The Ugly Vegetable Plot

Digging for clues to the purpose of a creepy crop of creepers

Tony knew something was wrong the second he stepped inside the polytunnel. The curved structure made of clear plastic and steel hoops was full of sprouting plants. However, he only sowed the seeds a week or so ago and the abundant vegetation looked nothing like the pictures on the seed bags. Tony had not the faintest idea what plants were growing in the plastic greenhouse.

He ventured into the structure and inspected the multi-colored vegetation. The most recognizable plant resembled a marrow. The fat, cylindrical vegetable was already the size of a rugby ball. But Tony did not plant marrows. There were large purple fronds, bluish grasses, a profusion of crimson, cabbage-like plants, and exotic flowers that looked like eyes and seemed to track him as he made his way along the neat beds. The umbrella-sized leaves of several shrubs were tightly packed together like the scales of a giant green dragon.

 “What the hell is this, Tony?” said Stan from the door of the polytunnel.

Stan was the manager of the communal garden – or allotment as it was known locally – and oracle on all things green. He held the all-time record for polling the lowest number of votes as a failed Green Party candidate. Stan surveyed the organic monstrosities emerging from the polytunnel’s soil. He gingerly fingered an orange waxy leaf, wiped the fingers on his faded anorak, and flicked his ponytail back over a shoulder – a sure sign that the green warrior was upset.

“We didn’t agree to grow any of this. What is this stuff, Tony?”

“I’ve no idea.”

“What d’you mean – you planted the buggers! Christ, I take a few days off and come back to a cross between Star Trek and Gardeners World.”

“I don’t know what happened, Stan. I planted string beans, leeks, peppers, and Jerusalem artichokes like we planned.”

“Jerusalem artichokes! Did they relocate Jerusalem to Mars or something!” scoffed Stan, his balding crown – every surviving hair was pulled back to support his ponytail – glistening in the polytunnel’s lights.

Tony eyed the tangle of misbegotten flora he had apparently seeded. It seemed as if some of the plants had visibly grown in the short time since he entered the greenhouse.

“You’ve got to be kidding!”

Again, the shout of indignation came from the doorway, but this time its source was retired tax collector Cynthia Fairweather.

“I knew you were up to something, Tony,” she spat and jabbed a thick forefinger in his direction.

Cynthia stomped into the polytunnel, donned reading glasses, and peered closely at the marrow-like vegetable, which seemed to throb with virility. She straightened, breaking her spectacles as she thrust them angrily back into the case.

Her internal sump of bitterness and resentment welled up. It was formed more than three decades ago at the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games. Cynthia represented Great Britain in the women’s shot-putting competition and was expected to win gold. However, she was roundly beaten by two Russian athletes and had to settle for the bronze medal. Cynthia contended that illegal steroids gave the two women their victories. She had a point; gold-winner Olga Navlenski had more body hair than a wig makers’ convention. The injustice sat and festered within her, souring the women’s natural competitiveness.

Cynthia confronted Tony. He considered disappearing behind the leafy shield of the undergrowth but decided the journey was ill-advised because it would be one-way. But the alternative was only slightly less intimidating. Tony was no shrinking violet himself thanks to his Irish farming heritage, but Cynthia’s body, from her close-cropped, steel wool hair to her fence post legs, was as solidly immovable as a dump truck.

“Don’t deny it, Tony, you’ve been sizing up my marrow with those beady eyes of yours for months,” said Cynthia, arms folded, black wool-clad legs set apart. “I bet you were going to enter this thing in the Nationals secretly, weren’t you?” she said and kicked the unwelcome vegetable. It did not budge.

“No way! That’s just your imagination, Cynthia,” replied Tony.

She fingered the strange marrow’s mottled skin and sniffed the area around it. “How did you grow this monster, that’s what I’d like to know. I smell skullduggery, Tony, skullduggery!”

“Look, Cynthia, I’ve got no interest in growing giant marrows or anything any other overweight vegetable for that matter,” countered Tony but his voice lacked conviction.

