Carrot!

So, not this last Summer, but the one before that, my neighbor Brad built he and his wife Haley two box gardens out of pallets. The first Summer season was amazing, they had some kind of lettuce, cucumbers (which while they were away I filled my fridges crisper and then some), Tomato's and hot peppers. The cucumbers and peppers were the boon of that harvest, but then this past Summer, it was horrible, barely anything grew...
As I have so many allergies to fruits and vegetables... Oh, must I explain this again?

Ok, when I was a kid, when i ate the salads that Mom made for us, I'd end up with an itchy pallet, a bit of asthma, itchy eyes, watery nose and sometimes small welts around my lips and cheecks... CLEARLY a reaction to something I was eating... I knew it was the vegetables, but Mom would MAKE me sit at the table until I'd finished it all, then she'd be on my case about always having a 'cold'... I was always sneezing, always stuffed up... So by around my teens I had figured out I was allergic to a plethora of fruits and vegetables.
The above listed symptoms come about when I eat, raw apples, pears, strawberries (but I can have raspberries) peaches, grapes, lettuce, raw tomato, raw peppers, raw carrots and on and on.

When I moved to Vancouver in 1994 I managed to get an appoint to go see an allergist about this life long issue I have had.
So, I got tested with everything from pollen to animals saliva, from tomato's to rice. When the test came back and the allergist took me aside to read me the results, he said that 'rice' was my biggest allergy... And it was like being hit with a pike to the forehead... 'Wait... What??... Rice?? No no, that cannot be right' I explained to the doctor... I've had these reactions since I was a child and I know that some allergies can be latent, it can take hours or even a day before they 'kick in'. So I said to the doctor, 'Ok doc, there's something wrong here, because I know with every fiber I'm made up of that I am NOT allergic to rice. NO way that I am.
So he said to me that the test can have "false positives"... 'So', I thought, 'The whole test is skewed then, because If rice is my BIGGEST allergy and that's incorrect, then what else is wrong?'.... So, I never saw the doctor again and I know, what I'm allergic to and I do my very best to stay away from eating those things.
But I'm constantly met, when out with family or friends, or guest at a dinner, with "Oh, You just don't like fruits and vegetables"... Which makes me feel bad and it shouldn't.. What idiot wouldn't want a beautiful salad filled with greens and peppers or a big 'ol fruit salad... I'D LOVE to eat a salad, but I can't. None of my reactions are deadly, lol at least thus far, but the reactions make it thoroughly not worth eating those things to which give me reactions.

SO, back to the neighbors gardens, this year they did an experiment for me, since I can have cooked carrots, they grew some carrots...
So despite it being a rotten season for the box gardens, tonight they presented me with the fruits of our labor in the carrot department....

Pen added for scale

So that's my carrot! The only survivor! 

We're all stumped as to why the harvest was so dismal this season. I felt bad because when they went away for a couple weeks I was in charge of watering the gardens and I did, but in that time they were away was when we had crazy crazy rain storms, it was a weird Summer weather wise, so we wrote it off to that. I don't thin it was anything I did, but just the Summer itself.

Next Spring I think they are going to replace all the soil or something like that, so maybe there will be a better carrot plunder next Fall. Much thanks to my neighbors for trying!

Don't laugh at my carrot!