*
I never informed you about the fate of my asparagus experiment station, which first inserted itself in our shared folklore about here and here. The short version --- short for me, at least, is this:On April 17 I gave it up, mourned for the asparagus crowns that I had abused the life out of, and backfilled the trench with its 3 tons of Illinois clay loam. It was my intention that after a respectful period of grieving for the little fellers I'd plant the ground with some native wildflowers or grasses. The next weekend, as I glowered over the plot trying to figure out what to do with it, I spotted a stiff purple shoot breaking through the ground at the northwest corner. "Crap," I thought. "Since this one plant is here I'm now obligated to let it grow and reserve the rest of this dirt for another try next spring." I don't like waiting for things to happen, but that's the way it would be.
Meanwhile, Rudy's long-suffering wife had, for reasons not relevant to this post, given me a St. Francis plaque to display near my garden. She had not told me that she'd blessed it with Holy Water before wrapping and delivering the gift. So I chainsawed a groove at the north pole of a walnut log and displayed the placque sort of like a Franklin Mint plate, facing the moribund asparagus patch from the east. Starting the next day, more purple shoots broke the soil. I was bemused, and started marking them with stakes. Well, by cracky, every last one of those hapless asparagus "crowns" eventually made their way to the surface, and as of yesterday I was still seeing new growth. So, as illustrated by the photograph below, which was taken late afternoon on Thursday with a phone camera, this for me truly is the dawning of The Age of Asparagus.* Thank you.
* I'm afraid I can't take credit for this pun. To the best of my knowledge it was coined by Robert Crumb in 1969. Also, apropos of nothing, the ornamental rectangular prism near bottom left is a genuine 1901 Culver Block brand embossed street paver.
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