Shoot out a tendril

Consider this a postcard from Iowa: the kind of quick note that I would send to a friend. I want to write to you more than once every few weeks, but that requires me to be less precious and perfectionist about it.

Many things in my life require me to be less precious and perfectionist — but let’s start with a postcard before I overthink this and scrap the whole notion.

today’s postcard image: a cucumber seeking support

Hi friend,

I finally trellised my cucumbers and squash on Sunday. I had nearly given up on them. They were all beset by powdery mildew early on. I feel a little mildewy myself these days, as Iowa heats up and the corn sweat waterboards anyone who steps outside.

The squash and I are fighting a slow, suicidal battle against squash vine borers. I valiantly scrape SVB eggs from delicate leaves every morning even though I doubt the squash will make it. I had enough with the hospice vibes this spring to last me awhile, and I’m not quite ready to give up the fight here.

I am suddenly, within the last three weeks, a person who knows that SVB stands for squash vine borer. Yeah, I don’t recognize me either.

In my other life, SVB stands for Silicon Valley Bank, which collapsed two years ago and nearly took the tech industry with it.

Squash vine borer larvae turn into pupae that hide in the dirt over winter. They emerge as adult moths the following year to lay eggs and infest the next crop, so this year’s battle will inevitably become next year’s as well. I’m sure similar pupae wait in the financial industry, ready to eat all our retirement savings. But there’s no stopping squash vine borers, and there’s probably no stopping the next collapse either.

Aaaaaaanyway.

My pesticides are all organic, mostly because I’ve gone a little feral in my grief over losing my dad. I scrape eggs with my fingernails until they liquefy. I pluck little green cabbage worms from their hiding spots along the stems of my broccoli leaves. I smash the worms between my thumb and middle finger, then fling their corpses across the yard. I watch the ants suspiciously; I let them live because I am a benevolent dictator, but if they start farming aphids (did you know that ants farm??), there will be hell to pay.

Most of the zucchini are a lost cause. I leave them for now as a sacrifice, asking the gourd gods to spare my spaghetti squash. The butternut is supposedly more resistant to SVB. It looks the best of all of them, and I allow myself a glimmer of hope.

The cucumbers are unfazed by the struggles of their cucurbit neighbors. They are flowering madly. Little cucumbers are forming. They will keep me in Greek salad for weeks if they make it, and if my nearby tomatoes have better luck than my squash.

I trellised the cucumbers against a panel that my brother (perhaps the handiest millennial alive) crafted for me out of wire fence, salvaged fence posts, PVC pipe, zip ties, and part of an old campaign yard sign. I used plastic garden clips to hold the vines to the wire. I wondered as I manipulated the vines whether the cucumbers would be happy, or if I’d left it so late that they would commit suicide out of spite.

Twelve hours later, I went out to inspect my plants before starting the day job. The neat rectangles of the fence panel looked like an empty spreadsheet waiting to be filled in.

I reminded myself not to think of spreadsheets in the garden.

I smashed another cabbage worm. I contemplated whether to euthanize the saddest-looking squash vines. Maybe murder calms me, because I am calmest in these morning moments.

And then I saw the cucumber. Overnight, it had already shot out tendrils to cling to the fence on its own.

I wish my instincts were so attuned. The cucumber knows what it needs: sunlight, water, support.

Not so different from what I need. And yet I get so in my head and away from my instincts that I end up in the ER with dehydration. Or I go weeks without talking to friends, too busy with spreadsheets to feel how much I need connection with my community.

But if a cucumber can shoot out a tendril to anchor itself more firmly to the world, then surely so can I.

Just don’t expect me to remember to drink water. That’s far too much to ask.

Until next time,

Sara

---

p.s. if you haven’t subscribed, I would love for you to join me — it’s a free and easy way to support my work. Or, please upgrade to a paid subscription (for the low, low price of $5 per month!) if you’d like to give me some extra motivation to write more posts like this one. Or, you can continue lurking. Regardless of your preferred method of consumption, I’m so very grateful that you’re here.

p.p.s. If you missed my last post, I wrote it in the first haze of grief after my dad passed away in May. His slow decline was a big part of my relative silence these past few months. Perhaps I will emerge, like a pupa becoming a moth, ready to lay all the words (and hopefully armed with better similes than this one).

On a more serious note, my dad was great, and I’ll have much more to say at some point. For now, here’s my post about his passing: