So, where's my sweet potato?

There’s a mystery in my garden beyond why some plants stubbornly cling to life in spite of me and others just give up the instant their roots touch the soil. I’ve lost a sweet potato.

A real one. Seeking a way to increase the diet of the humans in the household, I courageously bought two at the grocery store. I cubed one of them along with the ordinary familiar potato, tossed the pieces with olive oil and herbs and roasted them. I ate the sweet potato. (Note: It was delicious.) The other human ate the familiar. 

So one sweet potato was languishing and we all know that’s not good. It was even starting to sprout. At that point, I decided to see what it would do in good soil, not garden soil, even. I buried half of it in a pot that had given up on its earlier efforts (Gerber daisies). I had high hopes and when I last checked it, there was a bit of greenery showing, as well as the sweet potato. Well! Maybe this would work. After all, as a child, we’d grown a sweet potato vine in our kitchen by balancing a sweet potato in a jar of water and setting it in the kitchen window. 

But this morning, the sweet potato is gone. There’s not even a hole where it had been. There is a bit of green, so something rooted. How can a large sweet potato so disappear? 

Maybe it’s not so mysterious. Squirrels. I checked. They like sweet potatoes. They also like the sunflower seed I set on the window sill for the birds. Perhaps their sweet potato feast has been what’s deterred them from indulging in seed this last week. But I’ve no doubt, they’ll be back. One sweet potato can only fill them up so far.