inspired by a salad
what i remember:
walking out the garage and down the path past the shadehouse filled with papaya cuttings waiting to take root. the heat and smell of the plastic covered greenhouse tunnels hitting you in the face as you opened the doors on a baking summer day. the way the cucumber plants grew upright out of plastic bags of soil. the yellow flowers that could be snapped off the end of the cucumbers after they had grown, but never the flowers themselves on the vines. the furry, spiky, silvery hairs on the branches that could be touched but made you think they would stick a thousand little needles into your skin.they didnt. picking and packing with wilson, the gardener. the plastic wrap machine that was our industrial strength cling wrap friend. you could wrap anything in that, and the red hot wire that cut the plastic ready for the next thing to be wrapped was undoubtedly the most interesting thing a 10 year old boy could watch. the brown boxes with the green stripes down the side, and 'dr smith's plant inn' written in green: that was him, our dad, the doctor. jumping on and off the railway station weighing scale after the boxes had been weighed and put in a carriage ready to be shipped off to who knows where.
but most of all, eating a slightly dusty, not yet wrapped, never washed, off the vine english hothouse cucumber, and crunching and grinning as the green juice ran down our chins and onto our t shirts for mom to wash off later.
and something i never told anyone: my secret wish that when shopping at the local supermarket we would go and pick that days vegetables to be eaten for dinner, and we would pass the cucumber section where there was an english hothouse cucumber with a small sticker that said 'dr smith's plant inn'.
i wonder.
walking out the garage and down the path past the shadehouse filled with papaya cuttings waiting to take root. the heat and smell of the plastic covered greenhouse tunnels hitting you in the face as you opened the doors on a baking summer day. the way the cucumber plants grew upright out of plastic bags of soil. the yellow flowers that could be snapped off the end of the cucumbers after they had grown, but never the flowers themselves on the vines. the furry, spiky, silvery hairs on the branches that could be touched but made you think they would stick a thousand little needles into your skin.they didnt. picking and packing with wilson, the gardener. the plastic wrap machine that was our industrial strength cling wrap friend. you could wrap anything in that, and the red hot wire that cut the plastic ready for the next thing to be wrapped was undoubtedly the most interesting thing a 10 year old boy could watch. the brown boxes with the green stripes down the side, and 'dr smith's plant inn' written in green: that was him, our dad, the doctor. jumping on and off the railway station weighing scale after the boxes had been weighed and put in a carriage ready to be shipped off to who knows where.
but most of all, eating a slightly dusty, not yet wrapped, never washed, off the vine english hothouse cucumber, and crunching and grinning as the green juice ran down our chins and onto our t shirts for mom to wash off later.
and something i never told anyone: my secret wish that when shopping at the local supermarket we would go and pick that days vegetables to be eaten for dinner, and we would pass the cucumber section where there was an english hothouse cucumber with a small sticker that said 'dr smith's plant inn'.
i wonder.
posted by rob at 9:28 am
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