The winter flowering cherry is in bloom. It doesn’t put on a showy display of flowers. Its flowers open a few at a time, hanging like forgotten ornaments on barren branches. All winter long it will bloom, even in the snow. A few sad, dainty flowers waiting for suitors who never come.

The cauliflower is none of that. Wild and woolly, it flays its strong arms about in the winter gusts. Bold, brash, grumpy, if it had a voice, it would roar. When you hold a cauliflower in your hands, you’re holding the decapitated head of a proud, angry vegetable.