The Garlic Vampire

Gardens are a source of endless surprise. Maybe they oughtn’t be, maybe for most people they aren’t, but in my world, well, I seem to be caught off guard on a regular basis. Is it possible to be continually surprised, or is that a paradox? I supposed it would be a paradox if one expected to be surprised, but I am always surprised when I am surprised, both by the surprise, and later by my state of being in surprise, so I think there is in fact no paradox at work.
Take for example, my garlic. I decided last year that I should plant some garlic in the garden, which necessitated 1) preparing a patch of garden for the garlic, 2) obtaining seed garlic (now here’s a real question– why is seed garlic four times more expensive than the garlic you just use for cooking? Can’t you take garlic from the store, bust it up into the individual cloves and plant those? No one does this, they all buy seed garlic– which looks exactly like the garlic in stores, except for the price. This is a real mystery...) which I did from a seed garlic seller at last year’s Common Ground Fair, 3) getting sage garlic-planting advice from Darryl, my local gardening guru 4) actually planting the garlic before the ground froze solid and 5) applying a mulch of leaves to make the garlic happy. I did all that.
I then managed to promptly forget all about it.
Fast forward to June. It’s eight months later, and since I returned from China on May 16th, there had been nothing meteorologically distinct from one rainy day to the next. Finally, a day came when, if not actually sunny, it was at least not actually raining, so I thought, well, better go out and take a look at the garden.
I ventured out back to the still-unfinished raised beds, and there, at one end, was a pile of old leaves with thin green shoots poking up. “What the..?” I thought to myself. Then it came to me: garlic!
I excitedly pulled away the old leaves, and there were a whole slew of what I took to be garlic plants. How exciting!
Well, that would have been all well and good, except for a certain Chinese garden menace: Ayi. Ayi is 70 years old, and hails most recently from Beijing. She does not do well in heat, which Beijing has a huge surplus of in summer, so I try, whenever I can, to get her to come stay with us for the summer, where, regardless of the weather, it is cooler than it is in Beijing.
Now Ayi is a great cook, and like most Chinese, she is used to the idea of getting fresh stuff to cook every day. Well, like a fool, I showed her my garlic patch, and she said, “(Wow, those look like great garlic shoots! They’ll be great with noodles!)” and preceded to tear off several to take into the house to cook something. I was left wondering how my garlic would react to having it’s supply lines to sunshine cut off in this manner.
Well, the carnage continued, with Ayi making frequent trips out back and coming in with garlic leaves which she stirred into her luncheon noodles. “(Boy, these are great!)” she would say, and I would say something like, “(Yes.)” in what I hoped was a voice that conveyed my concern for my garlic.
I explained that I had planted the garlic last Fall and that I hoped to actually harvest some later on this summer. Ayi said that would be a good idea, but the leaves keep disappearing from the garden and appearing in noodle soup. I mentioned the problem to Daryl who said that he had some wire and that I could put up an electric fence around it to keep it safe, but I thought that was a bit excessive.
Then, one day last week, Ayi said to me, “(Ah, I understand! You meant that you were trying to *grow* the garlic! Not for garlic shoots!)” I said that was sort of the case... “(Why didn’t you tell me not to take the shoots?)” she accused. “(Well, you said they were very good in your noodle soup...)” I started to say, and she cut me off claiming that if I had been clearer she would have left the garlic unmolested. I said it wasn’t a problem, she apologized, I said there was nothing to apologize for and said that next year I would plant more so there was enough for her shoots and my garlic both...
So, here it is, heading towards the end of June, and Ayi has stopped attacking the garlic. Will there be any garlic to collect at harvest time? Perhaps. Meanwhile, Ayi has been added to the family pantheon of garden pests, right up there with deer and rabbits, a place of honor as a respected foe.
I shall report back later on the state of the Garlic Situation. Meanwhile, the lesson we can all take from this is simple: Plant More Garlic. That way, there may be enough for everyone come garlic season...