There's No Middle Way With An Aubergine

I was beginning to despair of the aubergines I planted this year. They were sown from seed at the same time as the tomatoes and the peppers. The tomatoes have been prolific, as have the peppers, but the aubergines? Nothing. I didn't know what to expect, really, having never grown aubergines before (mostly as I am ambivalent about eating them). I had certain expectations i.e that the plants themselves would be lush and bushy and that the fruit would appear in the summer some time. Other than that I was easy on the aubergine front.

So, when the plants took an AGE to get to about 10 inches high, and the leaves didn't wander far from the stalks, and nothing much else was happening I thought, the aubergine is going to be my vegetable nemesis, which didn't bother me that much because, as I said, I am not bothered whether they are available to eat or not.

Last week, the status auberginus in the polytunnel was the same as it has been all summer. There were tiny purple flowers, and I mean tiny, and no sign of anything exciting and vegetably happening. I thought, next time I'm here, I'll dig 'em out; I need the space for some winter cabbages.

But then when we went up the allotment this morning, there they were! Real live, fully grown aubergines!! A whole handful size each, just dangling off the plants, looking like they had been there for WEEKS and making me feel like I had been blind to their existence.

So now I am convinced there is an Aubergine Elf. A minxy little creature who lulls you into a false sense of failure vis a vis the growing of the aubergine, and then one night comes along with a wheelbarrow loaded with the fully grown finished product and sticks them to your pathetic little plants for you to find in a most unexpected yet strangely exciting way.

And now we've got them, lots of them, I suppose we'll have to eat them...

Finally, here are some photos of my new hair and my old kitten and sometimes a combination of the two. The hair-do is being remarkably good about being washed and falling into place without too much faffing. The kitten is being remarkably bad at flinging herself at me in order to view her domain from the vantage point of my shoulder which involves, to some extent, the digging in on claws if she feels she is losing her balance or needs to climb higher or dismount.