This episode takes a slight turn
As we veer off our regular programming
Hello friends,
If you have followed me for any length of time, you will quickly notice this week’s post takes a sharp left, or is it right, from my usual Saturday mind meanderings.
I love a challenge and signed up for one in March on writing micro fiction and non-fiction. Except for my children’s picture book manuscripts, my writing remains firmly planted in the non-fiction corner of the literary world.
The prompt for Day 22 of March Micro Marathon left me uninspired. I’m not a big fan of surrealism, but I do enjoy the bizarre playfulness of René Magritte’s black-suited men in bowler hats floating in the sky in Golconda.
“Write what you know,” they say. I gave the assignment my best shot and headed for my sandbox of words and photographs. Join me in a slight diversion into surrealistic micro-fiction.
Things You Brought In From the Garden
Bob, I never questioned your obsession with your garden. You called it your happy place, a serene escape from bad news and onery people. The ten-foot wire fence you constructed last spring should have given me a clue, but your story about keeping the deer and rabbits from eating precious tender sprouts made sense. Planting the Wisteria on each corner seemed innocent enough. Why wouldn’t you want to add more flowers to attract the bees to pollinate the squash and zucchini?
Nothing could have prepared me for the harvest streaming into my, otherwise safe kitchen. Every day, I feared the next basket of body parts cultivated from the wormy compost that you watered daily with glee.
When you brought in the legs, I thought they were interesting until the orange spindles began dancing across the counter. I would have cooked them, but they ran off with the kale lady from yesterday.
Our neighbor got a kick out of the butt, so he took pictures and sent it to all his friends. That tomato stormed off tooting down the hall searching for … well I just won’t go there.
I was ready to burn the garden when the phallic zucchini arrived all smug and proud of its appendage. I hid that one in the back corner of the vegetable bin.
Some days, you filled your bucket with ears, pieces of noses, and twisted faces scrunched in pain. How you delighted in vegetable bodies, but I never wanted to criticize or scorn an innocent pastime. Why shouldn’t a retired man wile away the hours amid the singing birds, tilling the soil, watering and humming to things growing in the garden?
Until you startled me. Under the worn straw hat, a lettuce head with red radish eyes, a roguish grin with upturned bean lips shuffled through the door. If not for the voice, I wouldn’t have recognized the being with the garlic clove nose, cucumber fingers, cornstalk legs, and watermelon protruding from your paisley shirt.
They say people often resemble their pets. But honey, you outdid yourself plotting along in the garden. I hope you enjoy your new bed tucked away behind the parsley snuggled up with rosemary. Stay warm.
I’ll be back next week with our regular programming.
And of course, a song for Bob and Rosemary: “Me and BOBby McGee.”
“I used to visit and revisit it a dozen times a day, and stand in deep contemplation over my vegetable progeny with a love that nobody could share or conceive of who had never taken part in the process of creation. It was one of the most bewitching sights in the world to observe a hill of beans thrusting aside the soil, or a rose of early peas just peeping forth sufficiently to trace a line of delicate green.”
—Nathaniel Hawthorne
If you want to read more from me, visit my website. I’ll be there waiting for you.
With gratitude,
Kathryn
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Dear Kathryn., I was finishing off a longish comment on this wonderful post and saying how good it was to catch up with you again - it's been a while. The screen refreshed itself and took my almost completed comment with it. I'll try and condense what I said ... I loved your writing style and humour in your micro-fiction. I was also telling you about a company we have over here called Oddbox. They deliver all sorts of odd-shaped fruit and veg. that the supermarkets won't take because they're not 'perfect' or uniform enough, would you believe! We have forgotten what 'real' fruit and veg look like. I particularly like the carrot legs; sometimes I get a rude version of that - I'll say no more and leave it to your imagination! I'm really looking forward to reading more of your micro-fiction, although I've missed most of the month, and here we are, nearly in April. Take care, Kathryn. Xx 🥒🧄🥕💕
P.S. For some strange reason, I am unable to 'like' your post using the heart. Every time I try, it tells me to subscribe. As I'm already subsribed to your blog, it just won't let me do this. Do any of your other readers have this issue or is it just a glitch that is affecting only me? Xx