REALITY: Garden Joys

Usually I spend my summer outside. Actually, my spring and autumn days as well, planting, cleaning, trimming, weeding, pinching and picking.

This spring, because I had lots of other things on my mind, I never got myself out to do more than a minimal of weeding and a pinch here and there. A couple times I tried, got fed up, came back inside and drew the blinds. Twice this week and again today I forced myself to face it. Brave? Ambitious? No. I was hiding from Algebra which evidently I was supposed to remember how to do for a Statistics class starting tomorrow morning at eight a.m.

I’m slashing, hacking, breaking, tugging, and making sweetie-pie run back and forth with the wheelbarrow to the compost out back because I can’t go near poison ivy.

Where in the name of God are all the plants I so carefully tended for years? Why does grass grow so beautifully in the gardens? How, in the name of all that’s holy, did everything go to hell in one season?

I’ve weeded and done some gardening at my dad’s this year, and some at my friend, Chris’ because neither of them was really up to it and both, like me, usually love to be out there getting our hands dirty. Well, my hands are now black because I forgot to put handcream on each time I came back in to wash up (can’t use gloves–real farmers don’t use gloves), and nothing short of clorox takes out all the stains for days.

I know I’m going to be stiff and sore tomorrow, and will have to sit through two hours of what may as well be Greek to me.

Maybe, with any luck, they won’t let me into class because of my dirty hands.