Carrots

Don't these just look lovely? Last year was the year of the carrot, in my garden. Carrots are frequently planted around here, but last year I went a little overboard and planted lots of carrots.

These were called "Purple Haze." I also planted an assorted rainbow mix that had orange, yellow, and white carrots, each with a different flavor. Then a bunch of the cheap 11-cent (on sale) packages of Nantes and Danvers half-long.

Which turned out to be unwise, because right around harvest time, Hubby got his crazy food-sensitivity test results back, and guess what was on it, that he had to avoid for a good long while? Yep, carrots. They didn't specify whether Nantes, or Purple Haze, or whathaveyou; apparently carrots of all kinds were bad for him.

So -- all the months of prepping, planting, watering, weeding, thinning, etc, while pregnant, were to (mostly) no avail. Eventually, when we harvested the popcorn in it's entirety, I begged Hubby to preserve some carrots. He dug a hole, put in a burlap sack, dug up one (yes, only one, doggone it, but I had to leave to nurse the baby) row of carrots, stuck them in the sack, then filled in the hole.

And Fall turned to Winter, and Winter lasted forever, until it gave up occasionally for Spring to visit...

And I decided I needed carrots to make some soup for a friend.

So I went to dig them up.

I dug.

I dug some more.

I dug over here.

I dug over there.

I dug with a fox.

I dug in a box.

Just kidding.

But I dug four holes where I was certain that burlap of carrots was buried. But with the corn out, and the weeds dead, my sense of location was all off-kilter.

So I gave up.

Later, Hubby came home and he dug in a few more places and... found it! He dug up the sack and emptied it on the lawn so I could hose them off. Three days later I gathered up a few to add to my soup. I daresay it wasn't enough, considering the time and effort that went into the original carrot crop, but it was something. By the way, the Purple Haze Carrot is only purple on the outer layer, and when cooked it turns to orange. They look very cool grated into salads though!


Next time we'll plant a flag.

Which means I should maybe plant some carrots pretty soon.