lazy gardener

I certainly was not meant to be a farmer.

A good friend was a dairyman, back when a good sized dairy might milk 50 or 60 cows. Now we have factories that have around 10,000 cows, but that is a different story.

Cows need regular care, like twice a day. The girls are insistent on that big of regularity. So Dairy farmers don’t go on extended trips without a LOT of arranging and delegation.

I, on the other hand, will go visit a daughter or a grandchild on the flip of a bad coin. That is OK, except that gardening needs a schedule too. Not as tight as a dairy, but if the tomatoes don’t get planted by a certain time, there is not much of a crop etc.

So this spring we went to stay with Emily. Garden got to wait and it did OK, but it might have done better had I been here. This fall we were gone again when the first frost hit. Could have brought more in had I been here, but I was not.

And here is the tricky part. If I have to choose between a good garden and a good visit with a daughter or grandchild, the garden comes in a distant second.

So, today, after a few frosts, I am going to attack our tomato patch and see how many tomatoes I can salvage. The ripe ones will be juiced and in canning jars by bed time, the ones that are not quite rip will be eaten later.

This fall I will stay home, mostly, and through the winter much the same thing, but if an invitation is extended, we might be on the road again.

The garden can wait.