Lessons from the Garden: Lesson Two

Lesson Two: Some Things are out of [my] Control.

My squash plants keep losing fruit. This is not just a small loss, involving a couple of squash, but somewhere in the vicinity of 80-90% of the fruit. When the squash is about 4-5 inches long (or about 3-4 inches in diameter for the round variety) the end with the flower (as opposed to the end attached to the vine) turns yellow, then brown. This menacing brownness begins to creep upward toward the stem, and eventually the entire squash falls off prematurely. By the time that happens, the whole squash is brown and wrinkley--not the picture of someting that one would normally like to ingest.

According to my gardner's encycolpedia, this condition in which the blossom-end of the fruit turns brown and begins to rot is termed (unimaginatively) "end blossom rot," and is caused by a micronutrient deficiency in the soil. I can add calcium chloride to the soil, but it needs to be worked in deeply, not just sprinkled, and as cuccurbits are very sensitive about having their roots disturbed, there is really nothing I can do right now. I'll just need to wait another year.

I suppose this "wait another year" theme sort of falls under the "all good things are worth the wait" lesson, but I need to get my milage out of this series, so I'm classifying this as "some things are out of my control."

Moral of the story: There are some things we can't control, like when your sweater has a hole, not getting cast in the title role, or getting assigned to graveyard patrol. Yet, fortunately, life, on the whole, is not altogether uncontroll-a-bowl. We can stop the spread of the ozone hole, have good behavior and get out on parole, and clean the air by not using coal. In general if one has a goal, it can be attained by working heart and soul.