Greengirls » Blog Archive » Greengirl: State Fair follies and garden thieves

Greengirl: State Fair follies and garden thieves

Posted on August 24th, 2005 – 8:09 AM
By Jaime Chismar

Machinery Hill! Giant pumpkins! Pork tenderloin on a stick! Teen love on the Midway!

Home & Garden editor, Connie Nelson and I will be at the Great Minnesota Get-Together this Thursday, August 25. Stop by the Star Tribune booth between 3 and 4 p.m. - We can talk your ear off about gardening or direct you to the nearest pronto pup stand.

See you at the Fair!

PS: Connie begged me to bring CUKE-ZILLA to the State Fair, but unfortunately, my ginormous green friend started to soften and needed to be composted. Though I love the idea of touring local fairs with freaky veggies, I was more excited to turn CUKE-ZILLA into hamburger-sized pickles.

Super-sized veggies have fascinating powers. They inspire gardeners to write and tempt neighborhood children into a life of crime…

A post from Berkley:
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 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 ripped pumpkinzilla off its 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.

We are sorry for your loss Berkley.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 24th, 2005 at 8:09 am and is filed under Squashes + gourds. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

5 Responses to "Greengirl: State Fair follies and garden thieves"

Kiss My Butt says:

August 24th, 2005 at 3:01 pm

You do realize how many off color double entendres this particular vegetable causes don’t you? Not to mention the photo of it in your medicine cabinet.

Greengirl says:
Speaking of subtleties, is that Mr. or Ms. Kiss My Butt?

Kiss My Butt says:

August 24th, 2005 at 5:03 pm

This is just a personal commentary on the annoyance of having to create a login account to view stories on Startribune.com. Speaking on annoyances why is your Blog so hard to find on the site sometimes? Most days the link is prominently displayed, and then, like this afternoon, it disappears.

Greengirl says:
I know… I know… Some folks were misbehaving in the Vikings blog and misrepresenting themselves as Strib reporters. Tighter security measures were implemented. Now you must be a startribune.com registered user to post your comments. The one (small) bright spot: No more posts for offshore pharmacies and porn.

Tashia Weisenburger says:

August 29th, 2005 at 4:52 pm

I have had trouble finding your blog as well! Please advise the star tribune to make some simple links or something!

Thanks!

Greengirl says:
Aw, I’m flattered… You can always find me here http://www.startribune.com/greengirl

immunocal says:

August 25th, 2006 at 5:24 pm

Nice site. Thank you:-)

dog grooming says:

August 25th, 2006 at 5:34 pm

Nice site. Thanks.