Garlic Flowers

I’ve started to notice something weird now that I’ve begun working the local farmer’s market (as of yesterday) and given a few garden tours to strangers or friends of friends.

There’s this phenomenon where people want to prove to me what they know about this or that thing in the farm or garden, but what they’re saying is simply wrong. I don’t know how to respond.

Like yesterday, at the market, I sold some fresh garlic as full plants — including not just the cut bulb, but the green stem and leaves. One woman wanted to tell me (in French) that it’s garlic flowers.

“No,” I said. “I cut the flowers off a few weeks ago.”

“But,” she told me. “It’s all flowers.”

Except it’s really not. Only the flower is a flower, and that’s long gone — sold and eaten.

Also, for some reason, a few people wanted to tell me about the giant fields of garlic they had allegedly seen all around the island. Except it’s not true — maybe they saw fields of long green leafy things. That doesn’t make it garlic though.

But what are you supposed to say to this random person who insists on what they’re saying and it’s just simply factually patently false? Let them live with their illusion? Try to correct them gently? Just ignore it?

Just like I have a hard time lying to people’s faces, I have a hard time letting inaccurate statements go unaddressed. Perhaps it’s my obsessive-compulsive side. But decorum doesn’t generally call for correcting strangers — especially when they’re not going to buy anything. It occurs to me more and more that the “average person” just has simply no concept of any of this “agriculture” stuff and plants really are just “some green thing” they see sometimes and don’t really consider any more deeply than that.

I get the underlying motivation of their side of the experience: they want to show they know something too. And that’s fine and I promote that. Become an expert. But a flower is a flower and not all the garlic is a flower. It’s not that complicated.

Just had to get that off my chest.