By Muriel Sluyter

Greetings, Gentle Reader,

As I weeded the garden, the mosquitoes eagerly came out to greet me As they did, a joke they tell in the South came to mind: Two mosquitoes capture a man. One says, "Shall we take him down by the river to eat him?" The other replies: "No, let’s eat him here; if we take him down there, the big boys will take him away from us."

Now, this is when you can tell a Westerner from a Southerner. A Westerner would say, "Oh, come on! Mosquitoes don’t get big enough to eat people." But, a Southerner would respond, "Oh, come on! How would the man know what they’re saying? Mosquitoes don’t speak English."

It’s hard to say what the mosquitoes were saying about my presence in the garden since I don’t speak mosquito, but I suspects it was something like this: "Dinner’s served! It may not look like much, but hey, it’s been a long dry spell, and beggars can’t be choosers."

Actually, there haven’t even been enough mosquitoes to keep the swallows and bats happy; it’s been too dry. But, the August rains we have enjoyed the last couple days have changed that, somewhat. Unfortunately, mosquitoes like to hang out in the garden; they know some human will be by shortly, bringing a warm lunch on the hoof — so speak.

Every spring and fall we put the bedding from the barn floor on a different section of the garden. Since bedding can use up a lot of nitrogen as it breaks down, we can only plant in that area, if the bedding is sufficiently broken down. This year it was, so we planted corn and beans in last fall’s "barn floor gold."

My husband looked at the corn this morning and asked whether it would make good ears before frost. I reminded him that a warm June with no frost often precedes a warm September with no early frost, and if we had no early frosts, the ears would mature. Then, I made the mistake of saying, "Since we planted it in the manure patch, it should do well." He looked at me quietly for a moment and said, "What is it going to taste like?" that’s when I realized that, if I had thought before speaking, my choice of words might have been a little less descriptive.

That would have been good, especially considering that this good man, though thoroughly and happily adapted to the realities of farm life, was born in downtown Amsterdam. I hastily assured him that it would be delicious. He thought it over for a moment, then said, "I’ll wait to see what color it is before I decide to eat it."

My usual answer to that would have been what any wise mother says to a child, who announces that he doesn’t want any of whatever has been fixed for dinner: "Good, that leaves more for the rest of us." But this time, I decided that discretion was the better part of any smart-aleck answers I could think up, so I simply said nothing.