In truth, Tony did covet Cynthia’s prize marrow, but not because he wanted to compete with her. The man had an unquenchable thirst for plant-related knowledge and wanted to know how Cynthia managed to raise such as a grotesquely proportioned member of the Cucurbitaceae plant family. Cynthia’s marrow resembled a mini-Zeppelin balloon. Soon, she would enter her baby into the England National All-Comers Vegetable Championships. The manic grower had won the prestigious competition two years in a row; a third victory would give her the trophy permanently.

Cynthia’s deep-seated mistrust of people was deepened by her mistrust of Tony. He was a retired customs officer, and she bore a grudge against this corps of officers she called the League of Louts. She was especially disdainful of individuals whose job it was to inspect passengers’ luggage at airports; Tony had ended his career in such a capacity.

Some years previous, Cynthia was passing through the “nothing to declare” exit at Heathrow Airport when a customs officer stopped her. This had never happened to her before. The man found a pouch containing powdered Siberian Ibex horn in her suitcase. Tibetan monks used the substance as a super-fertilizer. The customs officer detained Cynthia on suspicion of importing illicit animal products, and she faced a prison sentence if convicted. Olga Navlenski, the Russian shot-put gold medalist, rescued her. Olga happened to be passing through Heathrow at the time. The former athlete had made a fortune selling copycat shaving products through her company Gillettesky and was part of a consortium of Russian tycoons on a mission to buy Buckingham Palace and turn it into luxury apartments. Olga saw the kerfuffle in airport customs, and to her delight, that her old Olympic adversary Cynthia Fairweather was at its center. Partly for old times’ sake and partly to score another victory over her rival, the Russian oligarch used her influence to smooth things over and have the super-fertilizer returned to Cynthia. The incident added another bucketful of acid to Cynthia’s well of bile.

“Cynth, you have to go through the proper channels if you want to make series accusations like that,” chided Stan, and positioned himself between the bickering gardeners.

Tony was grateful for the manager’s intervention; a rare feeling for him because Stan’s officious manner usually chaffed like a shoe full of peas.

“Is that a fact?” said Cynthia. “Tell me, Stan, does throwing Tony in the compost heap qualify as going through an official channel?” she asked and took a step nearer her victim.

Stan held out skinny arms to keep them apart. Even though Cynthia looked capable of snapping the man’s limbs with her eyebrows, she ceased advancing on her quarry.

“There’s no need for you to take action, Cynth,” argued Stan. “Chances are Tony will be banned from our community after I’ve called a meeting of the management committee.”

“Banned! What do you mean, Stan?” retorted Tony.

The man with the ponytail reeled off a list of rules that Tony had contravened by nurturing the hideous plants that now appeared to be filling the polytunnel at an unnatural rate.

“Serves you right,” said Cynthia.

“But this isn’t my fault! I planted the right seeds. I’ve no idea why we’ve ended up with The Addams Family’s veggie plot,” implored Tony. “It’s something in the soil – that’s what it is.”

“What do you mean?” said Stan, immediately regretting the question because he had opened the flood gates to one of Tony’s conspiracy theories.

Stan desperately turned to his only escape route, but Cynthia’s billboard frame was blocking the door. He considered slashing his way out of the structure to escape Tony’s speech but would have to pay for the damage done to the polytunnel. He considered staging a fake heart attack. But it was too late. Tony had already started to expound one of his pet theories.

“We all know the history of this place,” he began.

It was common knowledge that the allotment was formerly a community rubbish dump that had received all manner of trash for decades. Its history prior to that was murkier, but the one that Tony had adopted concerned a government research center that stood on the site during the Second World War and for a few years afterward.

Tony traced all kinds of natural disasters back to this phantom center, but the one he favored concerned ugly vegetables. Consumers shun malformed vegetables – produce that is oddly shaped or disfigured with outgrowths – even though the food is perfectly edible. According to Tony, today’s produce industry in league with the government uses fertilizer laced with a nefarious chemical – developed by the research center during the war to dissuade starving German citizens from eating nutritious produce – to ensure that a proportion of all the vegetables grown in the UK are ugly. As a result, there is less good-looking fruit on supermarket shelves and hence less choice for consumers, enabling the industry to inflate prices to meet demand.

