The mysterious dissapearing plant

5/29/08 Thursday
I’ve come in for another break from the heat. It’s 2:45 and right now it’s so I can only stay out in it an hour or so. It’s probably only about ninety five or so, that’s as high as the weatherman predicted if I can remember right. They are saying we will have five or six days straight where the temperature is at or over a hundred degrees. I wonder what that is in Celsius. I used to know like I used to know lots of things. Anyway, that’s gonna be some killer stuff and real hard on the plants. Today I’m mowing rye to make as much mulch as I can. Because it is ripe and full of grain I am dumping the contents of the grass catcher in the wheel barrow. Then I beat it with a stick to knock the kernels of grain out and they settle to the bottom of the wheelbarrow. With that done I am taking the straw and putting it around the plants I’m mulching. In this case it’s the bell pepper plants I just put in the ground yesterday. With this heat and intense sun planting without mulching is an exercise in stupidity. I’ve been doing that too much as I push to get some of the many things I need to do done and forget to mulch. It has cost me dear with whole rows planted that are just bare. Some have two or three plants out of the forty or fifty planted. In some cases the seeds never came up, baked in the ground. Part of that is due to my inability to keep everything watered but lots of it is due to a lack of mulch. Lots of the mulch I put out simply blew away. Today I’m putting globs of mud on top to try and keep it in place.

We have a mystery. One of the potato plants just disappeared. The potatoes are growing better than anything else we have. I think a lot of that is because they were the first plants to get soaker hoses put in. The hoses are buried at their bases. So I was out and noticed one of the mounds I am building up around each plant was missing the plant. “Maybe a rabbit or something at it” I thought as I went over to look. Funny, I can’t even see the stem. I started digging down to find it and kept digging, and kept digging. There is nothing left, not even roots. Not a trace, no evidence there was a plant ever there except an empty hole. Did a gopher suck it into the ground? There is always something new around here.

While it’s on my mind I want to mention something I saw on the news two or so days ago. There was a kid who’s teacher had his kindergarten class vote him out. It is incredible that a teacher of kindergarten age children had each student in the class stand up and say what they didn’t like about him and then vote that they wanted him out. But to make it worse this child has Asperger’s syndrome, which is a form of autism. As I watched this it brought back memories. I recall being in kindergarten and sitting in the classroom watching everyone else outside playing. I wasn’t allowed out with them so just sat in my desk alone, watching them run and listen to them screaming in joy. It’s a clear memory. I also remember my father, in one of the many moments he elaborated on my failures and shortcomings, telling me that I had been kicked out of kindergarten. He said it was because I would keep tipping back in my chair despite being repeatedly told not to. This kid’s mom was on the news and told how he didn’t make friends well and in fact only had one friend in the class. This friend bowed to the peer pressure and also voted against him. I never had friends back in those early days. All the evidence makes it pretty clear that I too had, or have, Asperger’s. I wonder if it ever goes away.