Putting Giant Condoms on Shrimp

by Sandy Sand

It was all part of preparing for Thanksgiving.

Okay. That’s a little bit of a stretch.

To say it’s part of preparing for Thanksgiving is a matter of coincidence, because it’s threatening to rain before, during and after the holiday.

As I’ve bored you with a dozen or so times, Rick Feldman of Gardens by Rick, just put the finishing touches on re-landscaping my front and back yards.

Part of that included three gigantic shrimps. No oxymoron jokes, please. Want to be a purist? Okay then, they’re 15 gallon plants, which makes them giant shrimps.

Named thusly, because the flowers resemble those luscious little sea creatures the make wonderful cocktails and scampi.

Opposite of shrimp, which love water and need the briny stuff to survive, their plant namesakes hate, loathe, despise and detest water. In fact, watering them more than once every three weeks turns their bright pink flowers to a ghastly black and saps all the vivid green color from their stems.

Having a garden full of water-hating foliage is a distinct advantage in desert-dry Southern California.

But even here it sometimes rains. And when it does, it causes all kinds of problems.

Absolutely nobody knows how to drive in the rain; we become awash in mudslides in the burn areas; all the tools and stuff that can be left outside all year with no worries suddenly need dry homes; and all too frequently Mom Nature doesn’t listen to the screeching weathermen and their dire warnings of lots of rain ... it doesn’t.

So it is with the shrimp. Because of their giantness, and the fact that they’re planted in pots to match, because they can’t go in the ground and quietly reside with their moderately thirsty cousins, they’re far too heavy to move -- even using a dolly or hand truck.

Then there was the matter of the 60-pound sack of mortar mix that’s patiently waiting in an old planter for me to finish a small project. It, too, needed condom protection so it doesn’t get wet before its time.

The answer, of course, was to put extra large trash bags over each plant. Ugly, but utile. To which my live-in wag commented: Looks like they’re wearing giant condoms.

Two days of sweeping up fallen leaves and blown in dirt and ashes from the last fire, and finding homes in a garage that’s stuffed like a Thanksgiving turkey for tools like the weed whacker that will short out or the shovels and rakes that will rust if they get wet, I’m prepared for the impending rain storm.

By golly, after doing all that work, it better damn well rain.