My green-thumbed confession

When I was in junior high my sister gave me a shirt that said, "Help! I'm on the phone and I can't shut up!"  Now I need an updated version: "Help, I'm obsessed with my garden and I can't stay out!"  I can't get enough of the garden.  Oh, sure, I’ve got zucchini up to my eyeballs, and my arms always smell like tomato vines, and if I never saw another weed again in this life it would be too soon.  But I keep going back out—several times a day, and always on the pretense that “I’ll be back in just a second!”

Sometimes it’s to admire the pumpkins (but, oops, there’s a few weeds…I’ll just grab those), or to pick the raspberry bush’s daily yield of three magnificent berries (oh, wait, I forgot to water the basil plants, and I better pick a leaf for my fingertip perfume), or to check on the zucchini plant so I know how soon the next round of neighbors will be getting zucchini bread (is that a slug?--Smash it!  Is that a ladybug?—Go get the girls!  Is that a 6-foot long green monster?  No, it’s just yesterday’s zucchini putting “Little Shop of Horrors” to shame.)  Then, what do you know, a “quick check” turns into two hours.

Sometimes I proudly take pictures of my garden goods, and I realize I’m not so unlike Cupon Clippers.  Here’s a picture of today’s haul. 

I've recognized a form of my addiction in each of my kids.

Sage loves our beans (22 harvested today), corn, and, naturally, the sage plant in our herb garden (which only she is allowed to harvest).  After helping to plant the corn kernels, Sage made a chart and tracked how many kernels sprouted into little green stalks each day.  She considers herself the authority on which ears of corn are ready to be picked (though earwigs have provided ample, and fearsome, competition). Of all the harvested food, Sage and Eliza are totally in love with fresh corn on the cob--especially when they get to roll the hot cobs over the whole stick of butter.  We have to limit them at two fulls cobs a night, and not because we don't have enough in our garden.

Eliza is our flower girl.  When the tulips were in bloom, I found her outside praying over them individually.  She monitors all the new blooms, and exacts a tax for her services—regular picking, which she uses to fill all the vases we own.  Sometimes she brings the vase with her when she moves from one room to another.

You’d never guess from her pale skin, but next to me, Lily has spent the most time out in the yard this summer.  When her older sisters had long since deserted the backyard for otter pops or a show like Backyardigans (how ironic), Lily could be found picking peas (during pea season she asked to go out for peas five times a day), exclaiming happily over a pill bug or anthill, or picking green grape tomatoes.   And more than anything, she loves to confiscate the hose for her own purposes, including to create mud puddles (usually at the bases of our peach trees) to splash in.

Mark likes to go in the garden whenever he wants to not come in for two hours, since I always insist on giving him THE LATEST tour, which is always drastically different from the last tour that I gave him forty-eight hours ago.  I'm sure he goes to bed at night thinking, "To everything there is a season..."