“More ugliness means more profits for companies,” concluded Tony with the smugness of a TV lawyer delivering a surefire case.

“What the hell has that got to do with this atrocity!” shouted Stan, pointing a bony finger at the alien marrow. He usually looked about a decade older than his thirty-five years, but the pumped-up veins crisscrossing his temples made him look even older.

“It’s obvious,” said Tony, pushing Stan perilously close to a stroke. “This chemical and God knows what else is in the soil, so it’s not surprising we plant one thing and get another, is it? And may I remind you that we get more than our fair share of ugly veggies in this allotment – right?”

Tony’s words unnerved Cynthia. Although she ascribed her prize marrow’s spectacular growth to the secret fertilizer she smuggled into the country, she suspected that the garden’s history as a municipal dump also had something to with its supernatural bulk. The last thing she wanted was to disrupt her baby’s growth cycle at this critical stage. She needed the blame to rest squarely on Tony’s shoulders.

“That’s nonsense, Stan. Yes, we get some weird vegetables, but nothing like this,” said Cynthia, nodding at the undergrowth. “Besides, how come no one else has had this problem?”

“Exactly!” concurred Stan, mightily relieved he had an ally.

“Maybe someone has had problems but didn’t bother to say anything. I suggest we ask around when everyone comes back from holiday,” said Tony.

“That’s just a delaying tactic. Don’t stand for it, Stan. Eject him, that’s what I say.”

“Alright, alright, Cynthia,” said the harassed manager, and flicked his ponytail which was as limp as a sedated squirrel in the polytunnel’s humid atmosphere.

Undeterred, Cynthia launched another verbal shot put. “The fact of the matter is that Tony’s using some illicit substance to create freaks of nature. And especially that obscene excuse for a marrow, which without doubt, will mysteriously turn up in the Nationals in a couple of months.”

“I keep telling you, Cynthia, I’ve no interest in your stupid competition.” 

Stan looked at them both and wished he could astral project to his home and curl up in front of the fire with a mug of liverwort liquor and the Green Party manifesto.

“Alright, I’ll prove it,” said Tony.

He took out a pruning knife and approached the organic demon.

“It doesn’t even look like a bloody marrow,” said Tony.

He was right. The vegetable had taken on a magenta hue and seemed to be breathing. Tony attempted to cut the vegetable’s thick stalk but to no avail. He tried again, putting his back into this time. The knife blade broke.

“What the hell is this plant made of?”

Cynthia and Stan were lost for words. Tony was now determined to prove that he was not trying to usurp Cynthia’s bid for the third-time winner’s slot at the Nationals. He looked around and noticed an ax. The other two looked on in stunned silence as Tony swung the ax and broke the umbilical that connected the unsightly marrow to its life support. A low murmur of protest seemed to emanate from the undergrowth. The shrubs shivered, even though there was no wind inside the structure.

“Now d’you believe me?” said Tony, glancing nervously at the feigning flora all around.

Stan was white-faced; the situation had strayed way beyond his comfort zone delineated by the community garden’s rule book. He decided to fall back on a time-tested tactic.

“Let’s have a cup o’ tea,” he said.

The other two willingly agreed.

“Don’t tell me you’re in here suppin’ tea while that nightmare takes over the polytunnel!” said Maggie, pointing towards the scene of the crime next door.

Cynthia, Tony, and Stan sat around a makeshift table in the communal garden’s shed. A large, weather-beaten teapot and three mugs of tea were on the table. Maggie’s admonishment punctured their numbness.

“We’re sorting it,” said Stan curtly.

The black youth’s energy and willingness to question authority made Stan uneasy. While he secretly admired Maggie’s commitment to conservation and the environment, she was not a “party” person.

“Sorting it? Looks more like a bloody knitting circle to me!” said Maggie.

