The truth is that I had practically forgotten about them. Charge me with negligence if you must, but they hadn't given me much cause for titillated anticipation. I had sown the seeds in mid-May, and the several times I had "dip sticked" their progress through the summer they had demonstrated almost supernatural antipathy toward growth. More than once I had mistaken their willowy little fronds for weeds, and no doubt more than one was aborted through just such confusion. As late as August, when a young visitor accidentally uprooted one, it could have been mistaken for a jaundiced pea.
All this, plus the fact that I didn't have much invested in them besides space. I hadn't actually intended to plant carrots in the first place. The seeds were a free gift from the seed company from which I had ordered several other varietals of higher interest for this inaugural season. A bonus. An afterthought. I had committed them to the ground, and largely left them alone.
So it was that yesterday, in the course of my ongoing winterization of the garden -- dismantling fence panels, uprooting steel posts, mulching, manuring and the like -- that I happened a glance in their direction. Ready, I must admit, to have the spaces officially put to bed, I determined to dig up whatever might remain -- if anything. There were, I could see upon closer inspection, glimpses of orange peeking up above the surface; more, I soon discovered, down below. Dozens of them -- short and stumpy little Parisienne Carrots. A harvest where I least expected it.
There is probably more insight in this windfall than I really want to internalize -- my biggest harvest from my most neglected and forgotten sowing -- but I'll stew on that another time. For now, I am simply humbled and grateful for this serendipitous gift of the garden -- a penultimate harvest, as it turns out, since I did eventually leave the immature kale still giving growth their valiant effort. Maybe if I ignore them, they too will flourish and bless before winter settles in.
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