Yvonne Steel called The News office on Monday because she was excited at the success of her work in the vege patch.
Her beefsteak tomatoes were huge – and the behemoth pumpkin seeds from Mitre 10 had done their bit and produced a good sized vegetable, albeit cut short when it fell off the vine. More are to come.
Now any journalist will tell you that it’s folly to run a summer story about vegetables. It encourages all sorts of people to feel obliged to announce they have something bigger.
But this isn’t about size, it’s about envy.
Because Yvonne has a little dog called Athena, who doesn’t rip out vegetables by the roots.
We have a one year old chocolate lab called Bailey whose myriad offences, usually committed when she gets to sneak into the kitchen after we’ve done some baking, extended to, on Monday, jumping into a vegetable bed and ripping out our burgeoning cucumber plant.
In her defence, it’s been suggested Bailey was innocently helping herself to the cucumbers (which were nowhere to be seen) – having seen me pick them.
But in King St Cambridge Yvonne has no such issues. Her third season of plantings all over the section has produced a bounty of cabbages, corn, edible pumpkins, silver beet, capsicums and tomatoes. There might have been cucumbers, but I didn’t want to look.
But even though Yvonne saw great humour in my loss, I’m pleased for her – she has lived in Cambridge for 30 years, she was a familiar face back in the early 2000s at New World and she has cared for the elderly and is also one of the delivery people for your Cambridge News.
There will be no shortage of fresh vegetables – and strawberries – for the remainder of summer from Yvonne’s garden.
I hope Bailey doesn’t like tomatoes.
Yvonne Steel with Athena, who doesn’t uproot vegetables
