wait, water, weed

I spent about four hours at my "farm" yesterday. That's what I've taken to calling the plot at the "city farm" over in Patterson Park. I had work to do. All the seeds I planted managed to germinate, so thinning out the plants was in order. And after a week of rain and heat, the weeds were out of control. Of course, after about an hour of weeding, once I got to the middle of the last bed, I looked at what I was pulling out and thought "hmm... I wonder if these are the primroses I planted?" Oh well.

I worked my way through my task list, hammering corners on the beds to make seats, placing straw around my tomatoes to keep out the weeds, watering everything... but of course it was when I was laying on my back in the mulch, exhausted, when a fellow farmer approached me for a chat. She said we'd both been working too long and we needed a break to rest our backs. Wow, was she right.

She's been at the farm for 7 years now, and she spent almost an hour telling me stories as we walked around the garden plots. My favorite was the tale of the "revenge cage" that a man built to keep the squirrels out, but the birds keep getting in, so he has to leave the door open anyway. Or the woman who was told to put paper bags over her ears of corn so the squirrels couldn't see them... but they could smell them, and when she pulled those bags off she found that every single kernel was picked clean, in the privacy of the bag. There was the tale of her friend who saw a squirrel pull a tomato off her plant right in front of her and leap over to a picnic table to eat it. She yelled "you'd better eat the WHOLE thing" at him, and he did, but tossed the stem back at her when he was done. I was laughing the whole time.

All the planning, all the work, all the sweat and sunburn, and the squirrels really do think it's all for them. I guess squirrels are better than rats. Cuter anyway.

So I may not have the bounty I have planned for, but at least I'll have days like yesterday, where completely covered in dirt, sweat, and sunburned AGAIN, I left the garden smiling and happy.

All I have to do now is wait, water and weed.