Harvest Time

“Look, look, look!” shouted Bruce standing in his garden holding a large green vegetable in his arms, while extending them above his head. His shouts of glee went unheeded, but his enthusiasm did not diminish. “Look!” he shouted again but this time he addressed those in the house by name. His wife Janet and their three children, Elizabeth, Virginia and Timothy. The call to action was received with mixed emotion. However, knowing that the man of the house wanted and needed, based on past experience, their adulation, they decided to amble on to the deck. The youngest child, Virginia, the one he had named the family’s drama queen, had to be cajoled into joining them with a promise of a spoonful of treacle when they returned indoors. Soon the railing looking out towards the vegetable garden was lined with the remaining four members of the family.

“What’s that?” asked Janet sounding very pleasant which of course she wasn’t, because she was in the middle of her mandatory mug of high-test coffee which she needed in order to begin her day.

“Kohlrabi!” shouted her husband in all his gardening glory.

“Kohl?” what asked the drama queen.

“It’s a vegetable, Ginny. A vegetable you can eat.” No, she wasn’t impressed at all and looked at her mother.

“Can I have my spoonful of treacle now please mummy.”

“In a minute when we all go back inside,” she replied.

“So, let’s go,” she insisted pulling at her mother’s dress.

“Ginny, let your father go through his little song and dance routine and then we can all go back inside.”

Bruce’s son, Timothy, who had been promised that all he needed to do was gain entrance to the most prestigious university in the land and if he managed that, his father would pay for it, didn’t want to do anything that might jeopardise his chances, smiled, “Kohlrabi? Cool!” and that was as far as he was prepared to go.

“How do you cook it?” asked Elizabeth.

“You don’t,” replied Bruce and then lowered his arms and looked at the vegetable, “I think,” he added. “You peel it, slice it and put it on salads.”

“Can we go back inside now?” asked Virginia in a louder voice. “It’s hot out here and I may melt.”

To say the least, Bruce had his balloon badly deflated. It was obvious that his family were not overjoyed to be outside in the sun watching the man of the house trying to get the rest to share in his excitement.

“I thought you grew those for the rabbits,” asked Elizabeth. Her mother agreed.

“No, no,” he explained thinking that maybe if he threw the vegetable onto the compost heap he would get more of a positive reaction to his gardening skills. “I didn’t grow it for the rabbits dear, I grew it to taunt the rabbits dear.”

“And are they tainted?” asked Virginia.

Bruce rolled his eyes, “not tainted Ginny, taunted.”

“What’s taunted mummy?” she turned to address her mother who was about to leave the railing and return to her mug of coffee in the kitchen.

“Making fun of Ginny,” replied her mother.

That of course got the natural reaction from a 7 year old, “why would you taunt animals, daddy? They are your friends. You must treat them like your friends” No, this really wasn’t going the way Bruce thought it would, when he ventured out into the garden as he did every morning before he went to work. He was very proud of the rather large vegetable garden in which he had planted everything from tomatoes to, red and green cabbage, red and green peppers, three different varieties of eggplant, and of course 4 Kohlrabi plants, amongst others needless to say all organic.

“I’ll look up on the internet as to how to cook the kohlrabi,” he offered as a symbol of peace which was taken exactly the opposite way it was intended. Instead of drawing his family into a debate about the benefits of the new vegetable and its ability to transform a mundane meal into one of great delight, Martha turned and walked towards the mudroom door. She was closely followed as always, by her brood in order of seniority, which meant that Virginia being the youngest would have to close the door behind her. Something she invariable forgot to do.

“Close the door, Ginny!” shouted her mother as she appeared in the kitchen after stopping on her way to retrieve the can of treacle from the pantry. “The air conditioning is on,” continued Janet, “and we don’t want to cool the neighbourhood …..”

“Especially,” finished Elizabeth, “because they don’t help pay the bill.” She smiled at her mother to head off any possible criticism she might have for being redundant.

“Exactly!” replied Janet. Virginia turned and slammed the door just so her mother knew she had done so. She then placed the can of treacle on the table together with a spoon and waited for her mother to open it and live up to her promise. She did so without any more speeches about its high sugar content.

They heard the mudroom door open and in walked Bruce with the large leafy vegetable in his hands. He placed it on the table and as soon as he did, a bunch of small yellow insects with black spots came racing out of the leaves and ran looking for more protective cover. So did Janet and the children after screaming for a couple of seconds.

“Oh, come on,” replied Bruce kind of embarrassed he hadn’t shaken the leaves before bringing it indoors, “it’s only a little extra protein.” Well, that did it. Any hopes he had of getting the family to love the vegetable went out of the window.

“That’s not staying in here,” scolded Janet now with the fly swat in her hand. “Get that damn vegetable out of the house.” And what was poor Bruce to do? Nothing but listen to his wife’s commands, and with that, he turned around and went back outside and laid it on the table on the deck. He had spent too much time and effort cultivating that vegetable to throw it out and let the rabbits eat it. If the rabbits had professed a dislike for the vegetable, then he would’ve thrown it out, but he was not going to give them any pleasure.

After putting the kohlrabi on the table, he returned to the family in the kitchen where Janet pushed his mug of coffee across the table to him. He was certainly deflated. Not another word was said about the kohlrabi.

Just before he went to work though, he walked out onto the deck to see the kohlrabi and found it was gone. He looked down at the garden and to his disbelief he saw a rabbit munching on the leaves. He was about to go back inside and ask who had thrown it on to the lawn when Virginia came outside and said, “daddy, I saw the rabbit run on to the deck, jump on the table and run away with it.” He had his answer. It was time to go to work.