THE CRUNCH...

I'm not sure what it was, it may have been the cucumber letdown that followed Wednesday's Ice Cucumber-tasting post, or perhaps it was the photograph I used, which is heartbreaking to me in its own cruel way (you'll notice that this post has no heartrending illustration), but it seems that I'm experiencing once again that old cucumber crunch that comes over me at the start of another homegrown-cucumberless summer, as reflected in the fact that Ken Rodgers sympathetically brought me a couple of gorgeous home-grown cukes yesterday, in a kind attempt to ease an anguish that has no release, really: the crunchy green depression I experience upon recollecting former times in which I too grew my own cucumbers...

Happy is the man who can grow his own...

For such recollections inevitably summon horrific images of hordes of screeching, red-faced simians fleeing my garden with one home-grown cucumber in each hairy paw and one clenched in teeth, just ahead of my home-thrown rocks. Growing cucumbers under such circumstances is like watching your infant walk a tightrope for six weeks, a state of mind that is not borne without, eventually, babbling.

So I gave up growing cucumbers as I gave up growing onions, and for solace turned instead not to some esoteric vegetable religion, but to actual spinach, lettuce, chard and various herbs, among the many other things there are that cannot be compared to fresh-picked homegrown cucumbers, crunchwise. Like giving up your Ferrari to drive a hatchback, it leaves a big gap in the spirit charts.

I suppose this crunch too will pass in time, the essence of freshness...