Mel's Vegetable Garden.

       Behind our little house we had a small fenced-in yard. At  the back Mel made a small vegetable garden, and further back we had a little fowl run so we were supplied with fresh eggs, plus an occasional Chicken supper. Our neighbors also had a fowl-run and a very Cocky (excuse the pun) little bantam rooster. He would sometimes fly into our fowl-run for some courting fun, and he would try to stop us from getting in spoil his fun. Getting back to the garden, Mel planted cabbages, carrots, beets, and cauliflower. When they became mature enough to eat we had tasty fresh vegetables for our meals. The plants for which he seemed to have a particular fondness were his sturdy little cabbages. One day I decided that we would have cabbage for supper, and with a sharp knife, I cut the head off the first one in line. When he came home he said, in a shocked voice, "You took one of my cabbages," to which I replied, "I thought that was what you planted them for!" "Yes, but I didn't expect you to BEHEAD it and leave the stump of the neck sticking up out of the ground.  It looks so forlorn out there in the garden." After that I would pull them up by the roots and behead them more humanely after they were already dead. That didn't seem to worry him. We can laugh about it now, and the compost heap was enriched.