The old man's garden

The old man and the garden

So it was time to plant the garden again. I planted butterbeans and squash and green beans and cucumbers and watermelons and I look forward to spending the next few weeks tending it carefully and boring people to death telling them about it.

I guess this is some sort of mid-life crisis thing, taking up gardening just before the age of 50. But hey, some guys get Corvettes, some guys run off with strippers. In comparison, my new vegetable obsession doesn’t seem so bad.

I learned some lessons last year, my first a full-time gardener. One was that deer love to eat peas, well before they are ready to be picked. Those SOBs ate every last plant, which is why I support hunting them to extinction.

I also learned that you need to study the seed packets carefully before planting. I grew some watermelons and they got to be about the size of a cantaloupe in a few weeks, and I thought mmmm, these are going to be good.

Then, for weeks after that, they remained the size of a cantaloupe, and finally I realized I had planted some variety of “dwarf” watermelons, and they weren’t going to get any bigger. Why is there even such a thing as a “dwarf” watermelon? Who eats these, Snow White?

I plant the garden on a patch of land out in Lamar County where my dad lives. He’s almost 86 and last year he assured me that he was done with gardening, and he was not going to plant anything this year. Month by month, his commitment to retiring from gardening began to erode. “Well, maybe a few tomatoes” became “I might plant some squash” then “I’m thinking about rowing some peppers” and so on. When I finally went to plant my portion, he had already plowed and planted enough to feed the population of Turkmenistan.

On the day of the planting, I took him to a follow-up doctor’s visit. While it is kind of cool to take advantage of the handicapped parking sticker on his car, these trips cab be a little discouraging. That’s when he seems older, a little more feeble every time, walking a little slower.

But out there in the garden, that all goes away. He’s out there manhandling the tiller up and down the rows to turn the ground and hardly breaking a sweat. Out there in his element, he doesn’t look like an old man at all. He looks like my daddy. Meanwhile, I used that tiller for about an hour and it made me so sore I needed help combing my hair for the next two days.

As I prepared to re-till the ground for planting, I asked my dad if he had any gloves. He looked at me kind of funny and said, “No. Why?” I said well, I just thought I’d use some, because last time I did this I got blisters.  He didn’t say anything, but the look on his face pretty much communicated “You’re a sissy.” Hey, I have delicate hands. Does that make me a sissy?

Don’t answer that.

Anyway, the seeds are in the ground, the anticipation has begun, and it won’t be long before I’ll be complaining about all the work this stupid garden has created and how much my back hurts and wondering why I can’t just be satisfied with eating green beans from a can. And I’ll be loving every minute of it.