Gardener

It's one of those things; you do everything you can to give it a good start, but the results are pretty much out of your hands after that. Naturally, I'm talking about my vegetable garden. It's been freezing cold, windy, rainy and basically, sun-less in our backyard. The rain is giving me the biggest plants in the neighbourhood but if we don't get any sun, the plants might not set fruit in time. It's been my constant worry as I wander down the little rows, plucking this weed and pinching off that limb, watching the plants grow higher and higher with no evidence of flowering or fruiting on the horizon. What if they bolt? What if nothing comes of this little experiment and I'm fraught with disappointment after all this hope and toil?

But today!!!! Today it happened. Flowers on the potato plants, the melon, the beans, the tomatoes and the squash. One tiny pea pod poking it's little nose out from behind a bunch of leaves and carrots finally keeping up with their neighbour, the radish. On closer inspection, there are even tiny little green mini-tomato-wanna-be's clinging to one or two branches! It's happening! It's really happening! This foray into the gardening world will not be for naught (ha ha).

It's a wonderous thing to see something that was once a wee little seed become something edible. How incredible to know that something that will soon be a whole meal was once in a little $1.49 packet so slim it could fit in my wallet. It was today when I realized that I've caught the bug. This won't be a one-year-trial of "let's just see what happens". I've seen the miracle of vegetable life and am already planning next season's garden. I have become what I never dreamed I'd be. I am a Gardener.