The Swede More like a deformed animal than a vegetable, I imagine it snuffling in the dark, dreaming itself a globe as it heaves against waterlogged clay and stones   to fill out its girth. Hard as mahogany, heavy as flint, its thick skin is marked with blotches purple as bruise, ringed with ridges. This one has an outgrowth   which looks just like a foetal limb. At first I brand it inferior to the leeks I dug up in the garden one year, each smooth as a pole and more whitely alive than snow   but the ungainly body…