My 13-year-old sister Casey hasn’t experienced it yet. She thinks it will be a “fun project.”
I thought the same thing when I was about her age. What could be better than having our own fresh vegetables to choose from when we get bored and hungry?
I agree with her there. I am excited for the fall and going out to the garden and taking my pick of the large selection of fresh produce.
The sunflowers always look great, too.
But, this is one situation where the joy is not in the journey.
My grandfather was a farmer all of his life. A stroke about 15 years ago made it impossible for him to keep up the farm or do the physical labor that was needed to maintain even a small garden.
This still drives him crazy. For his entire life, he was up before the sun milking to cows, watering the gardens and doing whatever else needed to be done around the house and the farm. He was on his feet all day, never leaving a project partially finished or undone.
My dad likes to tell the story of the company picnic he hosted in the yard connecting our home and my grandfather’s farm. My grandfather pointed out a branch that was becoming overgrown and pushing against our garage. My dad said that he was going to take care of it “sometime.”
There was no such thing as “sometime” or “someday” for my grandpa.
A few minutes later a colleague asked where my grandfather was going.
“Probably to get a chainsaw,” my dad replied.
Sure enough, my grandfather returned with a ladder and a chainsaw and climbed on the garage roof in the middle of the picnic.
When I was 14 and as naive as my sister is now, I wanted to try my hand at having my very own vegetable garden and I thought my grandfather would enjoy showing me how.
I, like Casey, thought it would be fun.
The first day of planting my grandfather took each set of seeds and laid them out in his hand, instructing me on the different depth and spacing each vegetable required. Then he watched as I tried to translate the instructions to the soil.
A grunt resulted when I misunderstood or forget the directions.
At the end of the day, we both ended up frustrated and impatient.
I was feeling like I could do nothing right, and my grandpa would have much rather knelt down and done it himself, knowing he could have done it faster and more accurately than me.
This was just the beginning. I had no idea the care that the garden required, but grandpa reminded me. Each morning and each evening I would get a phone call to water the garden if it had slipped my mind and I learned that the garden never took a day off. There was always something to do: weeding and trimming, moving the pumpkin vines away from the other vegetables, keeping the pests out and anything else that would hinder the growth of our treasures.
Now we are going to start the project again. I have somehow been put in charge again and already started the planting too late and instructed our neighbor with the tractor to plow a spot that is too large.
Fall will be here soon.
