Gardening

Time to start planting - according to our mother. What does it matter that it snowed yesterday? We can plant our plants anyway! Sure, it’s rarely above fifty but who are we to argue with Mom? The moon is right, so it’s time to plant!

Today we are going to plant spinach, peas and lettuce. You know all those things that can survive a three foot snow - we hope.

When I was younger I somehow got the job of carrots. How this happened I don’t remember but it did. Rose got peas and Missy - I don’t remember what Missy had but she had something. We’d go out every year into our several sixty by four foot bed garden and Rose would help Mom plant a bunch of peas in nice straight lines and Peter would help dig perfect little holes for tomatoes and Missy would neatly do what ever it was she did. And then there was me. I took the package as Mom told me, carefully ripped it open, or as carefully as ripping gets, and threw the seeds all over the bed! That may have been why I liked carrots. No careful measuring, no digging holes, just scrap the dirt to the edges, throw the seeds around and push the dirt back!

Did I say that was all I did? Well it wasn’t. I was always done before everyone else so I “got” to help plant peas and do tomatoes and we all did potatoes. Dig a trench, put the seed potato in with the eye up and when you’ve finished with both sixty foot beds, push dirt over top. But we didn’t do that until we named a thousand worms and lady bugs and practically every stick that looked like a worm. And then we’d go get a popsicle, one of those tube kinds, and watch Mom limp to the house after stepping on a bee. (She tends to do this a lot).

Anyway, despite the fact we say we hate it, our fondest memories are of gardening. We tend to do one more thing, besides step on bees. We laugh. We laugh practically the whole time, even though we are complaining. We come up with sayings and scenes and characters for my book out in our garden and I know we still will.

Sigh. We do like gardening but it wouldn’t be the same if we didn’t complain for often that is the best part. Along with chucking half the seeds into the row behind you as you say, “If in doubt, throw it out!” so many times it drives Mom crazy.