Emily Paine Carter

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On a recent midday walk, my husband and I screeched our sneaker-clad feet to a halt.

All it took was Salem Farmers Market vendor Richard Alyea's question: "Did you ever see a potato shaped like a turtle?"

"Cool! Like a carnival midway," I thought. OK, a very family-oriented one, devoted to wholesome vegetable oddities.

Friendly, smiling, soft-spoken: Alyea is no brash carnival barker -- but he didn't need to be. We had to see "Mr. Potato-Turtle," as my walking companion Rod dubbed it. (What, not "Poturtle" or "Tutato?")

Alyea was in charge of the Greenwood Farms stand, while owners Sandra and Bill Greenwood were on vacation. Another worker had dug up the potatoes at the Copper Hill farm, but Alyea had eyed this oddity.

He also enhanced the resemblance a wee bit by drawing in two eyes and a turtle-y smile on the tuber.

Alyea, 68, said he won't sell it, and thinks it will keep a fairly long time, if kept cool.

"I like to make people smile. And they have been," he observed.

Once again wishing I had a camera on me, I dashed home for one. (Our cellphones pre-date camera-phone technology; we joke that they are the ol' "rope-pull" or coal-fired models.)

See if you agree that this is a super tuber-turtle.

• In other garden news, Connie Stone appeared at our home with a massive sunflower head.

The retired West Salem Elementary schoolteacher -- and current, most capable Salem Garden Club president -- said she had grown an abundance of them. This pleased her book-club and teacher pal Gaye Blevins, who lets her kindergartners pluck seeds for spring planting.

Connie had mistakenly doubted the Burpee seed-packet prediction of 15- to 20-foot plants. She apologized to neighbor Shelley Dalton -- whose fence the flowers bordered -- and said she hoped that her view from the base of Read Mountain was not obscured.

But, Connie reported, Shelley replied that the flowers' shade from summer's scalding days had actually protected her tomatoes.

To take down the "mammoth" plants, Connie's husband, Ray, had to use a handsaw on the 3-inch stalks.

• Such "Veggie Tales" remind me of an informal competition between two Rockbridge County weekly newspapers, circa 1990. Then-Rockbridge Weekly editor Doug Harwood (now editor of The Rockbridge Advocate) described on WDBJ (Channel 7) news an undeclared game with the Lexington News-Gazette: The rival papers published assorted photos of local, mighty vegetables.

Do you have such curiosities? A tomato that looks like Elvis? Plants, minerals -- but please, no animals or disturbing or naughty items.

Just e-mail this gmail address -- digital photos are a lovely idea -- and we'll take a gander for a possible column. As Rod says, this could launch The Front Porch's "roadside attraction" era.