When you are out in the garden, particularly when you are alone, your mind tends to wander. I have always marvelled at how things are connected, whether it be people or events and how you can take what you observe in one area of life and compare and contrast it to another area or event in another part of life.
People ask “how is your garden”.
Here we are in early August and well, we continue to work away. We are starting to enjoy some bounty. There is swiss chard and lettuce (things that the long-term wellprepared gardeners in some parts around here enjoyed 6 weeks ago). The Sunburst or patty pan squash are prolific little guys and they need to be monitored every couple of days or they grow too big. Aren’t they cute?
There’s a late breaking development with the pumpkin. That’s the pumpkin that we thought would mature by Christmas. It started off like gangbusters. There were flowers and vines everywhere-it’s like the plant in the movie “Little Shop of Horrors”. But then things started looking not so great-white powdery mildew has set in and the poor pumpkin doesn’t look long for this world. There is one pumpkin that’s trying to grow. I don’t know if it will have sustenance on the dwindling vines. If the plant continues at this rate there could be a bare patch in that part of the garden in the near future and we will have an orphaned little pumpkin.
Why did we buy those umbrellas and camp chairs?
When my gardening buddy and I started to set up our shop…late as it was this year…we looked around and saw that many gardeners seemed to ‘nest’ as well as garden. There were little plastic picnic tables and umbrellas in some of the gardens. Some gardens have those gazebos with netting. Well, we thought, isn’t that great! In addition to growing things we can sit here and watch the world go by. We can have wonderful discussions while watching Mother Nature do her thing. We each purchased a camp chair and one of those little beach umbrellas to sit underneath. We have used the chairs once.
The rest of the time it’s hoeing and digging and weeding and planting and watering. And the weeds, there is one particularly some nasty type of grass. I thought this morning as I dug and pulled and uprooted them that my cousin Steve in Australia might be wondering if there were earth tremors. No Steve, no tremors, just your cousin pulling weeds here in Central Canada and their roots come up by your front door.
When does the part about sitting on your rear and admiring things start. Actually I am exaggerating a bit. We admire and tour the garden every time we go out there. It’s the sort of thing other gardeners might understand. If you haven’t gardened I imagine, it’s hard to see the beauty in it. This is the current state of affairs.
And there are some lovely flowers
Some things never change
And so to the things that are linked in life and such. I met another neighbour today. Gardeners are a friendly lot. He was telling me since he’s isn’t able to weed as much as he’d like he hires people to weed for him. It costs him $300 per year. I suppose we can think about that as we weed away. It might come in handy as a sideline business if the Standard and Poors rating of the USA sinks our investments. I don’t think I’ll look at the newspaper tomorrow…but that’s another story. Nonetheless, the garden at this point is about 9 parts weeding and watering and 1 part produce. We’ve already paid for the seeds and fertilizer and peat moss and garden gloves and of course the chairs and the umbrellas.
In the position I left as I moved to life beyond full-time work, I worked in the not for profit sector. And here I am, just months later, working in another not for profit sector.
Barb's True Stories 