YOUR GUIDE TO THE TWIN CITIES
CUKE-ZILLA!
Posted on August 17th, 2005 – 10:02 AMBy Jaime Chismar
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Bigger than a baguette… It’s CUKE-ZILLA! Master of deception and disguise, CUKE-ZILLA lurks in the corn patch, hidden beneath a tangle of thorny leaves and vines. Everyday Greengirl inspects her garden. Everyday she searches the cucumber vines for fruit, but all she sees are bright yellow flowers. Everyday CUKE-ZILLA gorges himself on water from the soaker hose and nutrients from the soil. Everyday he outsmarts Greengirl. Greengirl needs six perfect cucumbers for the Minnesota State Fair. CUKE-ZILLA grows fat and strong like a sumo wrestler. Greengirl does not give up. Greengirl wants a blue ribbon, not bright yellow flowers. Befuddled and confused, she searches the 8′ x 4′ bed again and again. She discovers tiny maple seedlings. She startles giant wolf spiders. She trips over plactic netting and swears. Where hell are all the cucumbers? CUKE-ZILLA laughs from behind the nasturtiums. It is good to be clever and camouflaged with compost! It is good to be king of the cucumber patch! Greengirl wakes early Monday morning to water the garden. The basil stretches hip-high. The ears of corn swell in their husks. The heirloom tomatoes glow yellow and orange, a day or two from ripe. Greengirl rearranges the soaker hose in the corn bed. She suddenly finds herself face to face with a ginormous green zeppelin. “OHMYGOD! CUKE-ZILLA!” Greengirl is so shocked by CUKE-ZILLA’s mass and might, she almost tumbles headfirst into the bed. Greengirl tells herself to be brave. She pushes through the nasturtiums with shaking hands. She gently snaps CUKE-ZILLA from the vine and lifts CUKE-ZILLA into the sunlight. “Now, I understand why my other cucumbers are so teeny and frail. You steal all the water and nutrients from the vine!” Greengirl frowns, “You are too bitter and woody to eat, CUKE-ZILLA. What shall I do with you?” She cannot bring herself to compost CUKE-ZILLA, so Greengirl decides to be clever like CUKE-ZILLA. Before Brian wakes up for work, she hides CUKE-ZILLA in the medicine cabinet. CUKE-ZILLA waits patiently behind the razors and the shaving oil. Eager to shock and awe once more, CUKE-ZILLA laughs in the darkness. It is good to be king of the cucumber patch! It is good to be CUKE-ZILLA! |
CUKE-ZILLA: King of the cucumber patch.
It is good to be CUKE-ZILLA! |
11 Responses to "CUKE-ZILLA!"
Maybe Cukezilla thought it was a zuchinni! You have now released the rest if all the yellow flowers to become cukes, start polling neighbors and co-workers as to whether they like cukes with a vinegar dressing or sour cream as you may need all the help you can get to not waste ( they are starving people in India, Africa, somewhere…. as my father always chided us if we left something on the plate).
I have formed a link for tomato disposal ( it has a waiting list as everybody likes heirloom tomatoes) for when they start to really come on I can’t freeze or can fast enough.
Very fun! Last year I couldn’t give the cukes away fast enough…anybody care to explain why they are so sparse this year?
If I were you, Greengirl, I would start seeking options on the screeplay rights! My recommendation is to get a Labrador Retreiver. I had one and she loved cukes. She would wade into them, grab one and find the perfect place in the yard to chew it into relish. She never ate any, just chewed it. It was like she understood the finer points of Nature’s balance … get the excess cukes before they got you. One of the physical therapists helping me adjust to my brand new titanium hip was saying he made sweet pickles the other weekend … “The hardest work I have done in ages,” he announced. But, he loved the results. As a kid, this was the time of year that every lunch and dinner had something from the “cuke group” of the old food pyramid. Cukes, sliced paper thin, with onions in vinegar. Cukes and sour cream. Cuke spears. Cuke slices on sandwiches. It was as much about survival (”Eat ‘em before they multiply!”) as it was about nutrition. This summer, am in defensive posture with grape tomatoes. Now have Pembroke Welsh Corgi instead of a Lab; he only eats one tomato in the morning and one at night. Need a bigger dog or fewer tomato plants. Rock on, Greengirl … Good luck at the Fair. Have a corndog for me!
I’d trade you my Zucchini-monster for you Cuke-zilla any day of the week.
Isn’t anyone else concerned about the stuff growing behind Cuke-Zilla in the medicine cabinet?
Greengirl says:
Hee hee! I was hoping CUKE-ZILLA would help us get bids from contractors. Obviously, our bathroom needs a little work. I think the rusty cabinet is the origional - I’m talking 1954.
Nah…forget the screenplay. That thing has “dill pickle” written all over it.
I wonder how much Gedney would pay…?
Actually I was thinking it would make perfect hamburger pickles. One slice could cover the whole burger. YUM
Dear Greengirl,
I can remember when you were just a young lass slinging lattes @ Dunn Bros, and now you’re raising Rafael Palmero-esque cukes?!
We too have planted the little buggers - they are coming out our ears!!!! I made my first attempt at pickling last week, though I now must wait 8 long weeks to see if they’re any good. Let me know if you need any to submit at the fair - you can keep the cukes and the blue ribbons, just get them the heck outta my yard before they over-run the badminton court!
I so wish I had both a medicine cabinet and my own personal cuke-zilla. Oh, and a video camera.
Add one husband (or kid in a pinch) and America’s Funniest Home Videos, here we come
I had a pumpkinzilla. It was unusually big and oblong, dark green, growing inches every day. It was happy. I put it on a little plastic cover thing so that it wouldn’t get it’s back side scraped on the ground, and the plastic was slanted so that when it rained it wouldn’t pool around the bottom and cause it to rot. It was a very happy pumpkin and we were very proud of our pumpkinzilla. We came home from up north this past weekend, and I wanted to check the veggies since I had been away from them all weekend. At 10:00pm, I went out to the veggies, went straight to pumpkinzilla, and I didn’t see it. I thought maybe since it was dark, I just missed it somehow…but then I saw it’s plastic lid it sat on, and I moved it, and there was no pumpkinzilla. I found the stem still attached to the vine, but someone while we were away up north ripped pumpkinzilla off it’s vine and stole it. I looked around the block to see if someone took it just to smash it, but it is completely gone and missing. I am trying to make this somewhat humerous, you see, but that was MY PUMPKINZILLA that I RAISED and someone STOLE IT.
Sigh. Have to put it into perspective….at least that is all that was taken, and I can grow another next year. The rest of the veggies are intact, so life goes on. And so does a motion detector light and some sort of movable gate to block our backyard from the alley. Sad lesson to learn though…
rest in peace pumpkinzilla.
Sorry for your loss berkeley.
I have always felt that there should be a special set of sentencing for veggie theives: a solitary diet of badly cooked okra (and all that slime), overcooked spinach that makes their teeth squeak, something like that.
On the bright side maybe they were VERY hungry. If not, then fate will return to them and take something they have nurtured and cherish.
Greengirls Connie Nelson, Robyn Dochterman and Jaime Chismar are dishin' the dirt from the backyard garden and beyond. Whether you're a greenthumb or greenhorn, they're eager to learn from your misshaps, mistakes -- and most importantly, your sweet successes -- all growing season long.
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