As many Westonians know, there is a supposed northside vs southside competition in this town. The Owl has zero intention of taking this seriously, especially because we ALL know that northside wins on all important measures such as green space (hello, Jericho with 547 acres of woods and Ogilvie and …) and proximity to Maine, while the southside wins on being close to my alma mater. But we all also know that between the Wes-TEN and the Owl, I cannot resist whipping up some good old-fashioned Country vs Woodland-type feelings.

In this spirit, there has been a flower power battle raging, dating back to last year’s pandemic gardening blitz. Yes, the Owl and a southsider Select Board member (there’s only one that meets that description but for this purpose, he shall be known as Southsider) quickly escalated a casual “hey, look at my nice zinnias” into a hyper-competitive gauntlet toss down for this summer.

On the north side, zinnia seeds were planted in late May and quickly sprouted into yummy green tendrils which were summarily chomped by a Northside Bunny–picture the one from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It ate everything and apparently frightened away Katie Puppy, K9 ranger, who was basically ineffective in eradication of Fluffy. The Owl quickly re-grouped and bought a bunch of nice seedlings from the Food Project and planted those. Those were growing fine until an exchange student from Greece decided to park her U-Haul on top of half of them in July. You cannot make this stuff up. A major setback for the northern army.

Meanwhile on the south side, zinnia seeds from the Southsider’s 2020 harvest were planted and growing merrily until a Southside Gang of Bunnies said, hey, we can eat these up AND commute into Boston easily from a close-by train station. And yet the zinnias continued to battle on, growing slowly until … cue Jaws theme… the landscapers took out said survivors, thinking that they were in fact, weeds. There was no coming back from this setback on the Southside, and so, last week, the Southsider begrudgingly conceded Zinnia War ’21 to the Northside.

This concludes this edition of North vs South, where the currrent score is 1-0 for the North.

Bring it, southside.