Tony grinned. He liked the allotment’s youngest member and often mediated between her unrestrained tongue and the more conservative members of the group. Cynthia and Stan fell into a sulky silence, which infuriated Maggie.

 “Sorry to wake you people from your afternoon nap, but do you have any idea what’s going on in the polytunnel?”

“I suspect you’re going to enlighten us,” sighed Cynthia.

Maggie sat down. “‘The Invasion of the Body Snatchers’- that’s what.”

“That’s on Netflix, isn’t it?” said Tony.

“Yeah. Donald Sutherland and Leonard Nimoy. Good film,” added Stan.

“Netflix is such an inferior product. There’s nothing worth watching,” added Cynthia.

“So, this is you lot sorting things out, is it?” interjected an irate Maggie.

The three older members looked a little sheepish. Maggie was in no mood to back off.

“Maybe we can actually try to find out what the hell is going on here? Like, you know, retrace some steps, that sorta thing?”

Stan, the supposed leader of the group, suddenly felt self-conscious. “That’s what we were about to do,” he said. “Take it easy, Maggie.”

She went to retort but decided not to, and poured herself some tea. Stan tried to look like a man in charge, but as usual, failed miserably. “Tony, talk us through your plantings last week, will you?” he said.

“There’s not much to tell, but okay.”

Tony explained how he got an early start knowing there was a lot of digging to do. “You know how I like digging. It’s in the genes,” he grinned. He had everything planted according to the plan put forth by the management committee and finished watering by late afternoon. “That’s it really. I used almost all the seed we had left.”

“You didn’t notice anything unusual? A weird smell, something not right with the soil – anything?” asked Maggie.

Tony sipped his tea thoughtfully. “No, not really. Well, there was that bloke, I suppose.”

“Bloke?” said Maggie.

He found the stranger in the shed when he went to fetch some seed, Tony told her. “Bit of an odd one. Tall and thin, a beanpole really. Big hands like spades. Shifty eyes and a lumpy, milky complexion like rice pudding. Looked like he hadn’t seen the light of day in a while, which was strange because he said he was a big gardener.”

“Why was he here?” asked Stan.

“Said he wanted to join the allotment group. Went on about the soil, how unique it is. Wanted to know about the polytunnel. He loved the polytunnel.”

“What did you tell him?” asked Maggie.

“I explained what we do here, gave him a membership application form, and told him to fill it out.”

“What did he say?” said Cynthia.

“Nothing. Just took it. I got the feeling he doesn’t much like form-filling.”

“Then what?” said Maggie.

“That’s it. I watched him go. He had a fancy car parked over on the old berry patch.”

“Strange place to park,” said Stan. “There’s not even a track to it.”

“I never thought of that,” said Tony and took another sip of tea.

“Did you actually see him drive off?” Maggie asked.

“Er, no. I put away the application forms, and when I glanced up, he’d gone.”

Maggie frowned. “Show us where he parked, please.”

“If you want.”

The group traipsed over to the bare patch of land, which was laying fallow while they decided what to do with it.

“There are no tire tracks,” said Maggie, then gasped in alarm. “Look at that!”

 The others squinted at the area she pointed to.

“See? The ground here is darker like it’s been subject to a lot of heat,” said Maggie. She spotted something and held it up to the light. “This clinches it,” she said, proffering a glassy pebble. “Look how smooth this is like it was blasted by some sort of jet.”

“Exactly what are you suggesting?” asked Cynthia.

“Isn’t it obvious? Something extra-terrestrial landed here.”

“Wait a minute,” said Stan. “Are you saying some sort of spaceship was here? That this bloke Tony mentioned was a bloody alien?”

“Oh my,” laughed Cynthia. “Still reading a lot of science fiction, are we?”

Maggie ignored their skepticism, to which she was accustomed. “Tony, what did this fancy car look like?”

Tony stroked his straggly white beard. “Shiny, lots of chrome, unusual windows, maybe even some sort of dome-like thing.”

“Dome-like thing?”

“I wasn’t wearing my glasses, Maggie, and it was a fair distance away.”

“Concentrate, Tony,” implored the young woman.

