Portrait by Venture Photography, Greenwich, CT
The middle of the growing season always reminds me of 1944, the year I fell in love with an eggplant.
I was nine years old and stuck with seeing a lot of the daughter of a war widow, a close friend of my mother. Antoinette-of-the-beautiful-name-and-long-blond-curls was eleven, two heads taller, didn’t wear glasses and could do everything better than I could—ballet, piano, ice-skating, whatever. Something else: We had to collect scrap metal for the war effort. So, while Mother was busy getting somebody to pull down a cruddy old smokestack from a building down the block, we kids were seeing who could roll gum wrappers into the biggest ball of tin foil. Antoinette beat me at that, too.
But I sure topped her on one thing: Behind our apartment building we had a communal victory garden where I grew an eggplant much bigger than hers. A giant. I left it proudly hanging there until it rotted and fell to the ground.
Fast forward to Riverside, 1962. Older and wiser (supposedly), I now had a spacious back yard and a mother-in-law whose gardens in Philadelphia made the pages of national magazines. Believe me, if she had Cedars of Lebanon, they were the real deal. (A consummate traveler, she’d return with seedlings tucked into the toes of her shoes and manage to get her suitcase through Customs.)
So I listened attentively to her instruction about cultivation but soon reverted to form. For instance: After I read somewhere that plastic keeps down weeds, I threw a shiny black tarp on the ground, punched holes through it, popped in squash seeds and voila! No weeds, but zillions of slimy slugs underneath and, on top, squash vines that blackened from the bottom inch by inch, finally turning the yellow blossoms to yuck.
I planted my next vegetable garden under a dogwood by the kitchen door, where I grew incredibly gritty lettuce (couldn’t wash it well enough), big tough string beans (couldn’t pick them fast enough) and tomatoes stunted from lack of sunshine. But I was terribly proud of my basil, until I brought a bunch to the office and was told it was mint, mint that had grown in profusion next to my basil and had taken on some of the taste.
My hats off to those who know their beans—be they gentleman farmers like Ted Ewing and Don Miller whose lush kitchen gardens once inspired me to write an article called “He’s Well Known in his Field.” Or kids like the mini-contestants in a Green Fingers Garden Club show where six-year-old Evelyn submitted a clay pot of dirt sprouting one tiny carrot. “Peter Rabbit would love it!” emoted the judges.
But I’ve always had trouble with vegetables. In fact, last year I almost lost my health insurance because of them. United Health had sent a nurse to the house for its annual visit, and she put me to test. “Count backwards by fours from twenty to zero.” No problem. “See how many fruits and vegetables you can name in thirty seconds.” A-ha! So I started singing “Pushcart Serenade”, a patter song from my childhood. It has verses such as: “Oh pears, pears, we’d make a lovely pear/Peaches, peaches, the peachiest anywhere/Oh lettuce, oh lettuce get married today/Honeydew, honeydew say you’re mine to stay” –interspersed with rambling lists of produce and ending with “And we’ll raise a family—a baby lima/We’ll live on my celery.”
The nurse thought I was crazy. Didn’t crack a smile. But I must have passed, because I’m still getting bills from Mutual of Omaha.
Anyway, I have to run. I’m on my way to the Farmer’s Market to check out the cucumbers. The celeriac, too—that ugly warty frog prince of vegetables that’s so great mashed up with potatoes. See how smart I’m getting? Finally!