The Raw Dirt

I never thought that it would happen to us. We've been happily married for the better part of a decade and thought we would be past the danger zone for it. I had always promised myself that it would never happen in my marriage. Growing up, I had seen what it did in my family. The division that it caused. The struggle and the strife. Here we are, though, and I see it happening in my own family. Today, we planted a garden.

When I was growing up on the farm, my mom had a big garden. By the end of the summer, we'd have all the zucchini, tomatoes, potatoes, onions, strawberries, corn, lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, pumpkins, green beans, carrots, and peas that we could possibly eat. As I've gotten older, I've finally realized why she kept such a large garden for all of those years. Sure, it was nice to have all those fresh veggies to help us save money. My suspicion, though, is that Mom wanted to have some alone time. She was living in a house with her husband and three sons. All she had to do was yell throughout the house, "I'm heading out to the garden. Who wants to come help me?" and she wouldn't see us again for hours. She was able to just be in the garden and not have to worry about any of us.

For me, however, I equate it with a lot of work. All of the tilling, hoeing, planting, weeding, harvesting and cleaning took up a lot of time and energy, and always keep in mind that I'm incredibly lazy. As such, when Anne said that she wanted to plant a garden, I groaned inwardly. OK, maybe it wasn't so inward. We have a small patch of dirt on the side of our garage that we could use for just such a purpose. We measured it, and it was just enough for a few veggies as a test run to see what grows well and what doesn't. 23' X 3 1/2'. Still I grumbled. I think that I'll always equate gardening with hours in the hot sun doing work that I really didn't enjoy whatsoever. It's the same reason I put off mowing the lawn. In my mind, mowing the lawn is still the all-day event that it was when I was growing up. The job just kept getting bigger. Each time that we would get a larger mower, we'd increase the size of the lawn that we would mow. Finally get a riding mower? Now we can mow on the other side of the clothes fence. Get a bigger riding mower? Now we can mow on the other side of the drive way. To a certain extent, even though we live in town now and it's a half-hour job at most, I still have that image of hours on the riding mower ahead of me whenever it's time to mow the lawn. Perhaps it's just the curse of my long memory. Or maybe I'm just a weenie. One of the two.

So, now we have plants growing next to our garage. Two tomato plants, a hill of cucumbers, two rows of peas, four potato plants, and a row of onions. Hopefully, we'll be able to give away what we can't use. If we were smart, we'd coordinate with friends and neighbors so that each of us grows only one crop and share amongst each other, but I digress. Also, I've rarely been smart. I know, intellectually, that the work will be minimal. I'm going to try and have a good attitude about it. Honest. Still, though, you should probably pray for Anne.