How Does Your Garden Grow?

“Look what I have,” my husband announced as he walked into the house from the yard.

I glanced up from my desk to see his proud expression. That was when I noticed the green bundle clutched in his hand.

“First asparagus of the season,” he boasted while moving to the sink to rinse off his treasure. “They will be perfect for dinner. We can give them a quick cook and they will go nicely with our chicken.”

I nodded my head in appreciation because the idea of fresh asparagus sounded delightful. While my husband washed and trimmed his harvest, I reflected on the joy that homegrown vegetables bring to him.

My husband learned to garden as a child. While he often claimed to dislike his youthful chore list in the yard, somewhere along the way he developed an avid green thumb. Now as an adult, he can’t wait to cultivate his spring plot. Many winter evenings, I find him in his chair with his seed catalogs, dreaming about warm weather.

“So, what are you going to plant this year?” I asked him over dinner on snowy evening in February.

“Oh tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, maybe potatoes,” he rattled off before faltering, “and maybe one more thing.”

The hesitancy in his voice made me look up from my plate. I knew what his halting words meant.

“You’re not going to plant…,” I began, “not…”

“Relax, it’s one row. It’ll be fine. How much can a few plants really produce?”

I felt my jaw start to tighten and we locked eyes in a telepathic stare. Instantly, my husband got the point. Years of marriage had perfected this mode of communication for us.

“And what will we do when it all comes in?” I asked.

“I have some new recipes this year,” he began, “great new ideas and preparations.”

I groaned. Was he serious? This was how it all started a few years ago.

“Look, son,” my husband said as he showed off his bumper crop that lined the kitchen counters, “It’s all the eggplant that we could ever want!”

My teenage son, still sweaty from ball practice, looked around the kitchen in horror. Never had he seen so many large, glistening eggplants invading his home turf. For a moment, he was speechless. I watched in helplessness as my child’s gut told him to run, but his panic quickly gave way to defiance. He turned to his father and held his ground instead.

“I’m not eating that,” he stated flatly.

My husband seemed genuinely shocked, which made me wonder if he understood anything about adolescent brain development. I shook my head at my spouse. How could he possibly be surprised? What normal kid would choose eggplant over, well, anything else?

And so, the battle began. To his credit, my husband did try everything. At first, I would often find him frying thin slices of eggplant right before dinner.

“Nope,” my son said when the platter came his way at the table.

“Look, I made lasagna,” my husband coaxed to our teen one afternoon.

I watched my son suspiciously eye the dish, then count the remaining eggplants within his view.

“Pass,” he leveled, aware of the trick that resided in the sauce covered layers.

But the final straw came after my husband had exhausted his creative ability to use God’s bounty. With eggplants finally given to all of our friends and enemies alike, my husband threw the remaining dark purple vegetables into a pot with fresh tomatoes and made ratatouille.

In all fairness, the simmering stew smelled wonderful, which I knew would make my spouse’s culinary failure even more spectacular.

“What’s for dinner,” my son asked.

My husband rattled off the menu and then mumbled, “and ratatouille.”

And that was the moment of impact. My son could no longer contain himself. Like a true red-blooded teenager, he erupted like a volcano.

“I can’t take this!” he spat. “How am I supposed to eat this stuff? I can’t live like this!”

He grabbed an apple and a bag of Doritos and stormed off to his room. An hour later, he emerged long enough to eat a full dinner, minus the ratatouille of course.

Now as I watched my husband lovingly prepare his first stalks of asparagus, I wondered about what our summer meals would look like, especially if our son decided to stop by and join us.

“You know,” I began, “it could be trouble if we serve eggplant to the kids for dinner.”

My husband smiled. Then he turned to me with an expression of self-assurance that started to make me nervous.

“It will be fine,” he said. “I have a new recipe for eggplant parmesan, not to mention that I have a plan for the end of the crop.”

“Plan?” I asked.

“I’ll just put on that Disney movie,” he confided. “You know, the one about the rat and after everybody has relaxed, we can head to the dining room. I’ll tell them that life is intimating art and then I’ll dish up the real ratatouille!”