Kohlrabi killers

I battled weeds around the place this weekend. The ones along the fence are actually kind of pretty, but they're deadly nightshade, which will kill you.

I know that because when I was a kid the stuff grew in the junk around grandma's old garden, and she pointed it out and said, "See that? Never eat it. It's deadly nightshade and it will kill you."

I wasn't exactly going to mix myself up a salad, but I got the drift. Of course, we weren't exactly the smartest kids.

My cousin Shawn and I were caught one day in the garden running around with rakes tied to our belts.

"What are you doing in the garden?" my grandmother yelled.

"We're seeing how much 'smoke' we can make," we said.

"Smoke?" she said. "Have you lost your minds?"

A pall of dust settled over us, and we looked at her like she might be on to something there. Then we started running around in circles again. It was a section of garden my grandmother hadn't planted. If it had been planted, there surely would have been a dog in it.

The dogs' names were Irish and Hogan, and they were Irish setters. When they died, my grandparents got another Irish setter named Mike and he carried the Irish sitting torch, so to speak.

The dogs were always in the garden, and my grandmother was always yelling at them. She would be out there weeding or watering, and the dogs would wander in and grandma would yell immediately.

"Get out of the kohlrabi, you damn dog! Get!"

My grandmother is the only person I know who grew and ate kohlrabi. That is, of course, when the dogs weren't in it. They usually didn't dig stuff up as much as they just sat on top it and thumped their tales.

Whump. Whump. Whump. Bad dog.

Gardening tip No. 39: Kohlrabi doesn't do so well when a dog rolls on it.

But the dogs expected to get yelled at, and they had worked it into their daily routine.

While the dogs were a constant source of irritation for her, she was also the one who fed them, so they were always around her. When grandma went into the garden, the dogs would follow.

"Out! Out! Out!" she'd yell.

The dogs would saunter out and go lay in the flowers along the walk. They never went in the weeds.

She yelled at those dogs a lot.

"You're always yelling at those poor dogs," my grandfather would say. "Why don't you just leave them alone?"

Then he'd laugh. Grandma didn't think it was funny.

Of course, the dogs did come in handy when a stranger showed up, or when the cows got out, because they'd bark.

When you live in a house surrounded by cows, it's a good thing to know when the cows are out. When the cows are out, one of the first places they go is, you guessed it, the garden.

The dogs couldn't stand that. The garden was their turf.

So if you wanted to hear some real yelling, well, you should have been a cow in that garden eating kohlrabi. Grandma would give you an earful.

Moooooo.