April showers bring May flowers, correct? Well, I wish we had our garden planted before all those showers showed up. One of my neighbours measured over 4 inches of rain in the last week or so.
I had the great idea to expand our garden this year. It’s a big garden. Expansion involved a plow on the tractor and then a cultivator and then a rake. My 13-year-old son, Sterling, looked at the field of dirt where our lawn used to be. I suspect he anticipated more work in the garden when he asked, “Um, why did we expand the garden?”
I could be wrong, but I thought the kids loved working in the garden!
But when all that rain stopped, we let the ground dry up a bit and the planting began. We still had a Costco bin of harvested potatoes from last year’s garden. I guess we didn’t eat them fast enough through the winter because they started to sprout in the bin. Some of them went to feed the calves and 280 of them just went into the garden, happily planted by a half dozen chipper children!
One of those chipper children, a 6-year-old boy named Arrow, disappeared shortly after the day’s activities began. I was then nearly struck by a bike zipping past me through the garden. Arrow thought the smooth, brown dirt would be a great place for a BMX bike track. Perhaps he thought the existing bike track on the other side of the yard, complete with ramps and jumps, was not sufficient for him. He just needed something more flat, more smooth, and more in the garden. I suspect a packed-down bike path is less than conducive for healthy root growth. The seed planters decided to work around the path and stick to planting in the less-packed-down not-bike-track portion of the garden.
There were a few clumps of grass spread out around the newly-cleared land. As we planted seeds, we would rake up the clumps, pick them up in the wheelbarrow and make a pile beside the garden. If the children were not-quite close enough to the pile they would just wind up and toss the clumps over to the pile. I was raking next to the pile when an inaccurately-aimed clump of grassy dirt flew through the air and struck me in the back. I may have responded with some words of frustration to the guilty party that hit me. I apologized for that later on when we were having a break in the house.
Someone reminded me the other day that these days won’t last forever. Our oldest daughter turns 20 this year so that reminder is really hitting home. Dad, maybe you’re working on some project with your kids and you feel the frustration setting in because they’re not doing it right or they’re not doing it fast enough or they’re throwing dirt at you. I understand! Let me remind you that these days won’t last forever. Time flies! Make every moment count! Even the dirt-tossing ones!
Jason Weening planted a lot of seeds with his 10 kids and one patient wife. Looking for a Father’s Day gift? Check out his book, “Yes, Dear…I’m Watching Them”, on Amazon!