Emotional Toaster

August 04, 2004

Ode to the Persevering Pumpkin

Fence Pumpkin © kjo 2003

This picture was an example of my last attempt at gardening. We have a little area in our yard that is fenced in. It is a patch about 20 feet long by maybe 15 feet wide that was at one time a little dog run for the chihuahua who owned our house before us. When we moved in I thought,"what a great little garden area this would make." A fence to keep out all manner of cruciferous chewing critters and also make the veggie patch look all neat and orderly. So out I went, spade in one hand, seed packets in another, ready to feel the soil between my fingers and add a bit of life to mother earth.

After an excrutiating number of hours, a large loss of fluids from my pores, and a half dozen or more odd and extremely worrisome bug bites, I had tilled the land and deposited the pods. Pods that would one day break forth from this mighty ground and bear us a heaping helping of some of nature's finest fresh fruits and veggies.

As the months went by, I quickly grew tired of the daily pulling of errant grasses and disturbingly spiny weed like protrusions. I grew to hate the dirt that accumulated beneath my short but tidy nails. I loathed the fact that I couldn't just haul my brand spanking new Martha Stewart Harvest Basket out to the garden and load it up with ripe, bulbous, multi-colored roughage, glistening with dew. I wanted to dance my way back to my well organized, yet lived in looking kitchen, and whip me up a fresh meal decorated with herbs that I hand raised and carefully snipped with my special Martha Stewart Peaches Herb Scissors. I wanted to gleefully deliver the extra bounty to all my friends and relatives who would look at me, tear in eye, hand over heart, exclaiming their sheer delight and appreciation for my greenish thumb.

Hell no..not on this plantation!

What started out as a warm hearted, let's get back to the land, and feel one with mother earth moment had turned into a sour, bitter, resentful task. One that I dreaded each day and made every excuse not to do. "Uh, I think it's too wet out to weed", or "Do you think there may be to many mosquitos out there..you know we have that West Nile thing going on".

Needless to say, eventually the garden was left to lay fallow, untended, and unloved. Oh, occassionally I would wander out and grab something that appeared to have grown large enough to take in and fry with something or other equally unappetizing. But generally it produced only an extreme over abundance of zuchinni squash and roma tomatoes.

I started to feel guilty about allowing the zucchinni to rot on the vine. So I picked it..and I hauled it inside and decided I had better make good use of it. However, it seems that you just can't give that shit away. Sure, offer a friend or acquantance a fresh vine ripened tomato or an ear of corn and they are all into that. But offer up a bushel or two of freshly picked, dirt encrusted squash and they will make every excuse under the sun.

"Ya know, I just got a half a truck load from my mom, if you had only asked me last week".

So what could I do?

I went in search of zuchinni recipes online, and found a fine little ditty that would turn out to be a moist and delicious green tinged muffin. I packed em full of chocolate chips and walnuts, to mask the obvious vegetable aroma, and baked them to over-flowing in my Martha Stewart Make It Like Martha Muffin Tin. I wrapped them delicately in pastel cling film left over from Easter, and I proceeded to lovingly hand them out to people at my work place.

They adored them. They offered to pay me for them. So I began to charge, 50 cents a muffin. I couldnt keep up with the demand.

Finally the last zuchinni was shredded and the last muffin was handed out, and my days as a farmer happily came to an end.

Well almost.

It seems that I'd forgotten that I had planted a crop of late blooming pumpkins in my own little victory-less garden, and come October, the suckers came exploding into the yard, a mass of orange ovals crowding the ground like beach goers on the Fourth of July. Every inch of sandy soil was covered in them. I gave up. I had been defeated. There was no way I would spend my autumn months hovering over a steamy oven churning out puffy pumpkin petit fours or moist Jack-O-Muffins. I was done! So I let it go.

Finally in late November I meandered out to the yard, to see if the last of the crop had dried and whithered when I discovered the fence pumpkin. One oddly shaped pumpkin, wedged artfully between the slats of the fence, hanging there, untethered and hopeful. I was amazed. I ran in and grabbed the camera and snapped the above shot. And then I left it there. Left it to finish its days the way a pumpkin should. Hanging out, looking odd and bringing joy to everyone who would see it, even if that was only the odd rabbit or a mouse or two, and whomever might someday see this pendulous pumpkin on the web.

It served us well...even if it never became a muffin!

Posted by craicgirl at 10:40 PM | Comments (2)

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August 04, 2004

Ode to the Persevering Pumpkin

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