Avocado Monster: A Brief Intermission

My husband has been on a gardening kick lately so that when he sees anything in our kitchen sprouting, he wants to put it underground and nurture it. Or anyhow, he wants to put in under soil, in a pot, on our balcony in east Oakland.

I'm very excited about this new venture, as I am always happy to eat the fruits or vegetables of a delicious, gainful passion.

In the past three months, we've had loqaut pits in our fridge, sprouting between sheets of moist paper towels, which although they took three months to sprout from the soil, are actually now reaching for the cloudy Bay Area sky. We've had cherry pits, which didn't work. At least I don't think anyhow that they are on our porch. Sometimes I don't get all the seedling info because I have shown a slight tendency towards treating plants perhaps not as well as he does. We also have English peas porchside that were once sold to me in a pod at the Oakland Temescal farmer's market. They are now at least three inches high, curling at the ends, and probably the cutest little vegetable I've ever seen. We also have tomatoes out there, but I'd rather not talk about them because they haven't been properly loved by the sun around here to reach their full potential. Very sad.

And there are others, but the latest vegetable excitement around here comes in the form of a pod. It's an avocado monster. As it requires one of the most amusing forms of support and care while it comes into avocado fruition, I thought I'd share the beginnings of our new plant with you. I've heard they take years and years. And years to grow, into a fruit-producing tree from the earth, so this might just be the most entertaining that this avocado is going to get for a while.



With it's paper clip arms barely keeping it submerged above water, it reminds me of a monster from Howard the Duck. But I bet that Howard couldn't win this battle. My husband has the pod's back and he's here to make sure that "it does it's business" in the light of my office's window sill.