Passions

Dad is out back, speaking to his swedes and turnips. He only grows tubers, root vegetables, that I sullenly refuse to eat. There is one flower a Passionflower, 'Passiflora Incarnate' that clings to the garden fence. I could not see any passion in it, until mum showed me the creamy crucifix within the blue and white corona. Dad belly laughs as mum, showing me, piously makes the sign of the cross. Dad is digging up a real beauty, that's what he called it, a 'real beauty', a soil crusted cannonball, the monstrous offspring of a cabbage and a turnip. He was not a religious man, but he did believe fervently, in those strange passions some have for cabbage soup and mashed turnip.