Flowerbed wars

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FLOWERBED WARS - Saturday Morning

An old married couple, my wife and I, were out planting some new plants in the flowerbeds. Well, I was planting, and she,..... well, as she always says, someone has to supervise.

“The nursery man said these little ornamental plums were called, ‘Plumbago’, but I think that is the term meaning a back ache, isn’t it?”, I ask my darling, just to make sure she feels included in the project.

“No, Sweety, you’re thinking of ‘lumbago’, without the p.”

“Oh, no, Honey, Lum Bago is one of those two comedians from Arkansas; you know, Lum and Abner, I think it is.”

“What?! Bago is not Lum’s last name; Lum didn’t have a last name, for Heaven’s sake! Did you take your medicine this morning?”

Oh, you’re probably right, Dear. I was thinking of that Bago family what makes the motorhomes. You know, Clive had one once, and he kept referring to it as a “winner” Bago. I never did know just what it was that it won, maybe a contest for old motorhomes like they got for old cars or something.”

“You know, I think I’ll just call them ‘ornamental plums’, it has a nice ring to it. And, maybe you’d better sit a spell before you plant that next one, huh?”

“Yeah, I think that’s a good idea, because I think I’m coming down with plumbago.”

(to be continued.....maybe)

-- Lum,..... er, I mean Lon (lgal@exp.net), October 30, 2004

Answers

Funny thing about ornamentals. We've had a crab-apple in the front garden for years and I've yet to see it put forth a crab.

Hubby and I just had two days in the garden fixing up the electronic watering system. After replacing half the components we discovered a teeny, weeny resistor had come adrift. Little clue here for all the husbands. If you're dripping hot solder around, don't expect your beloved to be able to hold the circuit board dead still.

-- Carol (c@oz.com), October 31, 2004.


Carol, I thought that crabs were lured by the apples or something. I didn't know they grew on trees!! I love crab, I'm gonna haveta go get me a crab tree to grow next spring :-)

-- Tricia the Canuck (jayles@telusplanet.ent), November 08, 2004.

Oh! The apples lure the crabs. Thanks Tricia. That explains why I haven't had any crabs. I live too far from the sea.

The apples are wonderful for attracting beautiful crimson parrots each year. They come in pairs, the male brilliant red and blue, and the female more greenish and less showy. I figure that's so she's not as visible while she's on the nest. Each year I drive myself nuts trying to photograph them, but I like a challenge.

-- Carol (c@oz.com), November 09, 2004.


When I was in High School, we lived in Colorado a couple of years. The house we leased had some productive crabapples out front. One year, our yard overflowed with strangers. My dad asked his mentor in matters local and was told that people came annually to harvest them. The previous tenant or owner had given permission and it had snowballed into an annual thing. They didn't come the next year, however. The weather perhaps. So we gathered them. My mother was not a cook in the regular sense of the word, and her few experiments with them were not promising. However, she hit upon one great use for the "ripe" crabapples (they are tart, even when ripe--little things about half the diameter of a golf ball). She boiled a great lot of them using every container we could muster until they fell apart and then simply strained the juice into jars. We heated and drank this nectar all winter. It was kind of like wassel, only different. It warmed you right down to the socks like no other beverage I'd ever tried after working or hunting outside and feeling half dead from the cold.

-- J (jsnider@hal-pc.org), November 26, 2004.

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