12 2008-07-18T15:41:59Z false The joy of carrying my babbling baby boy to the garden each day is nothing short of magical. Every day, I pick him up from daycare on the way home from work, and when we get home, the puppies (now dogs, but they'll always be puppies in our hearts) leap about eagerly to get a whiff of us both, before darting out the back door to do what dogs do best. "Da da dAAAH! Dah da da Hooooooooo," Jack bounces excitedly up and down on my arm, his gaze darting from dogs to plants and back again. I stop at each plant, giving it a careful inspection, telling the boy what I'm doing at each step of the way. Our first stop after the Spice Wall is the Not-Actually-A-Zucchini plant that turned out to be yet another beginning pumpkin patch. With a growing sense of dread I realize the few parts that aren't yellow or brown are attached to dead or dying vines, and my pruning shears only underscore the fact that we've lost this one to the damnable blight known as the Squash Vine Borer. It's a harsh blow, harsher than I thought. Being a man, I'll never know the experience of childbirth, or carrying a child to term, but there is what I'd imagine to be a similar type of connection to plants one has raised from seed. The sweat, the tears, the literal blood that was shed...the sunburn from getting so caught up in my gardening work one morning that when sunset kept me from working any further, I, Lobster, endured several days of pain, and several more of peeling. It's as much a badge of parenthood, only a different sort. I did not have to push my crops through a tiny opening in my body (that would be highly illegal in our state anyway), but neither did my wife endure several months of labor. I would be a fool to propose being a gardener puts me on par with being a mother that gave birth to a child, but it does give me a bit more of an understanding of the special connection between mother and child. And so, it was with a deep mixture of sadness and anger that I put the ailing pumpkin bush out of its misery, and laid it to rest in the compost box, next to its slightly more decayed brethren. Jack pulled himself up and gripped the edge of the compost box, coasting along the edge, and felt the need to say a few words. "Daaa-hoo!" Daa-hoo, indeed. The grim work of the reaper done, we continued our inspection of the garden, and the pruning of the dead leaves, occasionally cursing the squash-vine borer to the Nth generation. The rest of the garden brought a bit more encouragement. The yellow squash had not only grown considerably since yesterday, but several other yellow squash had begun to fruit from their blooms, and the two tiny zukes had turned into two rather large tubes that are looking to be a very tasty meal in the near future. Bees buzzed happily among the mint, drugged out of their mind, and I felt compelled to snap a few photos of them. The bees were so stoned that I was able simply sit there, inches from them, and snap close-ups. They didn't care in the least; had I been a bee, they'd probably have asked if I wanted a hit of the mint bloom. My watermelon plants had begun attacking a lone yellow squash plant that dared grow within a few feet of it. I decided to break up the fight, gingerly snipping the thin little watermelon tendrils that were attempting to throttle the competition, and carefully moving it towards another direction when I noticed something amazing. It had actually started to bear fruit. There, on the vine, was a teeny, tiny little watermelon about the size of a shooter marble. These things were half-dead when I planted them, and I'd given up on them before I'd even started. Their transplanting consisted of taking them out of the pot, setting them on the ground, and taking whatever I had left of the compost and peat, mounding it around the thing, and covering it with grass clippings. Now it's bearing fruit!!! I guess where one life ends, another begins. We finished off the day with an inspection of the pumpkin patch, and found two ripe 15 pounders ready for harvesting. When the wife got home, she snapped a photo of them, along with our 18 pounder, and then had the boy and I pose there with them. I like the photo. It's a reminder of the duality between being a father, and being a gardener, and the work that both entail. Maybe someday little Jack will feel the same way. 9 false 23462 false false false Entry 3222 Garden 2008-07-18T00:00:00Z DMY 26624 Public 2008-07-18T15:54:09Z 3667 Sunny 97 F