“I thought it was one of those new Tesla’s,” he said.

Maggie slumped.

“It’s getting chilly. I really don’t see much point in loitering out here any longer,” said Cynthia.

The group trudged back to the shed in silence, where Stan brewed a fresh pot of tea. Maggie was unusually introspective for a while, then spoke up.

“There’s something else,” she said finally.

Maggie explained that her Facebook group reported seeing strange lights in the sky above the communal garden’s location last week.

“This Facebook group, I suppose they have the same interests as you,” said Cynthia pointedly.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” replied Maggie.

The older woman shrugged.

“Let’s not argue,” said Stan.

There was a brief silence.

“So, what are your explanations for the jungle from hell?” said Maggie at last, and gestured towards the polytunnel. “I take it you noticed that some of the plants have now punctured the plastic sheet?”

They had noticed but were clearly at a loss. Tony stuck with his theory that the garden’s contaminated soil had something to do with the freaky flora.

“If you’re right, we should tell the council right away. They’ll probably close us down and bring in the Department of Agriculture,” said Stan. “I’ll need to file an official report, of course.”

“What about my marrow?” said an alarmed Cynthia. Her prize vegetable was growing only a few feet away from the polytunnel in its own mini greenhouse.

“They probably won’t close us right away,” assured Stan.

“Are you blind?” snapped Maggie.

“Calm down, Maggie…”

“Stop it, Stan! This is a global emergency,” she shouted.

Stan and Cynthia exchanged “here we go again” looks. Tony looked decidedly uncomfortable.

Maggie plowed on. She pieced together the story so far. Aliens had detected the unusual nature of the soil on the allotment; they may have been scouring the planet for such an area of land for a long time. Tony was partially right, in that something in the previous landfill gave the soil unique qualities.

Tony lifted his tea mug triumphantly. “You’re welcome.”

Those qualities make the land suitable for growing alien plants, continued Maggie.

“Seems like a long way to come to do a bit of gardening,” scoffed Stan.

Cynthia agreed.

“That’s not why they came,” countered Maggie. “Have you seen how fast those creepy things are growing? I believe the aliens’ goal is to overrun the whole planet with this stuff until the world is uninhabitable for humans. Then they’ll move in.”

Stan and Cynthia laughed. Even Tony was skeptical. Maggie persevered.

“That weird guy Tony met was an agent. He tampered with the seed. Probably mixed it with theirs. Then let Tony do the hard work.”

“It does make for a compelling science fiction yarn. Your talents are wasted here, my dear.”

“And what’s your theory, Cynthia? What?”

“I don’t have one, young lady, I will leave that to the experts. I have no doubt they will find a perfectly rational explanation. Now, if you will excuse me, I have to give my champion marrow its nightcap and final back rub of the day,” she said and left.

“You have to admit, Maggie, it’s pretty far-fetched,” said Stan in a lame attempt to make peace.

“Tony, what about you? You’re the only one who might at least try to think out of the box.,” said Maggie.

The older man shrugged. “I’ve said my piece.”

“You do realize, Tony, that you’ve probably sowed the seeds of an alien invasion of Earth,” said Maggie melodramatically.

Right on cue, there was a scream.

“What now?” opined Stan, and leaped up.

“I bet it’s something to do with Cynthia’s marrow – and the damn body snatchers in the polytunnel,” said Maggie as she followed Stan out of the shed.

Tony stayed put and thought about Maggie’s words. The idea he had laid the ground for an alien invasion sat on his mind like a pile of wet laundry. His wife would be less than pleased. The local pub would close. And there were things he would definitely miss if alien marauders took control, like tea, smelly cheese, porridge, and baiting Stan. But there could be upsides too, he realized. For instance, being enslaved by alien overmasters would almost certainly involve much digging. But best of all, knowing about an impending battle for Earth was the mother of all conspiracy theories, and he was in on the ground floor.

“Better make hay while the sun shines,” said Tony, and went to put the kettle on.

He was unaware of the eye-like flower that had grown through the shed’s window that was staring at the back of his head.