Cue singing birds here.
Maybe I should have warned him that I'm cursed.I have tried to have a small raised garden bed of my own on three separate occasions. The first two attempts apparently triggered droughts. The third attempt just... didn't grow, probably because the site received too little light. Whatever the legitimate reasons for my gardening failure, I have still found it disappointing to be unable to grow even things that are supposed to be so easy a child could do it. Like radishes. Many days after the seed envelope's promised germination period, I exhumed some. There was no tuber. No surprise, since there had been no leaves developing either. Just a spindly little root to mock me.
That year my total "harvest" was something like seven carrots, one red pepper, one misshapen green pepper, and five green beans. So much for what an acquaintance once said to me: "This is Kentucky. Just put it in the ground, and it'll grow!" Not in my backyard, apparently.
Perhaps I angered the garden gods somehow. I don't know. I just know that I have not yet succeeded in growing food of any kind. Except Italian parsley, which is one delicious weed. And I want to be part of a farming enterprise? I may be on a fool's errand indeed.
Luckily the father-in-law has planted many a garden and was willing to let me help despite my curse. After a couple of hours of bending over and squatting and getting up countless times, I decided that he was probably willing to risk my curse to avoid all that work. But I didn't mind. It's good for us, and we're happy to be part of it. We also hope to learn something, even though we're not into the chemical fertilizers and insecticide sprays he had us use today. Surely, something good will rub off on me.
Then again, this may be the first bust year at the Flora farm. If so, I'm pretty sure that it will be all my fault, in which case I'll stick to cooking ever after.
No comments:
Post a Comment