The End of a Leafy Era

I can’t say I’m sad to see it go.  The massive kale and collard green plants in our garden have gone to flower and having grown to umbrella size, survived a plague of grey dusty mites, weathered a blazing hot arid summer and a cold winter, are finally dropping leaves and preparing for the Final Countdown.  At some point in the next few weeks, if all goes well, I’ll yank the plant from the ground like Arthur pulling the sword from the stone.  “And who so pulleth this kale from the dirt and roots is rightwise king born of all the garden.”  When I remove the kale plant we’ll discover a quarter of our garden that has been masquerading as a tropical rainforest, with pygmy tribes and undiscovered lemurs in the undergrowth.  Though deprived of a roofing material for many fairy houses and blankets for slugs and snails that Child Harbat has “rescued” from the garden, I’m sure we’ll make do without the fifty metric tons of biomass this plant was producing on a weekly basis.  I was ashamed to have so much food sitting dormant on a plant in the front yard but one can only eat so much kale before you sprout horn and hoof and start answering to “Bessie”.  Goodbye, kale plant, I hardly ate ye…

About Peter Soutowood

Writer, architect, father, husband.