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• The Tale of AsparagusJuly 15, 2023

  When I was younger I hated asparagus. I hated it so much, I couldn’t even use its full name. I called it, Hairy Beans. The problem was, my family really liked it. My parents would make it often enough and inevitably offer it to me. ‘Here try some,’ they’d say. ‘Maybe you’ll like them better this time.’ No. I never did. I didn’t like this annoyance, this intrusion into my dinner of a strange looking/tasting vegetable, but I learned to handle it.

  One day, things got a little more real. We had a garden. A large one. There was a plot of land next to our house that my parents turned into a garden. Half of it was grass and fruit trees, and the other half was the garden. I hated helping in the garden because it was boring. Mainly I had to weed, and in a dry place like Utah, that is not always so easy. Next to the garden, my dad had a compost pile. It was his pride and joy. Pre-internet, it was a little harder to accumulate knowledge on things like getting the perfect compost pile. He tried though. He checked out books from the library. He talked to others he knew that had mastered the art of compost. But his problem was he couldn’t get the inside of the pile warm. I don’t know why it is supposed to be warm, but I learned that it’s very important. My dads worries came to an obsessive head one night when he dreamt that his compost pile was on fire. He woke up recharged, full of life, and determined.

  One day, my dad came home with a strange root. He set it on the table in the garage. ‘What is that?’ I asked. I thought maybe he had pulled it from the garden. Possibly a sacrifice for the beloved compost pile? The answer came garbled in slow motion at me. ‘It’s asparagus. We’re planting it in the garden’

  Things had gone too far. I could tolerate Hairy Beans once in awhile in the kitchen, but growing in the garden? Nope. He walked into the house, and I looked around for a place to hide it. We had an old trash compactor that my Dad had taken out of our 70’s era kitchen when he remodeled it. I opened it up and put it in. Problem solved.

  Two years later, My parents were going through things in the garage. At this time, my dad finally opened up the trash compactor where my foe had been well hid. He pulled out the asparagus root astonished. ‘How did this get in here?’ He turned to my mom, ‘Did you know this was in here?’ ‘Of course I did’, she answered.

  My dad was rightfully confused. After talking, it turns out, my mom thought it was some kind of gardening technique he was using to keep the asparagus fresh. He was always trying new things to keep our garden going. I was found out to be the mastermind behind it all.

  They planted it. It didn’t grow very well, given Utah’s arid climate. The next year something new was planted in its place but the legend of the Hairy Beans lives on.

  

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