Gardening

Last night it froze. As my parents were headed out of town today, I needed to pick the remaining warm-weather vegetables off the dying vines of Dad's little container farm. That mostly entailed 50 green baby tomatoes and the peppers we'd forgotten to eat all season. Dad grabbed his viable squash earlier in the morning, and we left the onions and carrots.

I started my adult appreciation for gardening last summer when L, my colleague from Afghanistan, provided bountifully for us all season with salads of lettuce and tomatoes and green beans and lemon basil. I found a new appreciation for the miracle of putting a seed in the dirt with water and sun, and being fed a few months later. My course in Vancouver in June heightened this sense in me, and increased my gratitude all the more for my dad's homegrown veggies.

Then, as I harvested the little tomatoes into the pottery bowl, it happened. I saw squirming and dashed screaming and shuddering into the house. After five minutes to compose myself and find gloves, the first pair of which had mouse poo in them, I got up the courage to face the beast. All poetic and pastoral sentiments were lost. By going to my it's-furry-like-a-kitten place, I was able to take a picture and then throw the thing out with a serving spoon.

And that is why I'll never be much of a farmer.