Tie o’ the Day is just plain gorgeous as it clashes sublimely with one of my paisley shirts. They both clash with my Suzanne-crocheted Hat o’ the Day. She’s been on a binge with crocheting hats lately. I counted over a dozen she created over the X-mas holidays. I can’t decide which I like the most, so I’m wearing them all once, then we’ll donate them.
But back to asparagus… Most of you know my hometown— Delta, UT. Many readers are not familiar with it at all. Delta was kind of a truer-to-life version of Mayberry. For the most part, we all knew each other. I lived in a terrific neighborhood, on the wrong side of the tracks, just inside the city limits. My dad’s parents lived next door to us, and Dad’s bee warehouse was behind their house. Farm country started literally across the street to the west of our home. That meant a canal full of irrigation water was also literally across that same street. And a dirt ditch canal meant loads of asparagus.
Every neighborhood has its share of grouchy folk, and mine was no exception. I was on the canal bank picking asparagus one fine summer day, when I heard an ominous voice: “Don’t you steal my asparagus!” It was not God’s voice, although it shook me to the core. It was one of our crabby, old lady neighbors who seemed to think that everything in her not-too-good eyesight was hers just because she lived closest to the ditch. I’ll just call her Mrs. Canal. Off, I ran the whole forty yards to Dad’s bee warehouse, leaving a trail of scared asparagus falling behind me. Yes, even the asparagus was scared.
Through the fog of bees in the honey extracting room, I regaled Dad with my latest exploit. He was sympathetic. He had grown up there, right across the street from Mrs. Canal. I asked him how old Mrs. Canal was. He pondered, then said, “All I can tell you is that she was at least a hundred years old when I was a boy.” That was Dad’s way of saying I’d better just be polite, and leave that area unpicked until Mrs. Canal gives up the ghost, then I could have at it.
I started picking the asparagus where Mrs. Canal couldn’t possibly see me, and it killed me to leave “her” asparagus growing there on the canal bank. Year after year, she never picked it, so it just grew spindly and went to seed. What a waste.
