Spudnik

Had a phone call from a friend a couple of months ago; she asked if I would like some seed potatoes as she had purchased some for her garden and realised she had too many, would I like the excess to put in my garden and grow to have for Christmas dinner?

Of course, without hesitation I said, “Yes please, that would be nice. Thank you.”

Consequently a small plastic bag of little, dirty, sprouting potatoes arrived at my front door a day or so later on the end of the arm of my friend.  A generous gift methought and accepted that plastic bag as one usually accepts a gifted chocolate box, with delight.

Only then did I think to myself, “Verna, you don’t have a vege garden.  Where or what are you going to do with these sprouting potatoes?”

“Immm…,” I thought back to myself.  “That’s a very good point.  I don’t actually have a garden really, let alone a vegetable garden.”

After friend left I stood at my kitchen bench looking out the window down at our very small back yard and viewed the clumps of flax-type plants arrayed in a sorta garden arrangement out there and laughed at myself.  What a clutz! Not only is there no real garden, but I live on the slopes of a volcano and the entire ground is made of volcanic rocks.  Even our neighbours bring in big rock braking machines when they want to dig anything up for house or garden additions.  How can I make a garden for these sprouting spuds?! 

When that phone call came the ideology of planting new potato seeds in a garden so they could be harvested for Christmas seemed such a lovely picture.  How delightful that would be.  Or so I thought at that moment, without thought.

Oh how Tony would be rolling his eyes and shaking his head at me over that. 

Imm… as Verna Cook-Jackson is so prone to do, I put the sprouting potatoes away in a cool, dark place and decided I would ponder on this conundrum at some later date.  Verna Cook-Jackson is an ace at procrastination – especially when situations appear to be in the too difficult, too hard to sort out category.  Thus a cool, dark storage place seemed the best place to put the conundrum items until some magic moment when I would think of how to solve the problem would occur. Or not.

Thus the problem was solved, until a couple of weeks later when the gifting friends happened to ask in mid-conversation, had I planted the potatoes yet?  Well, no, I hadn’t.  So I said exactly that.  “Well,” says she, “you’d better get them into the ground very soon or else you won’t have lovely, sweet, new potatoes for your Christmas dinner.”

“Yeah, I know that,” snarkily retorted the procrastinating one, in the hope the short retort would stop her enquiring further as to my yet unknown planting plans.

A week later I was about to see this friend again so I thought she’s bound to ask the question again, damn it, so it was time to stop the self-delaying tactics about what I was going to do with her well meaning gift of sprouting spuds for Christmas and actually do something about it.

So I went out to the backyard one Saturday and began to dig out some of the flax bushes.  I had by this time decided that those clumps of flaxy stuff would go and thus leave earth space for spuds. 

Well, one does not dig out a flax bush.  I can promise you, digging does not work.  One has to axe out a flax bush.  Dynamite would have been easier.  And quicker.   I thanked Tony for being such a DIY man that he had willed me a garage full of a wide variety of axes, saws, crowbars and machetes – all carefully stored over the years just for the day when his darling wife would have to seek them out and spend hours, and hours, and hours, and days, and days, and days, and hours, and hours and days and hours in hacking, chopping, mashing, axing the damned flax out.

And then the proceeding and resultant problem – so much of the chopped and hacked out bits of flax and roots and only one small green garden bin.  An extra bin had to be ordered.

Days and days later there was one shattered, almost broken, dirty, sweaty widow standing in a patch of dirt about 3 foot by 3 foot – without a flax leaf anywhere.

So.  You think that’s it done then?  One then just plops a sprouting spud into the earth now exposed? 

Nope.

You see, as mentioned before, I live on the base of a volcanic cone.  I live on volcanic rock.  One drop of the spade into the soil to turn the soil over and ‘clunk’ metal on volcanic rock.  Clunk, clunk, clunk.  Wherever I drop the spade, clunk, clunk clunk.  Oh that’s right, that’s why we planted the flaxes there 17 years ago – cause they grow easily in volcanic rock.

