What's Wrong with This Picture?

Well, most basically, what’s wrong is that I chose to plant a zucchini plant in the new vegetable garden this year when, as everyone knows, it is a mistake to plant more than one-half a zucchini plant. You do a whole plant and you just become a neighborhood embarrassment or, worse, a neighborhood menace, sneeking around at night dropping excess zucchini on your neighbors’ decks.

Beyond that, there is the mistake of leaving the zucchini plant alone for two weeks during a hot period with no plans for it to be watered. I thought that would work, would slow it down. I picked everything on the plant before we left for B.C., and this is what I found when we returned (along with another one about half this size and two small ones that were perfectly respectable squash).

I didn’t buy any zucchini seeds this year; what I bought was butternut squash seeds. I planted about 40 of the latter seeds, at different times in the spring, some in the ground, some in pots in the house, some in paper pots in the kitchen, some in paper pots in the ground, some in paper pots sitting in standing pipes (don’t even ask about the logic of the last one, although slugs are involved in the explanation). Ultimately, three of the butternut squash seedlings actually made it to five inches and they have gone on to creep around a bit with small, discrete leaves and two very small promising butternut squash-like shapes which may eventually turn into butternut squash if I or the warm weather lives long enough.

My zucchini plant was pressed upon me by a neighbor who had planted one seed each in two pots and both seeds came up. When he gave it to me, it was already five inches. It seemed unkind to turn him down given the nature of his burden, so I took it in and planted it in the far corner of the small vegetable garden. By now, of course, it’s enormous, literally overwhelming the beets, the kale, and certainly the pathetic three butternut squash plants. So that’s the many things wrong with this picture. No more Mister Nice Guy, next year.

Here’s another place where there’s something wrong with the picture. In the most recent issue of the All Point Bulletin we are told of a recent Parks Board meeting. The Parks Board oversees the Community Center, among other things, but that is sort of the biggest thing they do. Complaints were being made to them that the Center was looking lackluster, had unchanged, dead lightbulbs, and insufficient gardening and landscaping. Apparently, by the end of the meeting, it was made clear that the trim painting was going to be improved, and that the Parks Board would lay out money for 6 dozen tulips. I don’t know about what’s going to happen with the lightbulb(s?), but one of the Parks Board members volunteered to pay out of his own pocket for an extra two dozen tulip bulbs.

The other part of this ‘what’s wrong. . . picture?’ comes later in the newspaper where the real estate folks advertise their wares. Last month, one (and perhaps only one) property was sold in Pt. Roberts, a beach house with 4 bedrooms and 6 bathrooms (what does that septic system look like?), costing $2.5 million. Pt. Roberts has many, many beach houses; it’s like Malibu, California, in that respect. There is a ton of money here. And we can’t afford, as a community, to get the light bulbs changed or buy an extra 2 dozen tulip bulbs, even when we’re just north of the biggest tulip fields in the U.S.?

What indeed is wrong with this picture? Maybe what we need is a Point Roberts Endowment Fund where we can all make donations to cover the costs of light bulbs and tulip bulbs, and whatever other bulbs, literal or figurative, are needed for civic life. Apparently county tax revenues aren’t able to provide such funding. Given that we don’t pay any state taxes, perhaps we could pay the equivalent, voluntarily, to the Endowment, especially those of us who came here from high state income tax states (think California) and who thus save 10% of our federal taxes overnight just by moving to Washington.

Alternatively, maybe the right model is tithing. If we believe in Pt. Roberts—and who would live here if they didn’t?—maybe we should tithe to the Pt. Roberts Endowment. Well, if there were a Point Roberts Endowment.