cucumpkins
So we planted cucumbers this year. Pickling cucumbers, small little manageable things, ready to lead us into the unknown world of fermentation. We planted them a little too early, perhaps, but placed them appropriately deep into our composted soil, and waited for growth. The first few sprouts looked alarmingly like the remnants of last year's zucchini (known for its tenacity), so Peter spent an afternoon pulling out about 150 "zucchini" starts. Then a few weeks later, the zucchini sprouts came back, so we pulled the starts once more and replanted with newly purchased pickling cucumber seeds. I watered the garden diligently, and everything seemed to be in order this time around. We went on vacation for a week, and when we came back, roughly 25% of the backyard had become this massive squash-like sea of leaves, male/female flowers, and bees a-pollinating like crazy. We had beaten the zucchini, there was no way we weren't getting cucumbers this time around, considering that they were taking over our garden as if it were nothing more than Belgium or some other insignificantly flat/historically overtaken country.A few weeks later, our neighbors came by, and brought us gifts of spaghetti squash, tomatoes, and cucumbers. I dumbly stared at them, surprised that they had cucumbers so early, as ours weren't yet producing, despite their sovereign-nation-like size. I dragged said neighbors to the backyard to see if there was anything we were doing wrong, but they assured me that they looked like any old squash; we were sure to have cucumbers soon.
Then, about a week and a half ago, I went outside the water the garden and bent down to inspect the cucumbers. I jumped back - there certainly was something down there, but if it was a cucumber, it had a tumor. A HUGE tumor, a tumor that made me feel itchy, like I needed to disinfect even the soil it lay on. In an ominous sign that I will be a terrible mother, I decided to ignore the garden for the rest of the week, thinking that maybe the tumor would go away. Peter came home from one of his wilderness trips soon thereafter. As is his custom, he immediately went to the backyard to inspect the garden. I trudged back there to join him, ready to feign ignorance and shame at not caring for my cancerous squash. But he was laughing: "Jess, they're pumpkins! We have pumpkins!"
I'm so absolutely excited about this, purely for the aesthetic reason of putting them on the front porch come October. I guess the pumpkin seeds must have found their way into our compost after last year's pumpkin party….and then they were placed into our garden along with the rest of the compost, and - here's the thing - NO MATTER WHAT WE DID, they were going to grow. We planted new seeds over them twice, and they grew. We likewise ripped out their first sprouts two times, and still they grew. We're reaping the consequences of last year's actions. We wanted tiny pickling cucumbers. But we will receive 20-pound pumpkins. I'm sure there's a metaphor in there somewhere.
posted by jessica @ 4:45 PM
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