While walking, I often pass by a corner lot with a sizeable veggie garden out back. During the course of the Summer, I have watched the tiny plants morph into huge vegetables. It has been interesting to gauge the progress of the plants, especially the corn which has really shot up the last few weeks. I’ve often seen an elderly gentlemen, wearing a straw fedora, who tends to this veggie garden in the a.m., before it gets too hot to toil in the sun. His backyard is always colorful with brightly colored perennials and flowering kale, and now even more so with some cucumber plants with their pretty yellow flowers, and which are already supporting tiny cukes. The cucumber plants are winding here, there and everywhere, threading through the green and purple cabbage, dark-green kale, red cherry tomatoes and even some still-green beefsteak tomatoes. This morning he had a wide, brown wicker basket brimming full of freshly picked veggies and he was walking toward the house as I passed by. I called out to him that he looked like Farmer Jack himself. He grinned at that comment and said “I’ll take that as a compliment.” Alot of younger people would not know who Farmer Jack was, but he was the trademark icon and face of Borman’s Supermarkets for years until they went out of business in 2006. Well, my farmer friend told me he was having fresh corn-on-the-cob, dripping with butter and coated with salt tonight for his dinner, even though his cardiologist and his wife would take issue with that meal. I told him that was the only way to eat corncobs and have them taste like anything. My mom and I would limit ourselves to three corncob-eating sessions each Summer; whew … all that salt and butter, but you have to indulge in seasonal bi-colored corn as it is such a treat. The Lincoln Park City Attorney annually has a small veggie garden in front of his office right out on Fort Street. This year, his kale is extra large but two corn plants tucked in the back of the garden are trying valiantly to each produce one full-size corncob. There are two puny corncobs only, certainly not enough to have a corn roast on Labor Day

I subscribe to Meijer grocery store posts on Facebook and there is always chatter on their store-brand products or seasonal foods and I usually follow those posts. I had to laugh one day when they asked “how do you eat corn-on-the-cob … spiral-style or typewriter-style?” I immediately thought of this picture of the “mini-me” eating a corncob in my high chair, and probably ending up with more corn on my face or the floor than in my mouth. I believe I adopted the typewriter-style of eating corncobs judging from this picture above. So …

“’EARS LOOKIN’ AT YOU KID.”