against the grain.

Last year, sometime in November or Decemberish, I decided I wanted to try to sprout some potatoes.
It looked like a middle school-kids science project. Glasses of water, tooth picks, and suspended potatoes all over the patio table. Level of hope? mmm... 1.6
I really wasn't sure much would come of it. The roots were growing, but the host potato was looking quite horrible.
I let them grow on... which, if I were being true to all of us, meant- I gave up and was too lazy to clean up the table- with a small sliver of hope that one may grow a horn, turn into a potato-making-unicorn, and use its rainbow powers to fill my garden beds with buckets of starchy gold.
A month or so later, I planted them in the garden. And when I say planted, I mean, I chucked them in the dirt because they looked gross and were starting to smell. I then covered the smell with more dirt. See? Planted.
I watered them once.
Then I forgot.

A month later.
Oh my gosh!... I called my sister frantically like I had just turned water into wine. A little bud poking out of the ground! Shit... now I have to learn how to take care of this thing? When to water it? When to pick it?
Three months later, a lot of forgetting about watering them later, and a lot of bragging about how I was going to have so many potatoes that I'd have to give them away... I got, 19, tiny, baby, red potatoes.
The red part was the most exciting. I had no idea which of my rotten franken-potatoes had taken root.

The biggest is close to the size of a golf ball... the smallest, a pea.
Austin and I split one raw, right out of the ground. It was phenomenal. It honestly tasted as if it had already been cooked.
I'm in tiny potato heaven.