Strange Fruit

We've had a garden this year, my family that is, for the first time in ages. I'm not an enthusiastic gardener, but have to admit that it's nice to have some green tomatoes. Really green. Not just the half ripe ones they send us from California in February.

One of the things we planted was carrots. Not really having more than half a clue, we bought them already sprouted in one of those black plastic pots. What looked like dozens of tiny ferns packed together so tightly, I didn' t want to separate them in case I killed them all.

I just popped them out of their cribs and put them in the ground in a lump. They grew that way all summer. But the odd thing is that they didn't grow straight down, like normal carrots. They wrapped around each other in remarkable ways. We've got corkscrews and blobs and all sorts of indescribable contortions that are physically impossible to peel. Not sure what I'm going to do with them. But they look cool.

Harvests are funny things. Extravagant, overflowing with stuff you don' t even remember planting and aren't sure how to preserve. Or use.

At Dinner on Wednesday night, we were told by the manager of the Motel that in the last two years, this little corner of town has gone from being number one on the cops' list of hotspots, all the way down to number 5.

Did we plant that? No idea.

It's the kind of thing that's impossible to peel and I don't know what to do with it. But it looks cool.

But I still left Dinner angry. E. has been given a letter of eviction effective October 1. Ostensibly because she hasn't paid her rent. However, she has a collection of receipts proving otherwise.

She seems to be a particular focus of harassment and anger, for reasons I don't understand fully. (A while ago we had a discussion about whether she's being targetted because she's part of our team and it's part of spiritual warfare, or whether it's good that she's part of the team because she's being targetted. Hard to peel.)

She's been told by the manager that we're only her friends because we feel sorry for her, that she only still has her room because he feels sorry for her. That she's a troublemaker and a drunk. Her lock has been cut off twice in the last week, once because she'd left her TV on when she went out.

But what really made me mad was listening to the same man at Dinner telling me that it's good that we've fed "them" good food, but now we need to, and I quote, "feed them you know what." By which, I assume he means the gospel. The same 'gospel' he's been preaching for the last several years in between name calling, threats and rights violations.

I'd like to feed him "you know what". And I don't mean the gospel.

Peel that.

r

Comments

Anonymous said…
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
L.Bo Marie said…
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.