Gas Pains

Reaping What We Sow

Posted by Tom Gaertner on Sept. 9, 2009

Gardening, Parenting

The President spoke to the children yesterday. 

Did you notice that the end of times didn't suddenly materialize.  I checked and saw no little school children walking about like miniature zombies.

Nonetheless I was prepared.

I dug potatoes this weekend.

Just in case - I think I now have enough spuds to get me through the duration of the revolution.  After all - Bolsheviks make vodka from potatoes don't they?

I digress.

Truthfully, I feel like a field hand.

I ache everywhere.  Potatoes all over the place.  Pumpkins ripening on the vine.  I found myself up to my elbows in pickles so I uprooted the vines. 

Just so you know everyone is getting a pint of bread and butter pickles for Christmas this year.

I even shredded twenty-plus pounds of cabbage and at this very moment it is fermenting in the laundry room with the dirty underwear and towels.

I have taken cabbage into the office.  I have given cabbage to friends.  I have made new friends by giving cabbage to strangers.

Plenty more for slaw, stir-fry, braising, soup or whatever.

And get this.

In a heroic last-gasp effort before they died - the plum tomato plants stepped to the plate and produced a giant crop of fruit.

Which was transformed into a dozen pints of garden salsa.

About those parents who hollered the loudest about the President waving his pocket watch in front of their children's eyes and luring them to the dark side - has anyone considered that they might just be insecure parents?  And maybe that's why they are so afraid?

You know.  Like they don't have a great deal of confidence in their parenting skills?

Just wait until the stupid years arrive and those little kids become teenagers...