Epitaph for a nasty vegetable

Here lies okra,
pulled out by the roots.
It tasted like crap,
so now it's kaputs.

A beautiful season

"I hate working in the garden," snarls my oldest son. I ignore him because, according to my newest expert book on child rearing, "Animal Training Techniques for Parents Who Have Tried Just About Everything and Are Totally Desperate," I must ignore the behaviors I don't want and reward the behaviors that I do want. Right now I want my boys to help me plant the garden. They're not showing any signs that they're even remotely interested in doing this and, according to the book, I shouldn't force them to do anything they don't initiate themselves, either purposefully or accidentally.

On the other hand, I need to get this garden in sometime this century, so I decide to help things along.

"I'll make shakes as soon as it's done," I tell them. This particular bribe works because, as a part of my laissez faire approach to parenting and also to encourage them to at least fantasize about living on their own, I'm no longer making meals for them on a regular basis, and so, since it's nearly noon and they haven't yet figured out how cereal in a box, bowls in a cupboard, spoons in a drawer and milk in the fridge all come together, they're starving.

Eventually, we all make it out to the garden. I'm armed with a map of what is to be planted where, a rake, a hoe, some stakes, string, seed packets and a lot of determination. I'll need that last thing in the face of all this decided lack of enthusiasm. Currently, they're standing around the garden perimeter, looking at me as though I'm an evil overseer and they're the oppressed peons. "You start planting this corn," I tell one, pointing to one end of the garden, "and you can make hills for pumpkins," I say, marking off another patch. They sigh and get to work.

My husband cheerfully rototilled a monstrous-sized garden plot against the fence between ours and the neighbor's yard last weekend. I can't help but notice that since he's gotten a rototiller there's a lot more garden than there was when he just had a shovel and his back to make a plot with.

The soil is cool and dry and sandy. My youngest son is carefully shaping little mountains, using the yard stick to determine the proper radius of each mound before he begins and then plunging it through the center after he's done to make sure that each is 9 inches tall. He's the meticulous one. The other son is making what can only be described as organic looking furrows for corn, having obviously decided that stakes and string are for losers. I figure that the corn will come up anyway, straight or crooked furrowing aside, and I praise his artistic way with a line as well as the other child's masterful engineering abilities.

About this time of year in Ludington I would be busily talking myself out of starting vegetables from seed. There would still be a threat of snow in the forecast or an ice storm, and I'd be hoping the crocuses and hyacinths in the back yard would survive it. My tulips would be thinking about poking their heads out of the ground in another month, but I'd be out there every day anyway looking for signs of incipient blooming.

Here in Jacksonville, planting season starts in March, with none of the desperate longing for green shoots that presages springtime in Michigan. You go from hot weather where everything is wilted to watery weather where everything has molded to cooler weather where everything is dulled to warm weather where everything has suddenly sprouted. No dark depressing time in weather or in attitude from which to recover. Spring happens regardless of the fact that I haven't suffered through bone shattering cold and consequently don't feel that I've done anything to deserve such a beautiful season.

Yesterday I took the daffodil bulbs that my neighbor gave me way back in January out of the vegetable bin in the fridge and put them in pots on the patio. It seems like cheating, shocking them like that. My neighbor, more used to the seasons down here, is already enjoying yellow daffodil blooms. My bulbs got tired of waiting for me to remember them and sprouted in the shopping bag I'd wrapped them in, tucked away behind the carrots and broccoli.

The boys and I manage to get two kinds of corn and twelve hills of pumpkins and squash planted before we call it quits for the day. They're cheerful going back to the house, as well as filthy. Amazing what a little grubbing in the dirt will do for even the most sullen teenager. There is more garden to plant on the south side of the house and another patch on the north side that's due to get gourds and cukes and flowers. We'll finish it up later in the week. Barring any more unauthorized rototillage by my husband, we should have everything in the ground by end of the month.

I listen as my sons congratulate themselves. Gardening isn't so bad. They can see light at the end of the tunnel. This, of course, is where they're completely wrong. I set chocolate shakes down in front of them to reward them for their good behavior like it says in my book and then I go research cookie recipes for next week, when we have to start weeding.

Snakes

Today I plan to look out the bathroom window at the concrete steps to nowhere and see if the snake the bug man told me about is napping there in the sun. He said it was about a yard long and showed me by spreading his hands apart and then he said, "It's just a regular garden snake." He said he saw another one poke its head up out of the hole in the steps when he came out of the crawl space underneath the house. "I saw a rodent nest down in the crawl space but it looked pretty old. Probably the snakes have cleaned them out," he said. I called my husband to tell him about the snakes. I knew he'd be tickled.

I thought my sons would like to know about them, too, except I predicted Sam would refuse to leave the house again for fear of getting bit. But he just said, "Black snakes? Those are the good kind," and let it go.

I took a picture of one of them from the bathroom window yesterday. Its head was up as though it was listening. I think if I'd tried to sneak up on it from the back door it probably would've been long gone by the time I got around the corner. When I looked at the picture in iPhoto it looked larger than I imagined and smaller, too.

Steve says that a woman at work, Linda, told him that if you try to corner a black snake it will sometimes shake the very tip of its tail in the leaves to simulate a rattlesnake's rattle to try to scare you off. Part of me wants to see and hear this and part of me is convinced that the snake will chase me.

I remember a story that my dad used to tell me about when he was a boy and he and some friends convinced a boy to take a whip like stick and snap it at a nest of dozing blue racer snakes. "They came right after him and he was running so fast to get away that he got clear across the creek without getting his feet wet!" said Dad, chuckling. I could see the sun coming through the bright green leaves and smell the warm dirt along the path when he'd tell that story. I could see the boys, barefoot at the creek and I could hear the way they talked and the casual setting up of a friend to go do something that probably wouldn't kill him but would definitely give him something to remember the day by.