“There’s NO Such Thing…”

CLIMATE CHANGE? FAKE NEWS!

As many of you know, I grew up in the city but spent my weekends and summers at my grandparents’ farm. I had the best of both worlds. On one hand, I had the city conveniences of restaurants, movie theaters, shopping malls, and good schools. But on the farm, I received an education! Just like Mark Twain opined: I never let my schooling interfere with my education.

At the farm, I witnessed the stillbirth of a calf, I watched a barn cat deliver ten kittens, I fed the chickens, I helped slop the pigs, I milked a cow, I planted seeds and sapling trees, and I drove the tractor during haying season. I was overwhelmed by the amount of work farmers did: 24-7, 365 days of the year. In fact, I asked my grandmother, “Why don’t you and Grandpa take a vacation?”

“Suzanne! You know why. Cows, chickens, pigs, cats, dogs. Do they ever take a vacation? Plus, there’s crops to grow, gardens to plant, picking, and canning. And then there’s the weather. Will it snow or rain? Will we get enough? Or too little or too much?”

Fast forward to May, 2026. We regret to inform you that our fruit stand will be closed this summer and fall due to a late frost. We are unable to offer any fruits or vegetables. Years ago, a friend of mine recommended this market, who brings in truck loads of fresh, delicious apricots, tomatoes, red and black raspberries, cherries, blueberries, and peaches from Utah. The Angelo Peaches are undoubtedly the best I’ve ever had! I’m really bummed I won’t get to bake a peach cobbler and smother it with vanilla ice cream.

What can we expect? We shoot more pollutants into the air; we abuse the Earth; we mock Mother Nature and defame science. But what I do know this: Dr. Suze can’t bake a cherry, nor a peach pie. Sorry, Billy Boy, your father was right. I’m not wife material.

Thimblerig, AKA the Shell Game

Most of us have this game; sometimes on a street corner, at a bar, or at a party. Using three cups with a coin, a bottle cap, or a pea, the con artist hides the object under a cup and quickly shuffles the three cups around. Your job is to bet which cup covers the object. Of course, the con snatches up your money, as you have chosen the wrong cup. You are mystified by this two-hundred-year-old trick–and out five bucks!

Me? I discovered this week I, too, was a victim several weeks ago at a garden center, where some sick, deranged fool switched the identifying stakes in the tomato plants. I thought I bought “Better Boy” and “Celebrity” tomato plants, but after five straight days of rain and three weeks of desert sun, the vines were a sea of green small balls. Damn! Cherry tomatoes! What good is a bushel of cherry tomatoes? Megamillions of seeds to lodge in my teeth and wreck havoc in my digestive track. I certainly was in no mood to grind them into salsa, nor cook them down and strain all the seeds.

My only choice was to remove the plants, go buy new ones, hope the weather cooperated, and I’d reap a crop. “Do you think it’s too late to plant these?”

“Not sure, ma’am,” said the guy in the garden center. “Depends on the weather.”

Duh. “The only reason I have to is I got snookered by Thimblerig!”

He looked at me quizzically. “Uh, what?”

“Thimblerig. The Shell Game. Someone switched out the stakes in your plants; I thought I was buying big tomatoes, not cherry tomatoes. I’m not wasting my time and my water bill on dumb little cherries.”

“Ha, I hear ya! I got gut problems, too. Let me tell you a story about my friend who bought his kid a pygmy pig and ended up with a 400-pound sow.”

By the end of his story, I was regaled in laughter. Yes, Suzanne, there’s a lot worse things than buying cherry tomato plants.