Wednesday, May 25, 2005

Carrots

I live in the Canary Islands. They are part of Spain, but situated off the coast of Morocco.

Our house is a new building. Before we moved in, we had a long period where we were dragging our son, Julio, round with us to choose bath taps and floor tiles and so on. The poor kid got very frustrated because we wouldn't let him chose anything – like we were going to spend 20 years living with a 6-year-old's taste. So to relieve the frustration, I told him he could choose what we planted in the front garden. Then I hastily added "Anything in seeds," because the garden is only about by 12ft by 4ft, and a California redwood wouldn't fit.

Julio nodded very seriously, and said, "Carrots."

My jaw dropped, but I'd promised, so we planted carrots. It was a pain because we still hadn't moved in, so I had to go round to the new house every three days or so to water them, all summer long. But they tasted great. And when we eventually moved in, it was really handy for giving directions, because oddly enough, nobody else in the village had a front garden full of carrots.

Sheila Crosby