Gardening

A garden requires patient labor and attention. Plants do not grow merely to satisfy ambitions or to fulfill good intentions. They thrive because someone expended effort on them. ~ Liberty Hyde Bailey

I've never considered myself to have a green thumb. In fact, do to my aversion to mucking around in dirt, I tend to avoid all kinds of growing things. Sure, I can manage to water plants while I'm house-sitting but if you give me a potted plant to take of, chances are it's going to wither away wondering what happened to plant TLC.

When I was a child, my parents hauled all of us to the farm every single Sunday. On those mornings of backbreaking labor (as I choose to remember them as), we would be given individual rows to weed, hoe and pretty much take care of. My brother, the only one of us siblings that had a green thumb, was always given double what we were given. Just to foil our efforts at cheating.

My parents always had this continual rivalry going on. There was always a prime spot of farm land that lay fallow from the last year. My dad would want to plant yams (his favorite dish) while my mom would want to plan corn (her favorite). So every year they argued back and forth about it. It was so cool to watch. Eventually they would split the fallow part equally so that both could have good produce but they always had to have this little disagreement first. I think they put on a show for us or something. So, once my parents were off doing their own thing we were left to our own devices and apportioned land.

One by one we would barter, beg and plead with my brother to help us out. The Lawyer managed to do her part all by herself but the rest of us---yeah, we were plumb lazy. My brother would drive a tough bargain but eventually he would help us all out. For the rest of the week, he was set with household chores like washing dishes---I remembered I once traded him 2 rows of weeding for 2 weeks of washing dishes whenever it was his turn. Yeah, he really did sucker us in!

Now that I'm thinking back, I think perhaps I should have been like the Lawyer and just did my portion and got it over with. Instead of trading sweets, snacks, cash and labor to my taskmaster of a brother. Oh well live and learn:)