Wall of Shame, No. 1: Pickle or Pear?
From The Test Garden
There are moments in every gardener’s life when she must stand back, survey what she has grown, and take pride in what she has accomplished.
Unfortunately for me, this is not one of those moments.
I cannot tell you how excited I was to find these Burpee Dill Pickler cucumber seed packets at the local library, because pickles are one of my mom’s favorite snacks. I thought, They would be perfect for the inaugural vegetable Test Garden experiment.
When we were young and starving, desperately searching for something to eat in our fridge, whining that there was no food in the house, our mother would always reply, “What do you mean?! We have… peanut butter… and… pickles…” as if they were two of the five essential food groups.
It began normally enough. I planted the seeds a few inches apart in fluffy potting soil in a beautiful window planter. In just about the longest 10 days ever, I saw my first sprouts, followed by flower blossoms.
A few weeks later, the vines began their slow ascent up the trellis. I had every reason to believe I understood what was happening.
I was watering every day. Or maybe it was every other day. It was pretty hot, and I admit, I wasn’t as fastidious as I could have been.
By the time I found it, the cucumber had adopted a chartreuse color and resembled a baseball more than a pickle, but hey, don’t judge a book by its cover, right? Does that apply to vegetables?
I FaceTimed my sister, the Southern Rose Correspondent, about my recent mishap. She has always had the green thumb in our family.
She advised me that perhaps I shouldn’t disclose my gardening faux pas, as my little “venture” might backfire and cost me subscribers. But then I asked her, “Well, isn’t that what a Test Garden is for?”
So naturally, I did what any serious garden publication in this day and age of social media oversharing would do.
I posted my harvest on Instagram Stories and asked the public.
PEAR OR PICKLE?
All photos by Parsley & Petal
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The results were decisive.
Maybe it wasn’t as bad as I thought. I ended up slicing the pickler cucumber and making a sweet cucumber salad. It was delicious.
Things Get Worse
Unfortunately, it had friends. I found other cucumbers, or former cucumbers, and brought them both inside for further examination.
At this point, I could have thrown them in the compost and quietly moved on. Instead, the artist in me put them on white linen and photographed them. The result was reminiscent of an oil painting by one of my favorite artists, Cézanne, Still Life with Quince, Apples, and Pears. My high school art teacher would have been proud, God rest her soul.
Apparently, more than a decade working as a fashion stylist and producer in New York led directly to this moment.
And that was when I saw it. Abbott and Costello.
See what I mean?
For those unfamiliar with the American comedy duo, you can view a picture of them here. The composition is uncannily dead on. One tall and lumpy. One short and round. Together, waiting patiently on a piece of rumpled linen for someone to explain how their promising careers had come to this.
I have no explanation.
In My Defense
Cucumbers are supposed to be easy.
This is the sort of sentence gardeners say immediately before making another gardener feel terrible.
I can grow hydrangeas and am pretty good with roses. I can even renovate a lawn. I have moved plants around the yard often enough that several of them should probably have forwarding addresses. But apparently I cannot be trusted with a cucumber.
There are lessons I should deduce from this. I could discuss harvesting at the proper time or investigate pollination. I could analyze watering, temperature, nutrition, and the various other indignities that might have befallen Abbott and Costello.
But today is not about personal growth. Today is about accountability.
Welcome to the Wall of Shame.
100% pickle.
0% Dignity.
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