Asparagus

From Gary Larson's The Far Side comes what he labeled a marketing mistake:

"I cuss, you cuss, we all cuss for asparagus!"

Today's lesson boys and girls is about asparagus. You know, the oddly phallic vegetable that makes your pee smell funny.

While growing up there was a wild patch of the stuff growing along the road next to our field. Dad has since added some fertilizer and the patch has taken off.

Asparagus grows in the early spring. The early cutting taste great but later cuttings become more woody and tasteless. Eventually Dad will stop cutting off the asparagus and let it go to seed. When he does that it grows more than a meter high and becomes very dense. (Pug added to give some sense of height.)
Here's another wild patch along our fence.

Dad also planted a large patch. In the growing season asparagus is amazingly fast growing. Dad can cut off 5-6 pounds worth every day for a month before it starts to taste not-so-good. What is not-so-good asparagus? That's the stuff you get in the grocery store. I have no idea how they get the asparagus to grow year round but whatever it is is unnatural and it saps out the flavor.