Garden with Character(s)

We once grew an eggplant that was the spitting image of Richard Nixon.  Long, bulby jaw, with a ski slope protuberance that captured the precise line of his nose.  I wish I had kept a photo of it, but that was in pre-digital days.  However, each gardening season produces one or two truly bizarrely shaped vegetables.

I had gone digital by the year we had our "From Here to Eternity" carrots.  When I pulled them out of the ground, they were entwined in a clearly amorous embrace.  Just imagine these two on the beach, with surf lapping at their greens, and the ghosts of Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr hovering above...

Can't you just hear the waves lapping at these two?

This year's weird veggies have been more gross than sexy.  But some years, that's what you get.  We had a zucchini that couldn't bear to part with its blossom.  Usually, the blossoms drop off to reveal a nice rounded, single-cheeked zucchini tush.  But in this case, the blossom clung on and on, until the zucchini simply incorporated the shape of its petals and turned them into a very convincing large scale model of a slug.  The only thing it was missing were the stumpy little antennae... and the slime trail slugs leave behind when they crawl away.

Best impersonation of a slug by a vegetable

The slug-chini was joined that day by a haunted carrot, which looked like it had two grouchy trolls trapped inside it...

Trolls trapped inside the carrot!

Happily, both of these tasted far better than they looked.  There's little that can't be improved with a bit of olive oil and a fair amount of garlic.


The flip side of this anthropomorphic produce is the occasional perfect specimen -- the eggplant that glistens with photogenic droplets of early morning dew...

Glorious Aubergine

... or the tomato that offers a tantalizing promise of ripeness in just a day or two...

Two more days of sun, then Yum!

... as long as we keep that voracious raccoon out of the garden!