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“This Made Me Think Of You” series came to be from an accidental fit of laughter that spread through a group of education professionals navigating the stress and burnout of educators during the 2020-2021 academic year. As an attempt to connect to a fellow educator whose garden was flourishing far beyond my own, I placed a large and shapely Zucchini in her mailbox with a note. “This made me think of you”. I didn’t sign it, thinking she would remember my penmanship and appreciate my early attempts at gardening.
She did not remember my penmanship. When she learned it was my handwriting, she laughed at the voluptuously phallic produce. I blushed so hard from my unintentional sexual harassment of my friend that my ears nearly missed the sound of roaring laughter - which I had not heard since before Friday, March 13th, 2020, when we were all sent home to teach remotely “for two weeks.” It was now late-September.
The suggestive vegetable harvests continued to be shared anonymously via mailboxes throughout the autumn season, bringing the inappropriate middle-school humor back to the job where overhearing the middle-schoolers’ humor was a regular part of our occupational norms.
We photographed our secretive produce deliveries, often noting the striking compositions and stark contrasts. It was a silly, irreverent, impish morsel of humanity that was beautiful and vibrant in a setting that had then been made devoid of such niceties.