"Can you use these?"

he asks sounding slightly shamefaced. My father is standing there with a pile of carrots from the garden. Well, I think they are still carrots. One of them is large enough to feed a family of rabbits for a week. There are others that are only slightly smaller.
I have been using carrots from our garden for some time. There is a nice little patch near the clothesline, next to the parsley and the lavender bush and the stocks that decided to flower a second year. Dad likes to mix vegetables with flowers and put things in wherever there is a space.
The problem is that I often do not know they are there. He forgets to tell me what he has planted. It is his garden. I do not interfere - except in emergencies. The carrots were not an emergency. They were tucked away in a corner. He had forgotten they were there. They have obviously grown - too much.
I try. I wash off the remaining soil and investigate. Is it possible to salvage some of it? We could have carrot soup - and more carrot soup. I scrape the outside of the rabbit family size carrot wondering how to remove the dirt from the warren of splits along the surface. The simple answer seems to be to cut it lengthwise and go from there but the sharpest knife in the kitchen is not equal to the task. I put the rabbit family size carrot to one side. I go down to a rabbit couple for a week size carrot. After a moment I put that to one side and search through the remaining carrots. There are some oddly shaped rabbit couple for a day size carrots. I try those. They still seem tough. I wonder whether the pressure cooker is equal to the task. Eventually the pressure cooker has enough to contemplate cooking them. I give it extra time and clear up the mess.
Much later I investigate. The carrots are still hard through the core. The outer edges taste green rather than orange. I discard them sadly. They will make good compost.
Carrots were originally purple not orange. I am wondering what they tasted like then. I go and pull a rabbit couple for a day size carrot from the patch near the lavender bush for lunch. It is orange and it tastes like carrot.