CLASSIC VEGETABLE STORIES

    We have all heard the story of "Jack and The Beanstalk."  This week I will share a few classic stories from local gardeners.  Here goes...nothing serious.

    A man once planted a couple of acres of popcorn.  Later that summer, as the ears began to fill with popcorn kernels, the weather turned terribly hot.  Presently, the kernels began to swell and pop.  Like a chain reaction, the skies began to fill with popcorn bursting from the heat which in turn fell to the ground.  The fall out was so great that the ground was being covered with white popcorn.  The man's mule stood in the field and thought it was snowing, and proceeded to shiver to death.  Now that's mighty hot.

    We once sold a variety of cucumber known as "Chain Saw Cucumbers" because they were so large,  you had to cut them into pieces with a chain saw.  We discontinued them because of the lawsuit between neighbors.  A man came out of his house to check his cucumber patch only to find bits and pieces of cucumber hanging from the trees, gutters, etc.  His next door neighbor had blown his cucumber to smithereens with a shotgun.  When they got to court, the neighbor pleaded innocent, swearing the cucumber looked exactly like an alligator.

    My aunt always raises giant sunflowers.  Late one July, she was awakened at dawn by flashing lights and machinery outside her bedroom window. The commotion was coming from equipment rented by the Federal Aviation Administration.  Appears the FAA had received a complaint from several pilots abut the sunflowers obstructing their flight paths.  Up the stalk they went to strap a beacon on each sunflower head.

    Speaking of Federal officials, another fellow was raising turnips in south Spotsylvania County, about 4 miles from the Lake Anna Nuclear Power Plant.  He came home to find the Nuclear Regulatory Commission destroying his largest turnip with a giant wrecking ball, hauling the remains away in dump trucks.  Seems there was concern about the enormous size of the turnip with regard to the possibility of creating a fault in the Earth.  Not a good thing so close to the foundation of a nuclear reactor.

    Well, anyway, I'll close with this little ditty:

            "I eat my peas with honey,
                I've done it all my life!
            I know it may sound funny,
                but it keeps them on my knife!"