Cranky aubergines

Mme Reid-Gaillard writes

the indispensable kitchen

garden blog referenced in

Context, and captures the

volatility of the season 

as few have done, in her 

current entry:

    You always blame the 

weather for the fact that 

your aubergines are a few 

centimeters shorter than 

the neighbors, your hot 

peppers have only started 

flowering or your tomatoes 

persist on remaining green. 

It's a gardeners preroga-

tive to moan!

I don't think one could put dismay with one's aubergines any more poignantly than she has done, especially in her adoption of the comparative frame of reference; and with the season now so advanced upon its evanescent trajectory, who can afford to wait for hot peppers to reach veraison? This is horticultural cruelty at its nakedest imperviousness to aspiration, to say nothing of good works and good will. Nor is this ultimately a matter so much of knowing that somewhere a neighbor is proffering a plusher aubergine, as it is a crisis of underripening, per se, in which the very shade of the fruit proclaims it, never mind its scale. Moan? Rage, rather, against the persistence of tart hues.

One feels an almost natural 

dread of tribal culling in 

any botanical failure, and

while she manages to keep

it together with resilient

culinary wit, I know there

are many of us whose first

recourse might be to our

usual suspects, the gods.

I, for my part, have too

much respect for the pow-

er of prayer, and can ill

afford an overcorrection,

of clumsy side effects.