The most intense of vegetables

Tom Robbin’s novel, Jitterbug Perfume, begins with these immortal words. ” The beet is the most intense of vegetables. The radish, admittedly is more feverish, but the fire of the radish is a cold fire, the of discontent not of passion. Tomatoes are lusty enough, yet there runs through tomatoes an undercurrent of frivolity. Beets are deadly serious.” Then he wanders in his marvelous bohemian prose for awhile and lands at my favorite lines about our dear beet: “The beet is what happens when the cherry finished with the carrot. The beet is the ancient ancestor of the autumn moon, bearded, buried, all but fossilized; the dark green sails of the grounded moon boat stitched with veins of primordial plasma; the kite string that once connected the moon to the Earth now a muddy whisker drilling desperately for rubies.”  Tell it, Tom.