Truly Beet

          Once again I have been duped in my garden. I feel like Jack-and-the-Canola-stock, but I’ll come to that later.

First, I want you to look at this pathetic little beet that took months and months to grow, being a winter crop:

It was time to harvest the cold weather stuff and make room for the summertime plants which always include tomatoes, herbs, peppers, basil, and squash.

But what you don’t know is that last summer I painstakingly chose seeds from a catalog so I could grow all kinds of goodies the average nursery doesn’t even offer (Tennis Ball Lettuce, for example, which never sprouted). My favorite was the Chioggia Beet, which looks totally festive and fabulous with its peppermint stripes:

But it was not to be. Instead I got the sad-looking little sprout pictured above, and it wasn’t even striped when I cut into it. Come on! I have pulled plumper weeds! 

          But then get this: In my row of Brussels Sprouts, we suddenly have this humongous bush: 

Obviously a mustard seed (or a canola seed, even farmers struggle to tell them apart) got into the envelope and now St. Bob has staked this out as his personal project, thinking he’s going to grow mustard seeds for a faith lesson of some kind. But what if it’s the faith of a canola seed?

All I know is that this reminds me of the dreadful summer when I calculated that each of my tomatoes cost $18. And that lousy beet was $7.  Time to hit the Farmer’s Market instead. Wish I had a cow to trade for some interesting beans.

On the other hand, my books are a true bargain. Nothing seedy, nothing that will beet you up.