Life in the vegetables

Mr. Next Seat at my favorite pub this evening gave me an uninhibited stare as I rooted about in my bicycle pannier and drew out two squash. Two yellow squash shaped like geese; I nestled them spooning together next to my IPA. "If you'd like these...." I said to Miss Bartender, "they stir-fry up great!"  Mr. Next Seat said to me, "well! I was wondering what those were for...if you were going to put them in your beer or something."

It's beginning to be the time of vegetables, and because I work not on a "real" farm which sells things but on one for demonstration, I have been giving away some produce whenever I can think of it. I brought a cabbage for Mrs. Church who came to let me play the pipe organ earlier.

So here is a post on life in the vegetables.

The tomatoes. The terrible tall twining tussling tumult of tumbling tomatoes, turning me green. Each tomato plant has as much growth and vegetation as its own personal rainforest. The buggers have outgrown their stakes now, the growing tips foundering off into space, all blind and hopeful. There are hundreds of these plants. The company's breeders have crossed a lot of expectant parents with a lot of other expectant parents and they'll see what hybrid tomato goodness results.

The tomatillos are just as tall but are gangly, like a set of light fixtures, with lamp shades: those little fruits in paper husks. 

The zucchini astound and appall me: so much production. I paw through the helmet-sized leaves and arm-spiking stems, weaving my head around, trying to get a glimpse into the thicket only to be blocked by a leaf-in-the-face, to save the younglings. Lest a youngling zucchini Become Forgotten, pumping itself into an obscenety of vegetative pornography. "WHY" I say for the 5th time out there, and also, "More?!", and also: "Noooooo....."

I have been eating zucchini for lunch for the past 2 weeks. I eat with the crops: I can't wait for the storm of Kale. But zucchini pan-toasted with pesto, cut raw into sticks and dipped in amazing mustard, sliced onto salad, in zucchini-pineapple muffins....

Basil beguiling, bopping up bush-fully, begging to be rubbed in palms and inhaled. The aroma of the Thai Basil just about makes me curl my toes with glee: how is it that a simple smell can be so utterly captivating.

My office friends see this job glorified and sometimes I point out the repetitive non-creativity of it, the waste of grown vegetables, the endless weeding. And other times instead I am swept up in the romance of it: of standing to stretch my back and gaze out over the sweep to the lake, of watching a bumble bee greedily bustle about a squash blossom, of seeing everybody grow and flower, of the good sleeps and the endless hunger from outdoors work.

Yesterday, because of this rain, I was indoors flustering with labels on the computer. A screen: all day. It has been months since I've done that. At the end of the 8 hours I limped over to wish Bossman a good evening, and added--with spinning eyes and fogged head--how hard it was to focus on computer tasks. And I used to do it for weeks on end as a graduate student. "Yeah," he said knowingly, "working indoors is just hard after you're used to outside." 

I am a chameleon changing color with the seasons: in the winter I am white like the offices, in the summer I am brown as the soil. Or browner: I noticed the other day the dirt on my body was lighter than my skin.

I am loving this summer.