Having put up (don't you just love that?) over 20 pounds of summer squash the other day, and having shelled four pounds of blackeyed peas (that's four pounds of shelled peas) yesterday, we were going to pickle some jalapenos and make some pesto today. We'll still do the pickling, but there will be no pesto today.
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| The basil I picked yesterday. And yes, I put it in the guest bath. Where else would I put so much basil? |
I thought about it, and then thought better of it.
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| Cuscuta sp. |
This, fellow gardeners, is Dodder also known as Strangle Weed for obvious reasons. Dodder is a true parasitic plant. Why God designed this obnoxious life form and Evolution hasn't culled it from The Face of The Earth is beyond me.*
I kept up with it for several weeks by pulling the strands out one at a time. But what with Independence Day and so on, it got away from me. The only way to get rid of it when there's this much is to pull or cut the host out completely. Silly me, I thought I could salvage enough basil for pesto but decided against it.
From a physiological standpoint, Strangle Weed is quite interesting.
