough seeds since they're grown inside in about a half ounce of dirt.

But my tomato plants will have the entire half acre to hunt and peck. And if they feel like doing other things, like going out to pick up some chickpeas, that's fine with me. Bring the veggies home to Daddy! And if I happen to eat their friends, and later them, so far that doesn't bother my ethics.

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 *I think chickens should be kept in cages, because they chase the tomatoes away and try to take all the seeds for themselves.