You may have noticed that the Report from Reginald Montgomery “Chuckie” Hogbottom, Order of the Woodchuck, Recipient of the medal of honor “Marmota Monax” September 2019, Knighted as Groundhog of the Realm, May 2022, Recipient of the Order of the Garter July 2023 somewhat slowed me in my blogging tracks. Yes, Chuckie completely took the winds out of my sails.
How was I to respond to his bragging, his jabs, his puffery given the fact that he did seem to have completely submarined my vegetable gardening efforts this season?
Yes, there was next year to consider and grim plans to outsmart Mr Order of the Garter himself, but there was also the fact that I was having to whip over to the farmstand on the other side of the town rather frequently.
Then came the harvest of the onions. To back up a moment, one day in early spring I asked Jim to stop in at a local garden center to get me a bag of onion sets for the garden. Onion sets are those baby onions that you can plant instead of onion seedlings. They wake up and grow into onions just about as big if not bigger than onion seedlings. I asked Jim to pick up the onion sets because I had some onion seedlings going in the greenhouse, but they were limping along. Given our endless gray skies, I wasn’t sure they would amount to much.
I am not sure how specifically I described what I meant by a bag of onion sets to Jim. I think we talked about volume, but apparently not accurately enough, as Jim returned with an ENORMOUS bag of onion sets. When planted out, the sets filled more than a quarter of the vegetable garden and also got shared with Vicki, Jen and Sam for their vegetable gardens. I think there might have been onion sets LEFTOVER even after our HEROIC EFFORTS to plant all the onion babies. In a word, Jim filled our lives with ONIONS.
Miracle of miracles, this is actually why Reginald Montgomery “Chuckie” Hogbottom, Order of the Woodchuck, Recipient of the medal of honor “Marmota Monax” September 2019, Knighted as Groundhog of the Realm, May 2022, Recipient of the Order of the Garter July 2023 did NOT entirely triumph in the vegetable garden. Apparently Chuckie doesn’t like onions and left them be.
Last week it was time to harvest the mighty and untouched by groundhog paws onion crop. FINALLY a moment of ABUNDANCE!
Here is a photo of just a small swath of onions now air drying on the screen porch before being braided into so many braids I may well have to fill a room with them. (Needless to say everyone will be getting an onion braid for the holidays).
So did Reginald Montgomery “Chuckie” Hogbottom, Order of the Woodchuck, Recipient of the medal of honor “Marmota Monax” September 2019, Knighted as Groundhog of the Realm, May 2022, Recipient of the Order of the Garter July 2023 get the last word?
I think not for the last word this garden season, Chuckie, is ONIONS.
