tumor? tuber?

okay, so three posts in one day might be a bit excessive. but i just solved a disturbing mystery - all by myself! well, my friend google helped some too - but that hardly counts.

so when i was fussing around in the backyard on saturday, i starting poking around in the flower beds to see what survived the winter. i mostly planted annuals back there, so there wasn't much to see. i noted that i forgot to protect my hibiscus and it perished. oops. and the catnip is already coming back, as well as the cup plant. all good news. i started raking up some of the garbage flotsam and jetsam that accumulated over the winter - mostly carryout containers and malt liquor cans from the drug/prostitution shack across the alley. lar de lar dee lar... rake rake. *thump* the rake hit this skull-shaped lump protruding from the ground, right at the base of the neighbor's board fence. huh? i was almost afraid to see what it was. i jabbed at it with the rake... nothing. i scraped at it, and part of it ripped away to reveal a flesh-colored stringy insides. *yeechk* i scrape some more, and it started to wobble out of its hole, like a large boulder or bowling ball might. i turned the rake around and started jabbing with the handle... and the durned thing popped out of its hole and rolled in a wobbly fashion across the yard, into the alley, and came to rest in the middle of the alley road. it was the size and approximate shape and color of a human head - only with no face. thoroughly grossed out, i just left it there in the middle of the road and returned to fooling around with bricks. much later, i heard a tussle out in the alley and looked out the window to investigate. i saw two drunk old men shoving each other around, walking down the alley drinking beers in bags. they came across the lump/tumor in the road, and halted in their tracks. through the window, i could hear them muttering about it. one of the men tentatively kicked it, and it wobbled toward him. the drunk old guy actually squealed and pawed at his friend's arm - then they skirted around it and continued on their way.

odd.

today, i was thinking about it again. i recalled that i had planted sweet potato vines there last year - the decorative, wildly green and rapidly growing kind that you find in planters and such. "i wonder..." so i called upon google, and wouldn't you know? given enough sun, those decorative plants can occasionally produce large tubers with pale flesh! they are edible, technically, but those strains are cultivated for the decorative and drought-hardy foliage, not for delicious sweet innards. ha! so it wasn't a tumorous, faceless human head in my garden. just a mutant bitter tuber. tumor, tuber. potato, po-tah-to. whatevs.