A year ago, no one wanted to believe it was even a possibility. They said it had to have happened some other way. But what else could explain the dead and dying onions in the garden? The leeks were merely the most obvious victims of foul play, but they were hardly alone in their pain. The entire allium family, adopted and raised in captivity now saw its future looking unfathomably bleak.
Had it just been the leeks, perhaps no one would’ve noticed. But it wasn’t. It was the chives, those delicious green wisps of flavor garnishing your holiday potatoes. It was the shallots, those great complements to a Cornish game hen. It was entire heads of garlic, planted solely to cure the common cold. It was the onions, there for any dish and every occasion. And it was the scallions, flowering all over to catch the eyes of each wandering botanist. I’ve often wondered why onion-loving hip hop impresarios have never married their love of driving beats with a member of the allium family in good standing. Rapscallions is there just waiting to be plucked by someone with gold teeth and bad breath.
But that’s not the issue at hand. Dogs were pilloried and then defended. Onions are toxic to them, after all. What use could they have for boiling several dozen leeks in bone broth? There was a band of neighborhood labs, pillaging their way through yard after yard. Labs are meant to retrieve, but what they retrieve is rarely specified.
Journalism has changed the way we talk about leeks. In the golden age of newspapers, people would casually scoff a set of braised leeks displayed in a fancy serving dish, calling them “fat old onions.” You couldn’t get away with such a thoughtless comment today. Not with everything we know about onions.
In this case, the leeks were left to wilt and die. No one saw a lab abscond with any or chewing them at an undisclosed location. Perhaps it was a lab leak instead. The plants did look a tad bit overwatered.
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