From an old blog

May 31, 2006 • Wednesday
E. Coli and religion
Current mood: amused

So I planted a vegetable garden in my back yard. (Have I mentioned that I moved into a house?! It's incredible) There are a few little problems with this (the garden. Not the house): a) we have a sprinkler system that I can't control. So watering has been a bit of an issue. Some places get it too much, some not at all. Blah. b) the dirt thinks it is rock. I think it needs to be psychoanalyzed, but I can't afford that. Nor do I know a dirt psychoanalysist. [The Heartless Siren] (my psych major roommate) said she'd do what she can, but I'm not sure how much experience she's had with dirt. Perhaps she'll find her new niche in life. Anyway, with these problems combined, as well as my lack of experience and my very not green thumb, some of my plants don't look like they have much of a chance at life. This saddened me, so I called my gardening-expert parents. They suggested I go get some fast-acting fertilizer and a sprinkler. With their recommendations at hand, I went shopping. Well, I was at WalMart anyway shopping for other things, and didn't know where a local nursery was, so I thought I would just buy what I needed in their gardening section. The result? A very humorous story. Let me tell it....

First, I walked around the gardening section, finding nothing but Miracle Gro and no one to help me. I called my parents to see what they thought of Miracle Gro. Just then, cute old man in a green Walmart vest walks by. So I said to him, "Excuse me, do you have any..." my question trailed off into nothingness as he walked right past me without a glance in my direction. I was in shock. So I went back to talking to my mom. A few minutes later, the old man came back. "Did you need something?" So I asked if he carried the stuff I was looking for. "No. That's too expensive for WalMart." (It costs $6.98) "What do you need and maybe we have something else." So I explained that I was growing a vegetable garden and had already fertilized it while planting it, but I needed a more fast acting fertilizer to get things going. He asked what I used before. I told him steer manure. I thought he was going to kill over with a heart attack right there in the WalMart Gardening section. "You should NEVER use steer manure on a vegetable garden!!" At this point I about died laughing. But I kept my composure. You should be proud. He then proceded to tell me how bad steer manure is for vegetable gardens. His main argument? I could get E. Coli and die. Once again, I about died laughing. This time it was hard not to. So I explained to him how I grew up on a beef farm and that's what we had used to fertilize for as long as I could remember and how fertile our garden was and how I've never met anyone who died of E. Coli. He backpedalled and stumbled over his words for a moment. "Well, your cows at home are probably safe. But the stuff you buy in the stores, it's just not safe." My dear friend [Humble Master] made a valid point--it's all cow crap. What's the difference? Anyway, he then proceeded to show me some fertilizer that was expensive and would have covered my entire garden probably 100 times over. I explained that I was a poor, starving college student that just wanted something inexpensive that would make my relatively small garden grow. He took me over to the Miracle Gro section, found the one I wanted, then said, "This is your new religion. You will water your garden with this religiously every two weeks. You can miss church and your garden will grow, but you can't miss this." By this point I was just praying that he would leave so I could laugh in peace and with little guilt. This man was crazy. That's all there is to it. In a way he kind of scared me with his wild eyes and crazy ideas. But mostly he just made me laugh. I still chuckle about it.

If I die from E Coli, you'll now know why.