CUCUMBERS WANT TO BE YELLOW

You could have knocked me over with a vegetable of just about any kind, excepting maybe a sprout. While at last clearing out the garden for some fall planting and reaping the last of my summer rewards, like hidden tomatoes, secret chard sprigs, fallen peppers, unclaimed potatoes etc., in a fold of the winter netting that during summer is suspended from the east side of the fence (where this year there was a small funnel-shaped paper wasp nest that was attacked by an osuzumebachi that took one larva, that I saw; maybe the whole nest was later wiped out by osuzumebachi since, not long after, it was suddenly abandoned) - this sentence is beginning to take on the multidirectional quality of autumnal garden clearing -

Oh yes... after pulling down the withered cucumber vines I could now see, down in the fold of that net, a long, thick yellow fruit of kind I'd never seen before. I couldn't imagine how it had gotten there, whatever it was. It wasn't a yellow squash, since none of the squashes I planted were climbers; it was too hefty and anyway a monkey would have to have dropped it, and monkeys do not drop priceless whole food items they've gotten a good thieving grip on.

It couldn't be a goya either, since those climbing vines came up later this summer from last year's fallen fruit, and the new fruits are not yet developed (if they ever do; it's an experiment). So I reached down in the netfolds and got the fruit out; it most closely resembled the yellow straightnecks that were growing in situ on the other side of the garden. I broke it open, found that it was a fully developed cucumber, and realized for the first time the fact of the title.

Always a staggering experience, learning the inyerface things we never had a clue we didn't know.

MEGATERIYAKI REPELLENT?

While I'm on the subject of aggressive food, thought I'd take a brief tangent into the flavor lab of Dr. Bizarro and mention the cucumber soda that's coming out, here in Japan only, for this summer only. Pity for you folks living abroad and in other seasons.

You'd have to go a long way in my brain - assuming there's any traversable distance in there at all - before you might stumble across a couple of meme fragments you could cobble together into something resembling the idea of a cucumber-flavored soft drink. In fact I think you'd only find it outside my brain, and perhaps only in the brain of a Pepsi exec. It's one of them who came up with liquid cucumber in a PET bottle as a cool concept for a summer drink. My personal feeling is that cucumbers should flavor themselves and little else. But this is big biz, big test marketing and lots of press action, though mostly on the Huh?? end of the spectrum.

In keeping with the genuineness of the times there is no actual cucumber in the drink, or even cucumber coloring, it's completely artificial, except maybe for the water, but even that, who knows. Perhaps it could be used to fend off an attacking Megateriyaki.

I think I'll have try one though, just to rein in the restless edges of my disbelief. Besides, the chance may never come again. But I'll be very impressed if I'm even slightly delighted.