Root Specimens

In the Spring of 2006 my mother and I planted an assortment of vegetables in our garden, which lies in the virile southeast corner of our lot at 2 Rusholme Dr. In order to keep our neighbours from violent retaliation (as they are predominantly Portuguese), we were forced to plant many tomato vines in our garden. But we also decided to plant red and romaine lettuce, eggplant, purple kolrabi, red cabbage, and various herbs to pepper the gaps. Since our garden received more than its required share of sunlight, and since last summer was a wet one, our garden grew as if it were some poor farmer's hot-ticket science expirement gone terribly wrong - our lettuce stalks grew almost four feet high (if you are imagining a four-foot head of lettuce, please stop and imagine a wilted head of lettuce with large shoots bearing small yellow flowers growing out the center of the head instead. That's what it looked like. Or imagine the giant head of lettuce, because it's more fun), and the cabbage leaves made bosky allusions to elephant ears.



Ah, but The Kolrabi, it turned its energy towards producing swollen red bulbous nodes the size of footballs from which its leaves could sprout, and resembled something more alien than even the pugs and curious muts that sometimes trounced our small latticed garden fence. Most of the garden plants were either eaten or pulled in the fall, and most all the rest were quartered and dissolved by the processes of winter months. But the three mutant Kolrabi, they survived through to three days ago, when I finally pulled the stalwarts from their soil because the snows had cleared and the sun and warmth had thawed the plants and they were starting to stink, like rotten cabbage. These plants were unique, and I thought they should be documented, so I called my neighbour Jeremy Jansen, and he brought over his equipment and we shot our specimens hanging from a string (which was Jeremy's idea). These three photographs are the result of almost nine months of preparation on the part of the Kolrabi, and a few serendipidous moments on our part.