Onion Bandit or Success Story?

I looked out the window and down into my front garden.

There was a hole.

Where was this hole, you ask?  It was where I had planted the basement onion so long ago.  I could see the limp onion leaves that were clinging to the edge of the big vacant space.

I had...

An Onion Bandit!!!

Some critter had ruthlessly absconded with my onion, leaving nothing but the tops of the plant!

How dare he?!

Furious, I began to come up with intricate plans to stop the bandit from ever attempting such horrible thievery

ever

again.

But then I removed what was left from the hole and looked a little more closely.

It appeared I didn't have an onion bandit, after all!  Upon closer inspection, it seemed that the original onion had decomposed in order to make way for the growth of a new onion.  Tiny roots were shooting out from the remainder of the bulb.

I stuck it back into the ground and covered it up.

I wasn't convinced of this idea yet, however, so I went to the other onion that had been planted in the raised garden of the backyard, and dug that up.

If you're wondering why the leaves look so sickly, my daughter became a wee bit overexcited about the garden.  She "cut the grass", which means that she took the tops off of all of the onion leaves, then she pulled everything out by the root:  "It's ready now!"

Naturally, I replanted it all.  It takes time to nurture something that's been beaten up like this poor onion, though, so it still looks rather... sad.

And then, of course, I just pulled it from the ground again...

Poor little guy.

Anyway, I noticed that the bulb was not only wrinkly, but also somewhat hollow, so I decided to see what it looked like on the inside.

I had twins!!!

Woohoo!!!

It appears that planting an onion that has managed to grow so much in your basement that you don't want to eat it truly can work.

No waste!  Indeed, doing this can actually cause you to gain an extra onion in the process.

And then you replant the bottom section of one of those to gain two more onions.

And then do it again.

And again.

And...

You get the point.

How awesome is that?  Imagine never having to buy onions again.  A gardening lesson in self sufficiency!

They can be grown in pots, after all, so you don't even have to stop during the winter.  I think I've just found my happy place.

How about you?