Asparagus

I love asparagus and it is on my weekly grocery list.  I planted an asparagus plant in the garden more than two years ago and it has been shifted a couple of times.  Now I understand that you have to wait two years before you can harvest asparagus and there was no way I could harvest what the plant was growing anyway.  Asparagus spears that would not feed a bandicoot!  This year I gave up on the plant  because to be honest I thought it was dead.  I purchased another four asparagus plants (that were two years old) and have been harvesting smallish, but tasty, spears from these plants since August.
It has been raining here every day for the past week so I have not been out to water the vegetable garden. You can imagine my surprise when I wandered out there yesterday and from the "dead" asparagus plant emerged this giant spear.

It is 30cm long (or 12 inches on the old scale) and as thick as my middle finger.  Whaaatttt!  So maybe I had to wait until the plant was completely dormant before it would send up any spears worth harvesting.  This one spear is a meal in itself so for lunch today I will soft boil an egg and happily use this big spear as my "soldier".