Martha's Vineyard Weird Vegetable Spectacle

In these last dog days of summer, WV's New York City squirrel-in-chief, Gabrielle, has been out spying for us on Martha's Vineyard, trying to catch some evidence of President Obama's "unique metabolism" that David Plouffe cited admiringly in the NY Times after calling the president "a chess player in a town with a lot of checker players," and secretly congratulating himself for thinking up that analogy. A few days prior to the first family's photogenic arrival, our correspondent killed some time by wandering through the Martha's Vineyard Agricultural Livestock Show & Fair. There, she encountered the above pepper-and-bean angry cat and what looks to be an eggplant-maxixe-carrot LOBSTER, below (wow, impressive).


I haven't seen maxixe, also known as bur cucumber, since being in Brazil last summer. Here's a closer look at the maxixe (mah-SHE-she):



I was hoping for a glimpse of the Woodsmen's Contest, or the Judging of Goats, but this kindly fairytale spinner will suffice for now:

Life on the island, which lies in the Outer Lands region just off of Cape Cod, must get a bit dreamy at times from all that gazing out to sea, as suggested by this islander's mixing of greens and beans into a marine scene, explained by the caption:


"After sailing all summer, I began to see reflections of maritime life in my garden."

Perhaps a similar image flashed across senior adviser David Axelrod's mind as he thought ahead to the president's island respite in the eye of the political storm called Healthcare Reform, then donned his sea captain's cap at a jaunty angle and philosophized:

"What we’ve learned ... is that you have to look to the distant shore. You can’t panic from the choppy waves around you. He’s got his eye on that.”

I'm not sure what the spindly diorama below is meant to represent, but this caption seems fitting:

"There’s something about August going into September, where everybody in Washington gets all wee-weed up.”

--Barack Obama, days before arriving at the Vineyard (in the same article).