Gardening



I have been sweating in the garden. One project is making a small farm. Plowing the ground and getting rid of stones, weeds' roots and so forth. The soil becomes soft and rich after such procedures. Here is such a farm. I have planted 6 of young tomatoe plants.

 

While I was working there, a neighbor farmer, a little bit younger than me, has talked to me over the fence. A muscular type of guy with sunburnt face. He said it was a little bit too early for me to plant them because it still could get frosty in the coming few weeks. I should have planted them in a couple of weeks, as he said. I could not help smiling to hear him saying the vegetable plant makers could earn more if we planted them too early and got them ruined by frost. He proposed me some vinyl sheet to avoid such damage on vegetables by frost.

 

He seemed to have known my father. He said my father used to fertilize the soil and the plants might grow well. Yes, I know what he meant. His words reminded me of my father doing the same thing. I wonder if that farmer used to talk to my father as if to me today. My father was, at that time, as old as myself at present. I felt time had slid away. It was not a feeling of sadness. But I was satisfied to go along after my father.

 

The next plant should be water melon, which I have failed or have had nasty crows eat for the past few years. I would pull it off by any means this year. I would send fresh water melon to my parents in law this summer. Together with my wife, I have also planted or seeded a few kinds of flowers like Cosmos, Mary Gold, Forget-me-not and so forth.

 

The hardest work is to puu the weeds. Terrible work.

 

I only wish I were young enough not to have backache so easily.