Bobbing Along

“Feed me, Krelborn, feed me NOW!”*

Once upon a time there was a lovely garden filled with hydrangeas. The hydrangeas would produce their beautiful puffs of color from early spring to the first frost of autumn.

One afternoon toward the end of summer, a little surprise appeared, dangling merrily amongst the blossoms.

Fascinated by the single interloper, the owners of the garden, yes, a certain husband with two green thumbs and his wife with none, let that single gourd grow. It lived contently in the shadow of the hydrangeas until the first frost ended it all.

The gardener and his wife went about their busy lives, not giving the gourd a moment’s thought. Fall led to winter and winter led to spring which brought the first round of hydrangea blossoms for the new summer. Neither the gardner nor his wife considered the reappearance of the gourd plant until suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, this appeared.

Fascinated once again, the gardener and his wife continued to watch the plant grow. And grow it did. Before they knew it, the plant grew down the wall and onto the deck.

It grew over the wall and up the porch screens.

It grew onto the terrace, past the grill and inched its way toward the house.

It grew…and grew…and grew some more. (Yes, that is a wine bottle placed for the purpose of proportion. That mother was huge.)

And every time the gardener’s wife went outside, she was tempted to burst into song,

“Suddenly Seymour

is standing beside me…”*

Well, that’s the song she considered singing although the more appropriate song would have been,

“Feed me, Seymour, 

Feed me all night long.

‘Cause if you feed me Seymour

I can grow up big and strong.”*

(Fortunately, the wife didn’t burst out into either song, but that’s another story, perhaps.)

Yes, the gardner and his wife had managed to grow their very own AUDREY II*, right out of one of their favorite musicals. And what did they feed it? No one knows for sure, though, now that fall has arrived once again, the gardner has harvested some of the many, many gourds that Audrey III produced.

For what reason, you ask? The gardner isn’t saying. And the wife, well, the wife just wants her kitchen table back.

* from Little Shop of Horrors