Cucumber fight...

One of those days I’m afraid. One that started far too early in double darkness and didn’t get much better as the day passed away, even though the sun was shining. Still, it’s hard to have negative vibes about cucumbers; I’ll have a good try though.

Here’s my cucumber plant before the mildew got to it. I think we had five or six before the dampness of the summer did it in. As with everything home grown in small quantities I doubt that it made much or any economical sense, but then not everything is economics, some things are just as a try, or a wish, or even just because.

Why?
Why not?

I find myself thinking that a lot lately – and then making a relatively short list of ‘why’ and an almost endless list of ‘why not’. Yes, if I took into account economics, sense, and justification I think I’d find myself doing nothing at all and according to my ‘why not’ list and the early morning whisperings of the double darkness that’s probably just what I should be doing.

But then if somebody hadn’t drunk the rancid grape juice there wouldn’t be wine, and if Columbus had made a ‘why not’ list then there wouldn’t be any America would there? Mind you, and on the up side, that would have spared us all from Robert Mondavi and Californian white.

Even so, it’s an interesting internal debate or should I say fight? I seem to spend an awful lot of time beating myself up before doing anything. Ladies and gentlemen - in the red corner pessimist me boxing at a really good listing weight… and in the blue corner optimist me with hardly any listing weight at all (or even a bucket to spit his broken teeth into). Sometimes I wonder why optimist me just doesn’t stay out of the ring altogether, it’s obvious that he’s going to lose.

I wonder what it is that makes you an optimist or a pessimist? Is there some sort of Harry Potteresque sorting hat that calls the shots before we are even born, or is it a magic art that we learn through experience like potions or the care of magical creatures?

Optimistic creatures explain positive events as happening because of themselves (the cucumber seed grew because I and I alone planted it) and see these events as evidence that more positive things will happen in the future (I will have dozens of cucumbers from my single seed) that will lead to more good things happening to them of their lives (so many that I will be able to open a cucumber shop, feed the world, and in the process make my fame and fortune).

Pessimistic creatures, on the other hand, think in the opposite way. They believe that negative events are caused by themselves (the mildew is my fault because I watered too early and too much), they believe that one mistake means more will come (and it’s bound to spread to the tomatoes, the rocket, and then the potatoes), and mistakes in other areas of life are inevitable (this will lead to all the crops in the Western world failing and ultimately global starvation and then the end of the human race).

Of course with my cucumbers I have fallen between two stools, an image to conjure with regardless of your interpretation of the stool word. Yes, I have some cucumbers. I have some cucumbers today – but not tomorrow and not as many as I would have if I’d proceeded without the intervention of the mildew which I, in all likelihood, was the cause of. I can’t help thinking that I really did over-water, or not water enough.

Oh well.

Apparently, according to experts in the field (is that a cucumber field I hear you ask), it’s possible to overcome the effects of the sorting hat and make yourself an optimist simply by willing it so and taking a positive approach.

Maybe I’ll give it a go.

Fight on. Ding-ding. Round two!