Accessible Gardening: #4 - still laughing with joy, 1 by Sansai87

Sansai87 wrote:
Possums aren’t nearly so spooky looking in the daylight. At night, all you really see are their glowing, red eyes.
I’m posting a picture I snapped yesterday in lieu of my usual cartoon. My boyfriend thinks this is as funny as anything I’ve ever drawn.
The Wiregrass area is known for some unusual monuments and large scale ART. (MK says she has already posted a pic of our famous, giant, steel pig.) The pig is just to make people grin, but don’t ask me to explain this monument. While I consider myself a homegirl, this one I’ve never understood.
This classic, sober monument is dedicated to a BUG. Specifically, the boll weevil. The critter that once ruined this part of the south economically.
I know the history of it. I just don’t get it. Cotton was King here before the boll weevil. The botanist George Washington Carver saved things when he introduced the peanut as a cash crop. Before Carver, peanuts were only eaten by livestock and “po`folks.” Now, half the peanuts grown in the U.S. are grownwithin a 100-mile radius. (In fact, the Peanut Festival Fair is going on as I write this.) I would understand if the pretty lady was holding a peanut, but why, oh why, is she holding a boll weevil.
My elders (who wish to remain anonymous) told me it was once a favorite Halloween “trick” to steal the boll weevil from the lady’s hand and put it in some other weird public place. The weevil is now well secured and will be closely watched tonight. We take our beetles seriously here. ~Nadine~