folie d'aubergine

I am extremely annoyed with my eggplant plants. Pissed in fact.
In late May I carried them home tenderly from the garden center. On the Victoria Day long weekend, when every Canadian with a patch of grass happily squanders their hard earned money on bags of dirt and manure*, I brought home 4 lovely starter plants to grow my very own eggplant. I gave them prized locations in my very tiny garden. I watered them, fertilized them and watched over them like a mother hen. One plant was promptly eaten by a squirrel. The other three grew lovely, huge leaves and promising purple flowers. Then nothing. June, July and August passed. Not an eggplant in site. Notta one. Now it’s the end of September. Any day now we’ll wake up to frost and all the plants will be dead. And what do I find on my plants? Six shiny, smooth, elongated, dark purple eggplants. Each is a couple of inches long. At most they’ll be 3 inches before I need to pluck them and save them from a horrible frozen death. How daft could these plants be to lazily, greedily enjoy three months of warmth, water and food, and then choose to sprout their fruit when winter is around the corner? Why now and not 2 months ago? Stupid stupid plants.

*there’s nothing I resent more than having to pay perfectly good money for dirt and manure. It’s dirt for god’s sake. Now that I think about it, I resent that slightly less than having to pay tens of thousands of dollars for a ‘try’ at getting pregnant. Something the vast majority of the rest of the world enjoys for free.