Maybe not all fruits and vegetables have human personalities, but mine do. Like many other animal lovers, I’ve imposed human traits on the dogs and cats who joined our family over the years: Kaylee, an eccentric golden retriever; grumpy Abigail, a black and white long-haired cat; Tessa the Vague, a calico whose internal calendar always seemed to be missing a couple of Thursdays; sweet Rags, our great-hearted Old English sheepdog — and beyond all, Benjamin BadKitten, the misbehaving Maine coon cat I adored. I gave BBK such a big personality that he became the main character in many of my columns, including a story line about the unlikely friendship between my pampered BadKitten and a homeless tough-guy cat, whom Lee and I adopted after Benjamin’s death. Lee has noted, though, that I don’t stop at creating animals’ personalities. I tend to portray fruits and vegetables as sentient beings, too.
I’ve written about Artemis, a temperamental diva tomato plant, and Chococola, a hardworking cherry tomato. Wimpy broccoli that surrendered to an invasion of cabbage moths. Sour green apples the size of ping-pong balls. Failed crops of carrots, fennel and lettuce, slackers all. Impassioned pep talks to my team of pumpkin plants. Readers understand that I don’t belong in the same patch with horticultural experts.
I’m an impetuous gardener who writes about the joy of growing flowers and the challenges of producing edible fruits and vegetables. Flowers are beautiful and fanciful, with lovely fragrances and romantic names: Canterbury bells, Kiss Me Over the Garden Gate, Stargazer, Love in a Mist. English garden flowers. Cottage gardens. Ruffly petals and sweet-scented bouquets. Vegetable names, though? Turnip. Parsnip. Carrot. Rutabaga. I love cooking with and eating vegetables but, as topics for a garden column, where’s their poetry, their aura of romance? If I don’t come up with personality traits for them, they’re all just grubby roots.
Planting season doesn’t start for another four months, but seed catalogs have been dropping through our mail slot since before Halloween. Back then, I was still dazed and overjoyed that my spunky pumpkin team had produced a crop of 300 pounds — nearly a seventh of a ton.
Now, though, thinking too hard about how to outdo a fluke like that would put way too much pressure on my pumpkins and me. This year I’ve decided to float even farther into Cloud Cuckoo Land, starting with the varieties of pumpkin seeds I’ve ordered. A creative title on a seed packet typically attracts me, but in past years I also considered a pumpkin’s potential as a chubby jack-o’-lantern. This time, though, I didn’t worry about the fatness factor. Leftover seeds reminded me all too clearly of last year’s duds, expected to produce seven big honker pumpkins, weighing 100 pounds apiece, but actually topping out at a pathetic 30 pounds total.
My newly ordered pumpkin seeds are varieties I’ve never grown: Moranga, a Brazilian squash with light pink to salmon-colored skin; ghostly white Lumina; drum-shaped Australian Butter; One Too Many, white skin overlaid with reddish lines; Troll, blue-green splotches and button-like bottoms; Triamble, three-lobed blue heirlooms; Colorado Sunset, multicolored flat, stacking pumpkins, and Red Witch, scarlet with gray stripes.
Last year I reread the 4,200-page Harry Potter fantasy series, set at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. I reentered a world of magical adventures, courageous young protagonists, dry-witted professors, a soulless villain — and Hagrid, the beloved gamekeeper, who grew gigantic pumpkins in his vegetable patch. In May I’ll set aside one raised garden bed for planting only magic-themed pumpkins: Troll, Lumina and Red Witch, as well as Bellatrix and Scream, two varieties I grew successfully last summer. This eerie clique might be spellbinding enough to conjure their own personalities.
Craft Rozen hopes she never stops believing in the magic of storytelling. Email her at scraftroze@aol.com
