The Broccoli Debate

For three years, the broccoli failed in my garden. For all the time I spent planting seed in the house, talking to it hiding in a pot under the artificial sunlight, later digging a hole and putting water in and letting it absorb, then transfer while talking to it again assuring it that it will like it in its new home so its roots can grow, it never did. It does not like the climate, I decided.

I was depressed. I went out driving on the long winding roads that looked like broccoli stalks. The green bushes on the country sides were the same bushy tops. The clouds looked like them too. The farmer with bushy hair, the girl is the green ankle-length dress, the English bulldog, the constable directing traffic tweeting on his green whistle, the bar sign swinging in green breeze, the olive groove, the green parakeets in the cages for sale in the store window, my wife chopping off green onion tops. Everywhere I went, broccoli teased me: try again.

I gave you three chances, I mention angry and yet apagogically, and three times you rejected me. Try again, it encouraged seductively. Why should I? The garden without broccoli frowned with abject disgust. How dare I not try another time? After all, four times could be the charm.

The next thing I knew, I was planting seeds in a pot, cooing and almost begging, please little broccoli, grow for me. I could almost hear the mocking snickering from the soil.