Nothing for it but to dig up the rock.  Days and days and days and days and hours and hours and hours later there is a pile of volcanic rocks ranging in size from ping pong balls to giant meteorites piled high in the other 3 foot by 3 foot piece of back yard.

Thus the next problem - disposing of the great pile of rock.  What does one do with a pile of rock that cannot be nonchalantly placed in the weekly garbage collection?  Well, one gets up in the dark early in the morning and carries each rock, rock by rock, from the back yard down to the park at the end of the street and carefully places each rock on top of, or alongside the volcanic rocks already carefully placed there by the Auckland City Council landscape gardeners to enclose all those giant flax bushes they so nuturingly planted some years ago.  My volcanic rocks are barely discernible.  But the well worn pathway between my back yard and the council garden is trodden well, as are my hands, finger nails and back.

All this was finally achieved by the Sunday just gone.  To late for Christmas dinner new potatoes for the family, but in ample time for mid-to-late summer new spuds to accompany the BBQs.  So, after a tortuous 100km bike ride in the morning I arrived back home about lunchtime and thought, “Hurrah!  Today I finally get those sprouting spuds into the ‘garden’.”

After unloading the car of all the bike gear, clothing and paraphernalia one seems to have to endlessly unpack after any major training day – I picked up the garden tools, wheelbarrow and hose and reel and headed to my piece of finely dug over 3 foot by 3 foot ‘garden’.  All dumped down there ready to plant.

Now to go get the spuds.  Ah, yes, of course, I now need the spuds don’t I ? … to plant them.  OK, into the garage to get the spuds.  But… are they in the garage?  Of course they are.  But where in the garage?  “I don’t know,” I mumble to myself, “somewhere in a cool, dark place in here.” I look everywhere in the garage – in every dark, cool space – and there are scores of them in my garage.  But they are not there.  But they must be!  But they are not.

Where have they spuds gone?  !!  An hour later after searching the garage several times, methinks that maybe I didn’t put them in the garage.   “So be logical Verna, where would you have put them as you know you put them in a cool, dark place?” That’s me, thinking to myself.  Ah ha!  Under the house, maybe  …. or in the laundry, maybe.  An hour later, no sprouting spuds.

I have a well dug over 3 foot by 3 foot spud patch, but no spuds.  Cannot find them anywhere.  Had I thrown them out by mistake?  Had someone else moved them? Nicked them?  Couldn’t have, there is no one else here?  Have the cats eaten them?  Have I?  Naahhhh….

No spuds. 

Come 4 o’clock that afternoon I packed up the garden tools, the wheelbarrow, the hose and reel and came inside.  I had given up.

And then I thought.... Verna ....you don’t eat potatoes!  Since Tony died you have not brought one potato.  You eat kumara.  Not potatoes.  So what the hell was in your mind to say yes to those damned sprouting potatoes!??  

Then I got angry, like an angry potato – boiling mad.  I was a boiling hot potato!  A potato head!

This was a good time to have a chip on my shoulder!

All this and I don't even like potatoes.  And I had no potatoes!  And no flax.  And no rocks.  But a 3 foot by 3 foot patch of well dug up and over soil.

Guess I will just have to fess up to my friend about having lost her potatoes.

And I did.  The next day – when someone else within my friends hearing distance asked how my potatoes were going.  I looked at him as though he were nought but a small fry (love puns!) and fessed up that my sprouting potatoes had disappeared.  But quickly added (in the hope of diffusing any major disappointment on her part) that I did now have a nicely dug up piece of garden.

Friend took it relatively well actually.  Surprisingly well.  She even offered that come Christmas she would bring me over some of her own newly dug up new potatoes.  How sweet.  Particularly as she must have felt a teeny bit hurt by my lack of custodial parentage given to her lovingly gifted sprouting spuds.  

What a gem.

So I can let her know now ….. that the potatoes have been found!  In a cool, dark and safe place.  In my dressing table drawer.