This time, it's my fault

It all began at the HippyDippyville farmer's market, which convenes each Sunday downtown. Sorry, in "Old Town," that's what the locals call this intersection of two streets with stores selling (mostly overpriced) antiques, tie-dyed clothing and incense, vintage clothing and sunglasses, and some restaurants (where you can have tofu even for breakfast). It's quite cute, but more tchotchkified than useful, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, the farmer's market. Lots of organic produce, local-esque, and the colorful denizens of HippyDippyville out sniffing, weighing, pinching, and buying it. After living in close proximity to the Berkeley Bowl and various Bay Area farmer's markets for years, my produce standards are unreasonably high for the east coast, so I don't really make a point of going -- how many pounds of $4.50/lb heirloom tomatoes does a girl need? But yesterday I was strolling about with a new friend, and found myself entranced by the collard greens. Not just because cruciferous greens are good for you, and because I love them all (except for kale -- why so goddamn curly? it seems excessive), but because these collard greens were the biggest I had ever seen. I give you Exhibit A.

I felt I needed other comprehensibly sized objects for comparative purposes, but my tiny little arms only extend so far,
so it kind of looks like I'm cheating. (Like the Peanuts oh-so-small kite that turns out to be not so high in the sky after all.) So although I consider myself more of a qualitative social scientist, I turned to quantification.

(Werlinsky, if you're reading this you can see that I still use those zoomies all the time.) There you have it: 18ish" in length, 14ish" in width. Comparable to a palm frond, no? The kind your loincloth-clad servant fans you with when the heat of the day gets to be too much. (If you are wondering if I compelled my friend to fan me with the giant collard green leaf like the aforementioned loincloth-clad servant, the answer is "yes, yes I did." Shameful, no? Imperiousness -- always the best way to build a social life in a new place.)

People, there's still more. A few stands down, I found myself once again entranced, this time by some decorative gourds. Now ordinarily I am not the kind of person who likes or buys the autumnal decorative gourd -- just like dried out cobs of multi-colored corn, I don't know what to do with them: what, an artful table arrangement? Then what? But these gourds, they looked just like birds. Slightly warty, oddly colored birds, yes, but birds nonetheless.

With the loan of some Playdo from Queen Esther, conveniently located one town over, this little flock now makes its home on my coffee table. Slightly more problematic is my friend the extra-warty green and orange little penguin, shown here in spooky Halloweeny mug shots.
Its bottom is excessively pointy (sorry, little penguin, TMI?), and I don't have the structural engineering skills necessary to get it to stand upright. So for now I'm carrying it around in the pocket of my black hoodie, and it's keeping me company as I give out treats to the neighborhood kids, so fetchingly becostumed. But now I too have felt the lure of moving vegetables up the animacy scale -- and it's pretty hard to resist.