Miss H vs. the Fascist Veggies

As you may remember from this postlast month, Mother Nature is trying to kill me.

And as you may recall from this post last spring, my garden is in on plot, trying to do me in via allergic reaction.


But the strawberries aren't big bad Momma Nature's only accomplices. Every summer my garden is also infiltrated by fascist pumpkins. Really. Every year I go to the same garden center where I search through the trays of pumpkin-starts looking for one that appears to have conservative political views, but every year I end up with a pumpkin vine with a nationalistic bent that would make Mussolini cringe.

So after three summers of watching pumpkin vines march all over my tomatoes like they were cute little, spherical, red Polands, I really didn't hold out much hope that this year's gardening experience would be any different.

But it was.

This year my pumpkin vine turned out of the international-isolationist persuasion.

And it's a good thing too, because this is the year I ended up with a nazi zucchini plant and the battle between the two for my cute little garden spot would have been epic. Seriously, chlorophyll would have been spilt. Leaves would have been lost. It would have made "the great carrot and pepper plant conflict of '05" look like a tea party. (I still have nightmares of those impaled peppers...shudder)

Here is the photo of "Mein Squash" that I took this afternoon. I had gone out to pick some tomatoes ahead of the snow we are expecting and couldn't resist taking some photos to document the tragedy that my garden has become. To truly get the gist of what I felt, imagine for a moment, the theme from Jaws playing softly in the background (Da dum...da dum da dum...) (Da dum...da dum..da dum...da dum...)
(Da dum...da dum...da dum da dum da dum, da dum...)
(AHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!)
The zucchini gets the nazi label because it not only marched all over my garden like it was Western Europe (my strawberries being the proxy for France...they caved in faster than a snow fort in Cuba...or a bunch of French people armed only with over-priced food and snide remarks), it also embarked on a campaign to create a master race of vegetable.

See this? It is growing on the zucchini vine ...inside the tomato cage...

...but is suspiciously pumpkin-shaped. I know I should alert the authorities, but I'm not sure if my first call should be to the botany department at UCLA or the war-crimes-referral-line at the Hague.
And Herr Zucchini didn't stop with genetic-cross-mutations. The same vine also produced super huge squash with super-vegetable strength. This one actually grew around and through the little wire fence I bought in an effort to contain the plant last June. I don't even want to think about this vine's end game. Don't be surprised if Bush amends his "axis of evil" in the next few days to include my garden.
Notice the cute little almost-orange pumpkin in the corner of the photo below? The sole pumpkonian survivor of the green-striped reign of terror? Next to these freaks of nature, it looks like Frodo Baggins standing next to a pack of those slimy NFL orc-thingies that the bad wizard dude made in his basement in the first Lord of the Rings movie.
For added perspective, here is my foot next to the uber squash that appears to be turning orange on one end. My SIZE TEN FOOT.
And for added perspective, here they are next to my vacuum.

And no, me hauling my vacuum out to my garden to do a photo shoot with a bunch of gourds is not the strangest thing my neighbors have seen me do.

After securing the war crimes evidence on my front stoop (and carrying my vacuum back into the house) I decided to let the approaching snow solve the problem of the nazi zucchini for me. And it's not because I was being passive or joining a Monroe Doctrine fan club (google it, 7th graders. It will be a good history lesson for you). I decided to abandon my efforts against one deadly plant in order to utilize all of my resources to battle a more dangerous enemy...

This picture was taken today too...the strawberries are back.
Now excuse me while I go take a preemptive shot of Benadryl and pray for a life-sucking, horticultural-hope killing blizzard to hit central Idaho.