Cucumbers

The ones we grew

Two things came in from the garden — an aubergine and a cucumber.

“We grew these!”

“There's a cucumber too.”

“The aubergine got so big.”

They picked them up, felt them, held them to a nose.

“The aubergine is squashy.”

“The cucumber feels a bit odd.”

“The cucumber smells so good.”

“What if we cut them open?”

So an adult fetched a bread knife, and then they were looking at the outside and the inside together.

“The aubergine is white inside? I thought it would be purple in there too.”

“Water is coming out of the cucumber.”

“It's a bit sticky.”

“There are so many seeds.”

Counting what was on the plants

Out at the vegetable patch they went along counting how many cucumbers were on the plants.

An adult had cut some of the stems back.

“Why did you cut the cucumber?”

So they talked about that — take some off, and what is left gets more of what it needs.

After that it turned into a hunt for the stems carrying more than one.

“There are two cucumbers here!”

“Three here!”

“This one has got huge. I want to pick it and eat it.”

“We should sell them at the market.”

“We could decide the prices as well.”

“What would make the cucumbers taste better?”

“More water!”

An arm first, then a face

“What's this?”

An adult brought a cucumber out onto the mat, and slices went round on a plate. They took one each, held it to a nose, put it in a mouth.

Then an adult stuck a slice on their own arm.

“You put it on your arm like this, and on your leg, and on your face.”

“Ooh, that's cool.”

Some of them watched, and then did the same.

An adult wound a towel round one child's head and twisted it into two ears.

“Look — you've turned into a sheep!”

That child went to the mirror and laughed at what was there.

“I want to be a sheep too.”

After that they did it themselves — a slice on their own face, and slices on the face of whoever was lying down.

An adult folded a towel into a pillow and put it on the floor, and they lay down in a row with their heads on it.

Some of them just ate the cucumber. “Mmm.”

Where to put it, if not your face

The cucumber shop opened with thin round slices laid out, and they came over and lay down on the bed.

An adult put slices on two faces. Cold — and the slices came off again as fast as they went on.

Then not as fast. Then they were putting the slices on themselves and touching their own cheeks afterwards.

Three of them did not want it anywhere near their faces, so each one picked somewhere else — an arm, a leg — and put a slice there.

And then slices went onto an adult's arm too.

Close your eyes, please

They had asked for real cucumber, and that is what they got.

They worked out between themselves who was the customer and who did the massage.

“Close your eyes, please.”

“I'll put the cucumber on for you.”

“It's cool.”

The slices went on faces and on the backs of hands.

“My face is all soft. I've got prettier.”

Then they swapped over.

A red cucumber

An adult cut a cucumber, a potato and a sweet potato across the middle and set them out as stamps.

“Wooow!”

“It's a cucumber!”

“What's this?”

“If you press one down like a stamp, a picture of the vegetable comes out.”

“I want a go!”

They pressed the cucumber into red paint and printed with it.

“Red.”

“It doesn't taste nice.”

And afterwards — “What do we do when paint gets on our hands?”

“Wash them.”

Again, the next morning

“Let's do the cucumber again!”

“Where are the cucumbers?”

That was first thing in the morning, as they came in.

So out went the paint, with pieces of cucumber cut every which way. They pressed the cut faces onto paper and looked at the shape each one left behind, and did it again, and again.

Then they wanted to carry on, so plastic spoons came out and they scooped the soft middle out of the pieces.

It went on fingers, and into a mouth, and onto a face.

“It's cool!”

“It's soft!”

Somebody made wheels

The cucumber from the day before came back out, and thread with it.

They pushed the pieces onto the thread one after another, and held up the bracelet at the end of it.

In the middle of all that, one child put a piece on each end of a straw, set it down, and rolled it along like a pair of wheels.

A ring, and then a hill

A picture book about cucumbers and pumpkins came first. Then a real cucumber, to hold and smell and cut and taste.

A finger went through the middle of a slice, and it came out as a ring.

“It's a cucumber ring!”

Outside, the slices went down the hill. They watched how each one rolled and how fast it went, and looked at each other's.

The pieces floated

They cut the cucumber themselves and looked at the cut faces, and had a smell, and a taste. A slice sat on a face for a while.

Then the pieces went into a clear tub of water, and floated.

One child saw that and came over to look.

An adult put a small net down beside it, and after that it was fishing.

A cucumber with a straw in it

There was a cucumber by the front door in the morning, and a child picked it up on the way in and carried it to the room.

Another one went straight into a mouth.

On the floor there was a giant inflatable cucumber. They lifted it and pushed it and threw it, and sat on it, and leaned on it.

Then cucumbers in every shape — long strips, rings, ones cut into a cross, whole ones, ones with the middle scooped out. The table did not leave much room to move, so it all went down onto the floor.

Most of it went into a mouth first.

An adult took a cross-cut one and pulled it apart, and they got their hands to it and pulled as well.

Near the end, an adult filled a hollowed-out cucumber with water and put a straw in it, and they drank out of the cucumber.

Out on the terrace, and then water

The next day the stems and the inflatable one were still about, so it all went out onto the terrace.

The day before had been mostly tasting. This time a piece went into a mouth and then into hands — bent until it snapped, torn apart, stood on.

When that started to go quiet, an adult brought over a bowl of water, and then poured more of it onto the play mat.

They slapped the water with flat hands. A piece of cucumber went in and came out, in and out, and they watched where it splashed.

Tapping it until it burst

They tapped a cucumber — with a fingernail first, then with a toy hammer.

It made a sound, and then it split, and the seeds inside went flying.

They put their heads down to see into the split.

Thin slices came next, to feel with fingertips.

The green shop

This time there were popsicle sticks alongside the cucumber.

They cut it the way they had the day before, hands going back and forth, and pushed a popsicle stick into a piece they had cut. That was an popsicle.

They had built a shaved-ice shop once before, so this one was going to be a cucumber popsicle shop — and for it they took only the green blocks out of the box.

When it was up, the cucumber went on display.