Radishes In The Clusterfuck

 

My radishes are not doing well.

Actually, that's not true. I have no idea how they are doing. I don't know What To Expect When You Are Expecting radishes.

 

I really need to read up on them. But Facebook gets in the way. I gotta check it first, you know, to see if I have any new views on the blog. (Spoiler alert: I don't.)

And then I read the headlines in the news about the most recent assaults against humanity perpetuated by the Republicans. I note that more humanitarians got arrested for bringing water to thirsty people. Water. Water.

 

And after that, who gives a fuck about radishes, right?  Who gives a fuck about anything? Why bother? 

 

Such is gardening in the time of the Clusterfuck.

 

The opposite of Republicans is a vegetable garden, so I garden with fervor because my psychological health is at risk. These past years (what has it been since Trump arrived? Ten years? A hundred? Forever? I have no sense of time anymore) have whittled my soul down to its nubbins. I am pretty much just vitriol and Facebook.

And my relationship with Facebook is so dysfunctional; I hate it, I resent every minute I have to spend with it but I'm staying until I find a better social media platform. Faking orgasms so they don't break up with me first.

 

I added radishes to my garden this summer because I eat a lot of them and I figured I'd save some scratch by growing my own. This, of course, is never true. Nobody actually saves money by growing their own vegetables in suburbia. The money I have spent on the four kajillion of those little stake clips alone could have purchased my produce for the entire months of May and June. But I'm in it for the emotional benefit.

 

I am quite the taskmaster in my garden this summer. Probably all the built-up impotence I feel when I read the news. Classic transference. I can't get rid of the money-grubbing, racist, homophobic Nazis in this country so I am uber controlling with the  plants. I'm ruthless. Produce the vegetables now or I toss you into the compost. It's a total Arbet Macht Frei situation back there amongst the patio furniture and water features.

But the radishes. I can't toss them.

 

They are growing all cattywampus and shit. The leaves look unrelated to each other and are unattractive, to boot.  And they seem confused as to which way to grow. But I can't rip them out.

 

I had weird dreams the past two nights. The first one was that I had a newborn baby who needed to be fed but I kept losing it in an auditorium, and the second one was that I was carrying my dying mother around my house.

 

I don't think those dreams were about my radishes. 

 

But still. 

 

This morning, I went out to the garden and gave them some nice, fresh compost, the batch from salmon skin and coffee grinds. And I watered them. And I gently poked around in the soil to make sure the newborn magenta babies attached to the leaves were snug and fed.

 

And then I started to cry.

 

Because maybe we are the hungry babies and the dying old women and the confused cattywampus radishes just trying to survive in these unbelievably harsh conditions. Trying to carry on despite the climate change, despite being weeded out, despite being unattractive. Maybe we need someone to bring us good compost, build up our nutrients, you know, pat some hazelnut shells around our roots so the Republicans can't crawl up our scrawny stalks and eat us alive. We need to survive until we are big and strong enough to take back the fucking yard and bring back sanity and intelligence and ethics. 

 

The Trumpster minions and apologists and secret supporters won't be able to grow in our good soil. Let the worms have them.

 

And Mitch McConnell? He will swim with the fishes emulsion.