ESP or Luck?

As my gardens are full of summer blooms and my vegetable plants are bursting with produce, I thought this was the perfect story from Helene Hadsell’s files to share on this hot summer day. She wrote this memory about her gardens and husband, Pat, on July 3, 2004.

ESP… OR LUCK?

“You better begin gearing up your ESP. We need to find some rose bushes and green tomatoes,” I said to my husband, Pat, as we headed toward the house. We spent all morning in the yard, mulching around the trees, storing patio cushions in the garage, and pulling up two dead rose bushes. It had been an unusually dry Texas summer, so this was the first year we hadn’t raised a garden.

“Are we out of chow chow?” Pat asked as we sat down to his favorite meal of black-eyed peas, corn bread, and cheese. The black-eyed peas looked bare without a dollop of tangy chow chow.

“You must be having a Senior Moment,” I teased. “We finished the last jar a week ago…remember?”

“What’s this Senior Moment bit?” Pat asked, narrowing his blue eyes speculatively.

“I read an article recently that said memory lapses are common with people our age. Some wise guy called it a Senior Moment. The researcher claimed that after we reach middle age, we lose about one percent of our brain volume each year. Let’s face it, we fit into that category. We are both pushing seventy,” I reminded him.

“What you’re saying is, if taken to its natural conclusion, we could be totally brainless if we hung on long enough,” Pat said in his casual jesting way. I loved his gentle camaraderie and subtle wit.

Everyone who met Pat for the first time would do a double take and ask, “Did anyone ever tell you that you look like Abraham Lincoln?” Pat was tall and wiry, with a Roman nose and a determined chin. His passion was politics. He was even born on February 12th, Lincoln’s birthday, and he had a thing about being honest. I was known to stretch the truth at times to make my stories colorful; I might even exaggerate, or perhaps add a few brilliant white lies. When Pat caught me, I would accuse him of going into one of his Honest Abe roles.

After lunch, I suggested that we scout around some of the local nurseries. “Maybe we can find some roses to replace the ones that died. We might even get lucky and find some green tomatoes so I can make chow chow,” I said while clearing off the table.

“Sounds like a good idea. Let’s try to get started before noon tomorrow,” Pat suggested as he got up from the table.

Friday morning after breakfast, we got in the van in search of roses and green tomatoes. Nestling my cup of herbal tea in the beverage caddie, I reached in my tote bag and pulled out a rabbit’s foot attached to a key ring.

“Is your ESP working today, or do you need to stick this in your pocket for luck?” I asked.

“Funny,” Pat said when he saw the rabbit’s foot. Our son gave it to him as a joke last Christmas. The attached note read: If your ESP ever fails you, Dad, use this.

“Thought we would take a different route today. We’ve never explored this road, but it should take us to Waxahachie. Who knows, we may have missed something,” Pat muttered in concentration as he turned off the highway onto a dirt road. The road was so powder dry from lack of rain; I had to raise the windows to avoid being choked by the clouds of dust the moving car raised. Four miles down the road, Pat spotted the nursery sign in front of a two-story house and slowed down.

“Here is what we’re looking for,” he announced with confidence as he drove into the yard and parked. Piercing his complacency as we walked toward the shed in the back lot, I looked at him and said, “You know something, I recognize that smug look.”

“I know October is Mum Month and no time to plant or find roses, but maybe this place has some plants left from their spring stock. They may be neglected, but sometimes they sell ‘em for half price.” Always looking for a bargain, Pat grinned as we headed toward the covered shed.

“Am I seeing what I think…green tomatoes?” I cried with astonished delight as I spotted a bed of tomato plants in front of the shed. The limbs were drooping with the abundant weight from their unpicked harvest. The owner, a friendly, puffy elderly man, walked over to greet them. His body appeared to be made from a series of taut balloons stuffed inside the blue pinstriped bib coveralls he was wearing. His shirt was already sweat stained from the warm, humid morning. “I’m Andy. Can I help you?” His voice wobbled like a spinning top losing momentum.

“Why yes,” Pat replied. “We are looking for roses and green tomatoes.

“You’re in luck on both counts. This evening I was gonna pull up this tomato patch and plant pansies in the bed. I’ll fetch a bucket, and you can have all of ‘em…no charge,” Andy said as he turned to get a bucket.

As I began plucking the green tomatoes off the vine, I recalled my introduction to this secret family chow chow recipe Pat’s mother made. While his mother was alive, she kept us supplied. Now that I inherited the recipe, it was my duty as a transplanted Yankee to make it as PERFECT as his mother’s. PERFECT meant exactly the same taste. The recipe was a combination of chopped cabbage, green tomatoes, onions, hot peppers, sugar, white vinegar, powdered cloves, and allspice. There really are no words to describe the taste of her chow chow except to say it made a bland bowl of black-eyed peas come alive.

One fall, while performing the ritual of grinding the ingredients, a burst of creativity surfaced. I have to admit, his mother’s chow chow is the GREATEST, but the color was a dull, unappetizing light gray, so I decided to add three carrots to give it more color.

“You can’t improve on something that is perfect,” was my husband’s comment when he noticed the texture was different. The following year I added a drop of green color when he wasn’t watching. Sure…he noticed.

“How come this batch is so green?” he questioned.

“Guess the tomatoes were greener than usual,” I answered with one of my brilliant white lies while keeping a straight face. He bought it. From that day forward, I added my secret ingredient…green color to every batch to make it colorful as well as tastefully PERFECT.

When the bucket was full, I set it down and headed inside the shed to look for my husband.

“Come here, I want to show you something,” Pat called from the back of the shed when he saw me. As I made my way down the aisle, I felt the cool breeze coming from the open sides of the building. On the left was a fan neatly mounted in a four-by-four-foot box, humming quietly. I noticed the bags of fertilizer and the drip irrigation pipes that misted the grateful plants. My eyes took in all the colorful, happy blooms and healthy green shrubs. “This man is no amateur; he is dedicated to his leafy friends.” I thought to myself.

When I reached my husband, I saw the reason for his excitement: two buckets of roses; one a sunny lemon color, the other milk white, both in full bloom, standing at his feet.

“This is all that is left from my spring shipment, but I’ve fertilized and taken special care of ‘em. They have a good start and will bloom ‘til the first frost,” Andy explained in his sing song warble.

“This is your lucky day. I’ll let you have ‘em for half price.” He nodded as if pleased with his decision.

“We’ll take ‘em,” Pat replied, knowing he’d found another bargain.

Driving off after loading our almost impossible to find cargo for this time of the year, I turned to my husband and asked, “Was it ESP or the rabbit’s foot that worked for you this time?”